McGrath's Pub — Restaurant in Harrisburg

McGraths is the best bar in town hands down. Their food is fantastic & the atmosphere is great. If you're in Harrisburg and you don't stop here you're doing yourself a disservice. This is a classic Irish pub.

Whether you are looking for good food, good drink, or relaxing place to smoke a cigar, you found it. Let's start with the food, and arguably most important the fries. Their fries are out of this world, they're seasoned to perfection, and fried in a way that makes them crispy soft and crunchy, it's simply sublime. Next the main dishes. I often keep my orders simple with a sandwich or a burger. You can't go wrong with one of their Rachel's or a Pub Burger.

All that being said if it's your only time here you'd be crazy not to order the fish and chips. I love fish and chips, I've eaten it all over the world, if you even like fish and chips you have to order it here. It's the best I've ever had. There is a twist, it's breaded salmon! When it's placed in a basket over those amazing chips I was talking about earlier. Seriously though don't waste your time with anything else on the menu, not that anything else is a waste of time. But once you've had this fish and chips you'll know what I'm talking about.

Let's talk about the atmosphere. If you want a more traditional date night, or maybe you're having a business meeting, the downstairs is awesome for that. Also the downstairs is a smoke-free area. But if you're looking for a place to have a drink and a smoke, go upstairs It's the best place for that in town. If it's warm outside there's small a deck with enough room to fit a small group of people. Also there's a few arcade games if you're into that type of thing.

All in all in my opinion McGrath's is the best bar in town. Again if you like that traditional Irish bar, let's be honest if you don't you're crazy, you have to stop at McGrath's while...

We were in Harrisburg and told this was a good day drinking bar so we decided to give it a try. There was a decent afternoon crowd for Sunday football and a pretty good selection of beer and liquor. The bar has an Irish pub feel but also seems a little hipster-ish. Our bartender was Anna and she was great! She knew what she was doing, made good drinks and shots, was attentive and quick to refill your drink and did an awesome job keeping up with the growing crowd the later it got during the afternoon. We ordered the caesar salad, bacon ranch cheese fries and Irish hush puppies. The caesar was big enough to split between the 2 of us and was also fresh and served very cold. The fries were so good and also large enough to split, with leftovers. The "fries" are like soft, fried potato chips. The Irish hush puppies were a little larger than a golf ball and filled with mashed potatoes, crisp cabbage and corned beef then breaded and fried. The crisp cabbage was a little off-putting and there wasn't much corned beef, just little bacon-bit sized pieces. Overall, they were not bad. Good flavor and concept; I'd say a 6/10. The only complaint was that later in the afternoon there was another employee who got behind the bar, I'm assuming to help. This employee was a middle-aged male who seemed to be having a bad day. He was unpleasant and slamming things around and acted put off to be pouring/making drinks. He changed the atmosphere around the bar so we didn't end staying too much longer. Otherwise, it was a great time and I would recommend. Especially if...

I had only been here once before, and it was great, so I had to come back. I ordered the Hunters Chicken, which comes in a dark mushroom sauce, and after trying the potatoes (they were amazing) I bit into the chicken. I thought that that I had bitten into a piece of fat, so I tried cutting from another part of the meat. The texture was odd, but that piece wasn't quite as rubbery. I got the waitress's attention, and mentioned that the texture was odd. While I was explaining, I was taking a closer look at the meat, and noticed that the inside was entirely pink. It was raw in the middle.

They did not comp the order, they just remade it at no further cost. My stomach was upset, probably just due to the worry of having consumed raw chicken, and they took what felt like about 20 minutes after taking it away to get the replacement food out. It could be said that I did eventually get the food, and I should therefore pay full price for it, but when I go out for dinner with someone, it's more about the experience than just getting fed, and this was not at all a good experience. After messing up that bad, a lot of places would have at least given a discount, but apparently that's just not their policy here.

At least the person I was there with was a good sport about it, waiting patiently for me to get my food and eat it long after they had finished their meal.

If not for this experience, I would definitely have come back...