Better late than never ... here's the brief tale of our dinner at McGurk's on April 25th. For some reason we decided to leave the cafe where we'd had our enjoyable beer tasting and head over to McGurk's for dinner. After this meal I remembered why it had been so long since we'd dined at McGurks ... it pretty well stinks.
OK, maybe stinks is too strong a word.
McGurk's is mediocre. It tries too hard to be something more than what it is and ends up failing at everything. Of course, to be entirely fair, not everyone is as picky as Jay and me and that probably explains why the place is always crawling with people ... "finer" dining options are hard to come by in OFallon.
We opted to eat indoors because it was such a windy evening, but the patio was filled to the brim with patrons who didn't seem to mind; hey, when then breeze carries all your smoke to another table what's not to enjoy?
Our first course of business was to order a couple of brewskies ... but the list of available beers was disappointing to say the least. When I looked at their website, McGurk's listed a decent variety of hops and barley to choose from but at the restaurant we were given a list of about 12 beers and I'm still a little confuzzled about that. I wonder now if they were having an uber-busy evening and had run out of beer much like the Taco Bell I tried to order from a few weeks back which told me they were out of beef when I tried to place an order about 8PM one Friday evening.
Finally we decided upon a McGurk's Ale for Jay and a hard cider for me.
McGurk's Ale
It was tolerable ... kind of weak and a little flat tasting in both our opinions. Is there anything worse than bad beer when dining at a brewpub?
Cider of unknown origin
What I really wanted was a Strongbow Cider, which cannot be located anywhere in Stinktown that we know of; what I ended up with was creamed crap in a bottle.
Do not.
Ever.
Order this cider.
Ever.
We then ordered an appetizer in the hopes that it would be better than the beer. Here's the problem ... most of the appetizers on the menu were typical St. Louis appetizer fare: toasted ravioli, baked potato skins, spinach / artichoke dip ... blah, yawn, blah. Where are the deep fried snausages with mustard? How about some stinking pretzels? A cheese and sausage plate? HAS ANYONE IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT EVER BEEN TO THE BRITISH ISLES???
After much eye rolling, we settled on the bacon wrapped shrimp which was served on a bed of polenta. Thank Gawd for polenta because the shrimp was over-cooked and chewy - I love shrimp but I let Jay have most of this because it just wasn't good. The presentation was attractive but again ... we don't dine at pubs for culinary presentation, we dine at them for good, solid, beer-soaking food.
Shrimp's in there somewhere!
Staying true to my normal, boring self I chose the Fish & Chips for my entree. In retrospect I should have gone with the Guinness Beef Stew. This was quite possibly the worst version of fishie and chippie I've ever eaten ... Long John Silver's would have been preferrable to this. Honestly, there was almost no fish and a whole lotta deep fried batter. This was also overcooked - I had to saw through it with my knife and no amount of cheap yellow mustard could make it taste good. I fondly recall Harry Ramsden's fish which is lightly breaded and tender ... you don't even need a fork to pull the fish fillets apart.
Final verdict?
This sucked.
Cod briquettes with deep fried potato slices
Jay opted for a dinner special: Braised Short-Ribs with a Vegetable Melody. The only good thing to show up at our table all night, this was actually well prepared with tender, flavorful short-ribs and tasty, steamed fresh veggies. That big non-artistically placed blob of stuff on top of the ribs is horseradish sauce. Jay liked it but I'm a firm believer that sauces like that should be served on the side for people like me who don't really like sauce in the first place.
Bowl of meat and veggies
I still cannot reconcile the beer menu we were given that night with the menu listed on the restaurant's website. Furthermore, we were never given a drink menu or wine list although McGurk's lists extensive ones on their website. Our waitress was not enjoying her evening either and didn't even ask us if we wanted dessert ... which we didn't. Jay and I thought about ordering some boozie coffee to wind down the evening but decided that we could make a better version at home with Kahlua Mocha and whipped cream (and we did).
So, in conclusion ... don't go to McGurks ... it's just not that good. We could have hit them on a bad night but I don't think so - their waitstaff was disinterested and less than helpful and for the most part their food was not very good. There was a couple at the table next to us who sent their appetizer and their beer back because they were less than palatable. How skunky must your beer be before you're forced to return it to the bartender?
Ah well, into everyone's life a little bad food must fall. Thank goodness it doesn't happen very often.
Today I went out to lunch with a friend and had some wine...so no weight loss for me today.
I cannot wait for a vacation. We're staying at an all-inclusive, so I'm not sure how the food will be, but I will definitely report back with anything interesting - that is if I remember how to use the camera between mojitos 
Needless to say we picked up a bottle or three. 
