Coleman's Irish pub fare the real deal, no blarney
Coleman's Corner is open once again.
This popular Watertown pub reopened earlier this month after being closed quite some time for renovations. It occupies the same basic footprint as before, but the old outside dining area is now incorporated into the main dining room, and the seating outside now has a southern exposure.
The ceiling skylights are still there, but there's new tile floor throughout. The bar definitely appears bigger. The step down from the bar to the dining area has been eliminated and the dining area offers both tables and booths. Several large-screen TVs tuned to ESPN are visible from the bar and the dining room.
The place is fresh, clean, attractive and very loud. Our two immediate impressions while enjoying our pints of Guinness and Harp at the bar: dark wood and high decibels. All the surfaces are hard and there's sound bouncing off every one of them.
The bar is long enough for several groups to gather — the dressed-up, after-work crowd elbow to elbow with the dressed-down, on-their-way-from-a-softball-game crowd. The bartenders are friendly as they try, not always with perfect success, to get into a good serving rhythm.
One drink turned into two, and hey, why not? At four bucks a pint for great beer and five a pop for top-shelf cocktails, why not?
It's an Irish pub, a place to gather to see friends and be seen.
The bar crowd was beginning to dwindle and the dining room was quickly filling.
We grabbed the last table for four. Our friendly waitress, Megan, demonstrated one of her skills immediately, shouting out her name to be heard over the din. The place was getting slammed, but she was cool as a draft beer, taking a minute to chat with us and field a barrage of questions, part of our modus operandi.
Coleman's menu is well-thought-through old standbys from the previous incarnation with lots of new Irish favorites plus a smattering of upscale dishes — things like garlic and Guinness mussels, tuna carpaccio, Irish nachos, Blarney cobb salad, pastrami and Reuben sandwiches, burgers and traditional fare like Irish beef stew, shepherd's pie, corned beef and cabbage, fish and chips and bangers and mash.
Had we not started at the bar, we might have considered the "Four Course Irish Dinner," three draft beers and Coleman's Irish fries. For real.
Shrimp cocktail ($7.99) is still on the menu. We asked Megan if they were still the huge ones. "Yes, they're U-10s," she replied. Literally translated, they were humongous. Easily three bites apiece. And cooked and chilled perfectly with a nice snap you expect but don't always get, served with a just-zingy-enough cocktail sauce.
What goes great with beer? Wings! Their pub wings ($8.99), a dozen of them, were a treat — plump and meaty, covered with a sweet and tasty and somewhat goopy "Guinness gold" sauce. They guarantee a trip to the washroom for hand rinsing. Beautifully tiled and appointed bathrooms, by the way.
You can't get any more Irish-traditional than shepherd's pie ($9.99), the ultimate comfort food — a large crock filled with ground sirloin, peas, carrots caramelized onions and garlic in a savory brown gravy, topped with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes and melted aged cheddar cheese. A great rendition of this Irish classic, full of flavor and stick-to-the-ribs goodness.
Bangers and mash ($12.99) is another standard, one new to several at the table. Plain and simple, it's sausages and mashed potatoes. There were four good-sized spicy and tasty pork sausage links accompanied by the same great Yukon Gold mashed (made right there, according to Megan) that crowned the shepherd's pie. A good splash of their thick, brown house whiskey gravy covered the potatoes.
Fish and chips ($12.99) is actually British in origin but a pub staple in both England and Ireland. It's beer-battered fish, in this case hunks of cod, tender and juicy, with a really crispy, not greasy, coating. The chips, potatoes sliced in disks and deep-fried like potato chips, were great with the whiskey gravy supplied for dipping. High-test tartar sauce was the real deal, made with full-fat mayo.
There's one scallop dish on the menu. Jamie's scallops ($16.99) were delicious, eight of them perfectly cooked in a delightful garlic and herb white wine sauce. Even the rice pilaf that accompanied was prepared with care. A mixed vegetable sauté completed the plate. If you love scallops, you'll love Jamie's scallops. But keep the Altoids handy if you plan on talking to anyone at close range the next day.
Desserts, like the rest of the food we'd sampled, were big portions, priced at $5.99 each. Unlike everything up to this point, they tasted processed and not house-made. Carrot cake had coconut in it. What's up with that? Irish cream chocolate cake was sweet and chocolatey, but we couldn't taste any Irish cream. A lemon berry cheesecake/cake thing was the best of the three.
Thinking about it now, we probably should have just split the Four Course Irish Dinner for dessert and called it a night.
An evening of food, libation and fun at Coleman's set us back $95, for the food, at least. We'd stopped keeping track of the beer earlier in the evening. ...
Coleman's Corner fills a glaring hole in the Watertown dining scene, where there are few, if any, independently owned restaurants that aren't Italian, old-fashioned or dives. What we have with the new Coleman's is more of what made the original Coleman's a success: a friendly, pubby atmosphere, good bar, good service and good food prepared with thought and care.
We'll be back.
You can contact restaurant reviewer Walter Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.
Coleman's Corner
849 Lawrence St.
(off Coffeen Street, behind the Fairgounds Inn)
Watertown, N.Y.
782-6888
Coleman's is back, more Irish and pubbier than ever.
HOURS: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday
OUR PICKS: Shrimp cocktail, shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, Jamie's scallops
RATING: 4 forks
