Shay McElroy’s Irish Pub

Clean, neat, and quaint. Pleasant staff, and a nice place to unwind. Highly recommend you «drop-​in». You will NOT be disappointed…

This is my home bar. One of my pictures shows the old tables and chairs on the patio. We loved those. So pretty. The new ones… meh. Not so much. The tables and chairs aside…
Holly, Jeanette, Cassie… they are my gals. I love them!!! There are a number of bartenders that have come and gone over the years. Everyone has always been extremely nice and professional. I have never been treated poorly. Since I live in the building, it has been really nice having this place downstairs.
Too bad GreyStar ruined the living quarters here. Anyhoo… that will not deter us from going to this fine establishment.
I have met so many wonderful people here and made many many friends. Typically, walking past the patio I see at least one person that I know.
The drinks are good and the people are even better. Plus the sandwiches are fantastic. I do not recall the gentleman’s name in the kitchen, but he is worth his weight in gold. He does a great job. Love him to pieces as I do everyone who works there.
If you are looking for truly a nice and friendly place to hang out, come on by. My BFF met her husband there and so did I. Not bad, huh?
Halley puppy curls up outside and wants to know where her Blue Moon is located.

Has just one drink here and sat outside to look around. This was the first bar we stopped at when we got to Houston and they carried Not Your Fathers Rootbeer. Loved it and wish more bars carried it.

Great local pub with a good draft beer selection. Warm and inviting environment with friendly bartenders. Stopped in for a happy hour drink after work and they were helpful in helping me decide what to get and even let me sample beers. Very authentic feeling Irish pub, and it’s bigger and cooler than it seems from the outside — I definitely recommend stopping in!

Very clean and well decorated Irish Pub!
The service was ok. The bartender wasn’t in the mood for chit chat. I’m a local and tried to spark up a conversation, but got a smile as she walked away.
The jukebox was turned up way too load!
My buddy & I only had 2 rounds and split!
Beer was cold and tasted fresh.

Nice place to relax, grab a beer and people watch. Staff was friendly and the Reuben sandwich good.

Nice little Irish pub! It’s not fancy but the atmosphere is right. Surprised to see Irishmen living in Texas but they were there. Good bunch of «lads» too. I had a pretty well homemade turkey club along with a perfect pint of Guinness and a pint of Smithwicks! The food was cheep and the beer was normal price so all in all not too bad.

Located in a fairly hip part of town. Typical tapas bar /​saloon with an Irish theme. Outside seemed a typical but upon entry you are pleasantly impressed with the mahogany bar which is well stocked. Sandwiches avg 8 – 9 bucks and service is prompt. The waitresses are attractive enough to hold your attention between being well endowed and cute. The juke box was very interesting looked like and over sized I phone and actually will sync with it if you have one

love this place! The staff knows their whiskey! You can’t be the atmosphere and it’s walking distance from the rail. Karaōke on Tuesdays

Depending on what time you come, service is ridiculous, other times it is merely passable. A long wood bar, an outside patio along main, and the perfect pseudo Irish pub charm, until the obnoxiously loud club music makes you want to run out screaming ENOUGH.
Beer selection is just about every crappy UK beer on nitro you can imagine. Wouldn’t it be nice if they had some Fuller’s or a handful of good Texas beers, instead of the artificial tasting crap that is Guinness and Boddingtons? They did have Karbach Weiise Versa that was flat, sour, and completely off. Boo for the one good tap they had.
Food is just bland sandwiches. Pastrami tasted like it was that boars head stuff you can get at any grocery store. Really dry, and the only flavor was grease.
Ugh, again, enough. Just not a very good bar downtown. Outside of the pseudo Irish looking pub, which has its charm if you look at nothing else, not much here for me to come back to. I am amazed at how little this place changes throughout the years, and that it still draws people in. This is my last time.

Had a turkey sandwich for lunch. They were restocking the bar at the time, and oh how I wanted one of those craft beers that sounded so tasty! If I were in Houston more often, this seems like the kind of place I would enjoy some night life. Seems like a real chill Irish pub with a solid selection.

We were here for a quick lunch. The service was fantastic. Poor thing was the only one there so we were outside and just enjoying our time together. The food was very good and the location was fun for people watching.

Good Scotch selection and friendly bartenders.

Gets a little crowded because it’s so small, but there is a great beer selection available.

I don’t usually hangout Downtown, but this can can easily become one of my newest favorite places. It was pretty lively on a Thursday night. The music was nice, they have good, and the bartender, Holly, was A1.

No St. Patrick’s Day specials… (It’s an Irish pub)
Not a lot of space to sit but otherwise pretty nice looking bar!

This is my favorite bar downtown. It had great bartenders, a comfortable feel, and an actual group of friendly regulars — rare for downtown. One caveat though. If you want to sit outside, forget it. For some inexplicable reason, the bar decided to greet the oncoming winter by replacing their spacious, comfortable patio chairs with hard metal torture devices that have some sort of negative synergy that both increases how cold it is while simultaneously causing cramps and bruises in every single place your body interacts with the cruel steel (ok, tin… aluminum?)
Please bring the good chairs back, and you get your extra two stars back.

My first stop after arriving in Houston. We came here because I had to deal with airplanes and airports for 7 hours prior, and I was hungry as balls.
It was almost empty. Clearly the after work crowd hadn’t swarmed in yet. I ordered the Ruben sandwich with a side of chips, and it made for an adequate lunch. I really enjoyed that they had some local craft brews on tap.
My complaints are they’re slightly overpriced. And we also had to deal with shooing away fruit flies whilst eating, which was unpleasant and annoying.
Not bad for a quick beer and a bite. But wouldn’t want to spend a great amount of time here.

This place is cramped to the point where it makes you think it used to be an old visitor’s locker room. Throwing some Irish décor on the walls does not make it authentic.
Food was mediocre, but the service was really bad. Plus, we were overcharged by about $ 20 at the end of the night.
Parking is a nightmare, and you’re either paying to park in a garage or street parking at the mercy of the Nazi meter maids. In fact, we were given a $ 70 ticket on our last visit despite being parked 100% legally around the corner.
Cramped interior, expensive drinks, bad service, and it’s hard to get to. I absolutely would never come here again.

Just like Cee B.‘s review emphasizes: the customer service experience definitely leaves a lot to be desired at times. It is not always that atrocious — but it mostly is. After my fury at being treated awfully by the Flying Saucer on Halloween 2011 I have not been back there once so I have expanded my search for my new place. I thought this was going to be it — excellent location, it has an Irish name, it is a neatly decorated place. But I am not the only person that thinks customer service needs a serious upgrayedd, especially considering how many other bars there are downtown. Like Molly’s across the street. Or Sunny’s two blocks away. Or Warren’s.
Of all the reasons in the world to not give this one star — I like that it is never that busy. I don’t like waiting for my booze. I could do without the sass. But that is something to work on, we all have things we need to work on so it is not such a big slam.
The crowd is definitely not young. If you care about that sort of thing. Unless I am here with someone my age, everybody is north of 40, and perhaps it is 50.
This is definitely not Cheers, your friendly neighborhood local bar.