Center Square Pub

Every now and again, it’s good to get out of your comfort zone.
Karaōke isn’t something I do. I’ll sing in the shower. I’ll sing to my kids. I’ll sing when I’m alone in the car, or if I really want to torture my wife. But I’ve never had the desire to get up in front of a crowd, to sing along with prerecorded tracks.
That is until I was hanging out with Rachel P. and she told me about how much fun she had doing at at the Center Square Pub on Saturday nights. So, I gave it a go.
Man, that was fun.
I’ve seen some Karaōke nights that draw a bunch of truly talented singers. This isn’t that. Sure, there are a few people who can sing well. But for the most part, people are just at Center Square Pub to have a good time.
The night I was there, the Albany All Stars Roller Derby team was also hanging out. I also got to see a wee bit of a bar fight. There were sloppy drunks. Spilled drinks. And really, a whole different side of Albany’s nightlife than I generally get to see.
Also, I had a delicious pint of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, which they have on tap.
Right now, I can still say that Karaōke isn’t something I do. But after my experience at Center Square Pub, it’s something I would like to do more often. I can see myself returning. And if I do, I’m getting more of that Bell’s. Hopefully I’ll also be able to find someone to join me in a duet of Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

The food is greasy. crappy menu and the blond bartender has a salty personality and nasty disposition. She also feels entitled to a tip when she treats customers like garbage. Totally not worth the time or the money. no wonder the place is always empty.

Terrible experience. Asked for 4 vodka waters for friends. We got 4 vodka waters… in her eyes 2 vodkas, two waters. Okay great I can understand a misunderstanding as a fellow bartender. However, she asked that I leave immediately despite the fact that I wasnt even angry. I happen to joke with a friend that I was an idiot to order that way. Which is totally possible to miss order something when youre having a blast and talking with good friends. Well she over heard and thought I was calling her an idiot so she asked me to leave the bar. If anything a great bartender would have asked how many more drinks I needed to get more sales and a satisfied cutomer. Ive also had lunch there a few times over and its not exactly the finest of establishments. There are plenty of top notch bars in albany and this isnt one of them.
Whomp. Whomp.
Must trys: the next nearest bar

Came her for lunch last week, and it’s a great spot for mid-​day snacking/​drinking. Nice open space, lined with tables and chairs. While it doesn’t look like much from the outside, it’s a decent pub food and a commanding variety of chicken wing sauces and a dynamite beer selection… a bit odd that they list Coor’s Light amongst such awesome micro-​brews…

Excellent menu! The only downside is they don’t do table service until 6:30 so you need to fight your way to the bar. Great weekly specials.

My girlfriend and I stopped in on Friday night to have a beer in celebration of a friend’s birthday. The bar was pretty full, but not slammed, and there appeared to be only one bartender. She got around to me quickly, but when I started ordering three drafts she looked annoyed and said, «No drafts,» and immediately left for the other side of the bar. It was shocking how rude she was. We ended up waiting another ~5 mins to get bottles and when I asked why there were no drafts she said, «uh, our CO2 is out.» You would think that if a bar couldn’t serve drafts because of a tech issue they would just make a sign that said that, especially on an 80 degree summer night. My guess is that the bartender was too lazy to pour them. We probably won’t be going back.

I have been there many times since it opened, but I’m not sure I’l go again. I used to think it was good for what it was (good beer selection and reasonably priced pub grub) but it’s been going down hill for the past year. Now it seems understaffed — today there was one person serving food/​tending the bar and one person in the kitchen, during a busy lunch hour with maybe 40 customers there — and the service has suffered accordingly. It took more than 40 minutes for us to get our order taken, and then almost as long to receive two sandwiches – this despite several appeals by us to speed things up. The food was tasty, but they were clearly skimping on some of the ingredients promised on the menu – eg. I got a hot dog roll instead of focaccia bread. I saw several people come and then give up and leave. I hope this isn’t a permanent decline but if they’re cutting corners on the food and the staffing, I fear it will be.

Top shelf whiskey and a mean pulled pork sandwich. 5 stars.

