John D. McGurk's Irish Pub and Garden — Restaurant in St. Louis

Please read the whole thing.——I gave JDM a scathing review a while back bc the atmosphere changed from the world famous traditional rootsy pub who imported some of the best acoustic Irish music on the globe ,to a frat boy extravaganza of complete uncontrollable debauchery while blasting top 40 over the sound system. … Now I’ve changed my mind because they paid me to. ……… KIDDING just kidding. There were no green backs exchanged for the making of this review🤣. Honestly, I think what probably happened was that In an effort to market themselves better to a wider audience ( beyond being the epicenter of trad Ireland in America… which, btw is a pretty damed cool title) they may have went a bit too far in one direction than others . —- Now, with the influx and influence of a good amount of truly world class younger Irish musicians coming to St.Louis and embracing the place, the scales have balanced a bit. It’s still not the place I grew up with . But it’s starting to feel a lil more welcoming again. —- To JDM, every business wants new markets . But shouldn’t loose sight of what made them popular in the first place. The goal is to keep the what you’ve got while attracting a different clientele at the same time. —— I think your finally hitting a stride and I’m glad for the both of us . —— ps . Staff, food ,pours and prices have always been good. Even when we...

This place is LOUD and jumping on a Saturday night. They have live music and you will be carded at the door. We waited about 15 minutes for a table. I ordered a black and tan and waited some time to get my order. I was disappointed that I got a murky black beverage. The Guinness was dispensed directly into the glass, it was still foaming when I got it. I just can't believe it that an Irish bar can't make a decent black and tan. Perhaps our server forgot to put in the order in a timely manner and got a "rush job" or I made the mistake of ordering a black and tan instead of a half-and-half and someone took offense, but this is the USA, not Ireland. The onion ring appetizer was good, but the rings were as dark as they could be without being black. I'm thinking that they might want to change the oil more frequently. The fish and chips were excellent. We ordered the whiskey bread pudding for dessert. It was a bust. The serving was large tasteless block that reminded me of baked farina. The description says that the bread is topped with whiskey melted butter. I don't recall seeing that on the top, in any event we couldn't taste whiskey or butter. This dessert needs more of everything. More whiskey, more butter, and whipped cream or a scoop of the vanilla bean ice cream also on the menu. Save your money and skip...

I went for the Guinness stew, and came home with corned beef & cabbage and cheesecake. Since I haven't tried the corned beef cabbage or the cheesecake, I'm going to stick with the Guinness stew, which was a perfect serving. Often I feel overwhelmed by the serving size but this was nice. The meat was very tender and you can taste that little tang of Guinness in vegetable filled sauce. It came with a hunk of bread. I think it was a baguette, but it was toasted and salty, pairing perfectly with the stew. I have been to other places that had soda bread, but the baguette worked just as well. I also got a non alcoholic cocktail that I'm pretty sure they made up on the spot. It tasted like it had grapefruite juice and some other stuff in it and was really good. I sat at the tables but as I was leaving, I realized that there was a live band. I think next time, I'll suffer the high tables just to see the band. Some of the staff even came around and offered Jaegermeister, but even though my DNA says I'm 50% German, I just could never get over that much licorice flavor. I even tried to make the Jaegermeister shake once just to see if that would work when I was a lot younger but no luck. Anyway, it felt like everyone was gearing up to have a lot more fun as I...