The Boardwalk Bar & Grill

nice looking bar on one side and nice looking restaurant on the other. very attentive service. that said. my filet was DRY and far from «fork tender». crab cakes were like eating sand they were so dry and had curry (yuk)

I’ve been sitting here for 30mins, and the table still hasn’t been cleared from the last customers. We asked for menus and were told there’s a delay on food, but the place is only half full.
… Another 15 mins later we left. The table was cleared but despite asking for menu’s they never appeared. Other customers had been sitting waiting for menus too.

I am a visitor not a local but I had been to the boardwalk a few times. Whether you want a small appetizer or a large meal you can’t go wrong. My favorite is the wings (honestly the tenderest juiciest chicken I have ever had) i have been to the anchor bar in buffalo and this place got them beat. The «chips» are also a great hot snack with vinegar and plenty of salt. Trust me on this one you won’t go wrong. The staff treats you like family even on you first visit.

I spent about 7 hours here, overall I found my experience to be mediocre.
The hostess was exceedingly friendly (and attractive, if that makes any difference!), though the bar staff during lunch hour were not exactly what I’d describe as warm.
For that, we figured we’d sit on the boardwalk and watch the boats go by. This was fantastic and for that, the location is absolutely brilliant.
We ordered a platter for two of wings with bleu cheese and a bucket of Corona (5).
Apparently, or as I was told, this place is famous for its wings and I could hear the waitress recommend it to other patrons.
When the rings arrived, they were awful. They were burnt, practically meatless, and the chicken had obviously been frozen and frozen for a good while. This is bad when it comes to chicken bones, because as the chicken is frozen and frozen for a decent length, the ice crystals break down the bones and make them weak. It does not do this instantly upon freezing, which means that the chicken wings had been frozen for awhile. Yay for fresh food! Freshly unfrozen, that is!
The bleu cheese was absolutely pathetic and in the scabbiest container I’ve yet seen served with food. Essentially take the screw-​on cap of a red sauce container, like from Tesco or Heinz and there you go. That was the amount of bleu cheese for wings in quantity to satisfy two! Worse, there were no bits of bleu cheese or anything in this ‘dip’. Rather, it was just watery. It was entirely disappointing.
I was absolutely surprised as to how little meat was on any of the wings and drumsticks. So not only did they clearly use frozen food for their famous wings, but also picked starving chickens clearly destined for an American KFC. That or these were wings clearly derived from the ‘runts of the litter.‘
It took little effort, as in simply picking up the wing and putting it in your mouth and biting off the tiny portion of meat, to cause the bones to completely shatter leaving your mouth filled with fragments and marrow. Famous indeed.
As we had already pre-​paid for dinner, we had no choice but to return. I have a feeling the serving staff assigned to the outside tables are new or not their prime, because it took 20 minutes for the waitress to return when we asked for 5. Then it took another hour between our starter and our main course. Further, requests for a glass of water were never fulfilled, though they were made twice.
For dinner, the starter was their seafood chowder. It was just under 7 Euro and was quite good, though it was served sans oyster crackers. I suppose I wasn’t overly surprised, but the chowder would have been better fitted with oyster crackers. It felt a bit weird eating it plain.
My companion had the rack of lamb and I had the 11 oz steak, medium rare.
This was accompanied by a carrot mash, buttery sliced spuds, and steak chips in these cute copper-​coloured pots.
The lamb, of which I had a sample, was quite nice. It was tender and had a good flavour.
My steak, unfortunately, was not overly impressive. It wasn’t terrible, but it certainly was not worth 26.50. A good portion of the steak was obvious grizzle. It was cooked to medium rare and the bits that weren’t excessively fatty were tasty. Unfortunately, a good portion of those 11 oz were grizzle and fat.
My plate also had a dollop of mashed potato, which was good. But it was only a spoonful. Then the carrot mash was equally good, for a vegetable side. The chips themselves were undercooked.
The buttery spuds looked delicious, in fact they looked like au gratin potato, however tasting this led to disappointment as all it amounted too was an over-​buttered flavourless mush.
The cosmopolitans were sweet, but definitely light on the pour. That said, they did have a 5 Euro cocktail special and there did seem to be a steady stream of hen parties flooding into this establishment. I certainly would not return to eat, however I would return to sit on the boardwalk and have drinks.

This establishment has two separate sections, a bar/​lounge and then what appears to be a reasonably upscale sit-​down restaurant, both adjacent to the entryway. I went to the bar side and tried some of the selections on their Bar Menu (one of three that they seem to have) and everything was great to exceptional. They have what I guess you could call Cork’s version of buffalo wings, although on a scale of 1 to 10, the sauce was about a 3.5 or so. The menu commentary said «They speak for themselves», but I think you would have to listen very carefully.
The food was very fresh and served very hot. I also tried their Shepherd’s Pie, one of my all-​time favorite Irish dishes, and I would give it a 6 on a scale of 1 – 10. A bit too heavy on the tomato sauce and somewhat lacking in vegetables and a bit short on the seasoning, although it was served with a fresh Rosemary twig, which if you broke up and added to the lamb, did a lot to make up for the lack of spices. I am going to have to try adding that to my recipe!
They have a fairly large variety of beer on tap as well.
Overall, worth a stop in if you are in the area.

Happy Hour: all cocktails for a fiver during the week from 5pm to 8pm. WIN! Ask the bartender to make you an apple cosmopolitan, tastes just like apple jack sweets. It’s not on the menu but it’s amazing. They even make their strawberry daiquiris with real strawbs none of your slurpy mix here.
Curl up on one of the big squishy couches and just order drink after drink until you pass out or pass happy hour. Their bar food menu looks a bit average, but you might as well line your stomach with something.

BOARDWALK BAR & GRILL
Make a visit to the Boardwalk Bar & Grill to check out their inviting € 22.50 three course early bird offer.
Made feel at home straight way by the friendly staff who were excellent and on the ball throughout the meal in the busy buzzy comfortable dining room. The bar at the other side looked equally inviting.
After sampling a tasty seeded bun, picked the squid from a choice of four starters. The rings came in a nice thin batter and were accompanied by a sweet chilli dip and some lettuce leaves (nicely presented in a little paper cone).
Again there was a choice of four dishes for the main course. The salmon and spinach looked good at a nearby table but I went for the Angus steak. It was a fine piece served with onion rings, the sauce coming in a separate container (a sensible way of doing it).
There was some piped out tasteless texture-​less mash on the plate and that was left there at the end. Then three little saucepans were placed on the table, one containing well cooked broccoli and green beans, another with some decent chips and the third, more potatoes, this type a gratin (with some hard overdone pieces). That made it three types of spud with one course! Hardly necessary and a record for me, I think.
Desserts chosen were New York Baked Cheese cake and a Citrus Tart. Both were okay but we’d have been better off to have taken the glass of wine instead. The offer is for three courses or two courses with wine but you are asked at the very start to nominate your dessert with the order.
We did have two glasses of wine, each costing € 5.50. One was a South African Cabernet Shiraz, the other a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, both very pleasant and fit for purpose