Thursday 25th of September 2008 06:57:16 PM

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This is a historic pub located in the East Village. It is best viewed as a tourist location rather than a place to sit an enjoy a good beer. It tends to be pretty packed and the bartenders seem to hope you will order a large quantity of beers at once since they are served in 8oz glasses.

The beer is presumably brewed locally as they serve two options- light or dark. The dark is pretty good actually, but it doesn't have much for the way of variety.

The floor is covered in sawdust and the walls are covered with extremely old advertisements, so overall, the atmosphere is different from many microbrews you may visit.

Friday 11th of July 2008 09:27:26 AM

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One visit to McSorley's is really, in my opinion, all you need to satisfy the desire to drink at this historic pub. I've never found the atmosphere to be particularly pleasant. In a lot of ways, I feel like the staff is a bit pretentious, as if they feel that McSorley's is fabulous enough to not need to be welcoming to guests.

I don't find the beer selection to be good at all. The food is decent, but nothing to return for. And, the staff will probably shuffle you out as quickly as they can so they can fill your seat.

All in all, not a great place to relax and have a decent beer with friends. Definitely not the kind of place I would recommend to visitors unless they specifically asked.

Sunday 27th of April 2008 11:12:10 PM

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We wanted to stop in because it is a historic pub and it was around 5:00 on a friday so we figured it wouldn't be to full. It was packed in the front but the back room was very open. My wife said she was going to head toward the back, find us a spot and I would bring the beers.
I pushed my way toward the and ordered one dark, one light and one water. The bartender comes back with 2 half full glass mugs of each order. I guess that is the way they serve all their beer. He then takes my money and throws it on a pile of cash on the back of the bar. Digging through it to find a single in change.
As I push my way to the back of the bar, I can see the usefulness of having each glass half full. As I see the open oasis of tables and space ahead there is an employee there that mumbles something to me. I step into the open room to ask him again what he said and he says "What the hell did you think I said?". Noting the touristy look on my face he says "get back in the front room! This is for dinners only". So we pushed our way back in the herd and tried to drink our beers. A group of people were sitting at a table and had to empty seats, they asked us to join them which was a haven. They shared their cheese and mustard with us and the sleeve of saltines that comes with it. It was alot of fun chatting but it involved yelling and everytime the table next to us had to pee we had to get up and move our table to let them out.

It was quite entertaining but I don't think I need to go back. The beer was average and it was more about quantity than quality but the people were very friendly even if it did fill like a bit of a tourist trap.