McCloskey's Tavern — Restaurant in Lower Merion Township

My wife and I are Ardmore locals and had been putting off trying McCloskey's. So tonight my wife, a friend of ours, and I stopped by a little after dinner-time to eat a late meal and a drink to boot.

We were seated fairly quickly, got our drinks shortly thereafter, and gave our menus a look. And then we looked at our closed menus for about ten minutes. When our waitress came to take our order, my wife and I decided to split a cup of the soup of the week and the O'Patty's burger (Sauteed onions and swiss on a burger, set on toasted wheat bread). Our friend tried their basic Garden salad with grilled chicken. Our soup came first, about five minutes after ordering. I must mention that, while the soup-of-the-week listed wasn't the soup they were serving that night, the soup we received was very basic and was exactly as we expected it (tomato and macaroni soup- yup).

After getting our soup, we waited a long time to get our entrees; by "a long time", I mean we saw four other tables get seated, order, and served their food during this period, while waitresses joked with cooks and checked their phones. At around fifty minutes since ordering, we were considering just paying for the soup and the drinks and leaving when our food arrived, with no apology for time taken.

Our burger was bland, tasting only of swiss, while our friend's salad looked and tasted straight from a bag. Overall, I am disappointed; only the soup was passable, and that's not much. No...

We are customers of McCloskey's for 25+ years; we'll come back. But tonight's service was atypical, frustrating, and highly avoidable...if the owners and managers would train their team and right-size their kitchen to manage their nearly doubled seating capacity with their outdoor dining area.

Several of the lowlights of the meal: waited 30+ minutes to receive our drinks, food runners carried water cups and food plates against their dirty shirts and then served them to us, entree Caesar salad with salmon served with appetizer without other entrees. We received app and requested entree salad be served with other entrees; we observed that salad was placed on shelf in bar area while we waited another 15+ minutes for remaining entrees. When served, salad was not tossed with dressing.

Food runner was sure to let us know she thought we were rude when we brought to her attention that how she served us was subpar, at best.

When bill came, not a single item was removed from the bill in consideration of the overwhelmingly poor service. We paid full tab and tipped 20+% in cash...not because of great service but because the servers, bartender, food runners and kitchen staff were only partially responsible for the failures of the night. This was overwhelmingly a failure of owners, leaders, managers who seemed more interested in profit over...

Second time visiting the bar last night and everything went wrong. Only correct food on our order was the wings they were perfect. But the soup was over seasoned and our burgers not only took forever to come but one was the wrong burger and both were over cooked. Lastly (the reason for this review) there was a “regular” customer sitting to the left of the front door in a booth who began screaming, jumping out of his seat and yelling at another patron. The guests moved toward the bar near us visibly shaken and the father of the group was telling the manager “all I did was ask the guy to watch his language bc he was in front of my family and he lost it” and “I’m going to call the cops”. Instead of the manager kicking out the “regular” customer he made excuses for his behavior, allowed him to stay and comped the family’s bill who left. Afterward the bar cleared out and we were left feeling like how is this ok for him to stay and the family had to leave? Since my first experience here was amazing I’d be willing to try it one more time but never on a Wednesday again. I’m hoping not to see that manager or “regular” customer again. I hope the owner reads these reviews and addresses the major issue of letting a violent, overreacting patron stay bc he’s a “regular” over a nice family...