It’s interesting. We started joining friends of ours here about three weeks ago for trivia night. No complaints on food, drink, atmosphere.
Then tonight came.
There were two servers. Gina is one of them and I know because I commended her on being brand new last week and easily gracing the place with a pleasant attitude and great service. Tonight we got to experience the other server. Not sure of her name, maybe if she came by more than twice the whole night and didn’t avoid social interaction with us by texting behind the bar and hugging every group of guys that walked in, we could have gotten her name.
Tonight’s service was chock full o’ rushing and non attentive service. We received things we didn’t order and we didn’t receive things that we did. Overall a bumble of service but it WAS trivia night, so I could understand the confusion.
What I couldn’t understand was how we were treated after being presented with a bill charging us for things we didn’t order. Now lets get down to the nitty gritty. The waitress obviously didn’t understand when the order was placed and when we questioned why, she explained her point of view. When our party of six explained that we did not order «extra toppings» in something that we were billed for each one of, she gave us the best response I have ever heard, «That’s not what I heard, so I gave you what you said.»
One of the things included was a delightful peice of sausage. Grand. For those of you out there that refrain from eating meat, I am sure you can appreciate why this would be a problem in a dish. Ready for this beauty of a response…
«Well, I have no idea how that peice of sausage got in there, but I didn’t charge you the dollar for that.»
I have done the food industry. If someone complains that something is not what they ordered, you don’t say tough shit its not what I heard you say.
Lets cut to the end of the night. After being treated incredibly rude about the extra charges on the bill, our server took her sweet time to take care of the bill. We paid with a twenty and then had five cards we planned to split the remainder of the bill on. Interestingly enough this situation baffled our server and us too. Below I have included a comparison of this transaction the last two weeks and tonight:
Last two weeks:
«Can you take the cash off first and then split up the remainder of the bills on these cards for the amounts we have written down for you?»
«No problem, I will be right back with your receipts»
Tonight:
«Can you take the cash off first and then split up the remainder of the bills on these cards for the amounts we have written down for you?»
«Oh, um, well I have to charge these two cards alone before I do anything else with the cash or the other two cards.»
After 15 minutes of swiping the first two cards…
«Okay here is your receipts and if you just sign those I will take care of the other cards and the cash.»
Does anyone sense something weird at this point?
«I don’t understand why you can’t cash the rest of the bill out while I wait so we can figure our tip out together.»
«Well I have to close out the first two transactions before I cash out the rest of the bill»
WHY WAS THIS SO DIFFICULT?!
Honestly, and I don’t like to think this way, but it seemed like she waited to see how much I tipped her before she rang up the other three cards so that she could charge gratuity for our party of six if she didn’t like what I put. I have never been told I had to sign and tip a receipt before the server can finish tending to the bill, nor have I been singled out in a transaction in a group.
Great. This was all started over about eight dollars worth of extra toppings. However instead of saying, I am sorry I didn’t understand or I apologize, or anything to the liking of being kind and courteous, the server flat out said we were wrong because she didn’t hear us correctly and then proceeded to be rude to us after the fact.
The cap off for the night was when she told us she was in that, «get everything done so we can go home» mode. Maybe this is her reason for rushing around, paying no attention to customers and being rude. I didn’t realize we were keeping her from her life while she was working her job. Losting eight dollars is so much less significant than the $ 150 this place will not be pulling in from us weekly anymore. I recommended it to my friends and talked about how great it was, and now all I plan to do is make it known that this place should not be frequented and if you go above and beyond the doubt that this story happened, stay far away from the server we had. She is not hard to spot. She has black hair and her name is not Gina.
I think that leaves one person.
If the manager is smart, they would fire her and get a server in there that understands what it is to have a job and earn money, not a rude girl that has «better things to be doing». She’s costing the owner money, and that seems highly counterproductive.
Enjoy her shitty attitude.

Review about lunch only, not the bar:
Went here yesterday for lunch out with office friends, they had a good first experience eating here and recommend me to join their second visit. Unfortunately, we were all disappointed with the service.
We had to wait for at least 10 to 15 minutes for the server to come and take orders (the place wasn’t even crowded/​busy). Luckily it didn’t take that long for them to prepare the food. However, the server forgot to write down one of my friend’s order. The server tried to make it better by offering my friend to order anything for free. We couldn’t afford the extra waiting, so we said no. The server then gave us free drinks, which we appreciate, but what happened was still a big turn-​off for us.
I wish that the food will earn them a star, but it was pub food… nothing special. So 2 stars for the overall lunch experience.

I wish I could give this a 3.5 star. Not quite a 4 star. There are pretty decent happy hour specials on beer and food. There are darts and a jukebox, which is a plus, and trivia is a good time on Wednesdays.
I feel the one drawback is there isn’t much character in this place. Nothing to make it special.

I’ve eaten at Center Square Pub about 8 times.
Pinto & Hobbs (previously at this location) was a total failure that needed to be replaced and I’m happy to report Center Square Pub is doing a good job so far. The female owner of Pinto & Hobbs was a bit annoying if you ask me.
Excellent waitstaff attitude and service sitting at the bar. I’ve only been here during happy hour so I can’t really report what happens during peak hours. But during non-​peak hours things are run well.
The bar food is of reasonable quality and the draft beer enjoyable. Certainly nothing fancy about the look and feel of the pub but everything works, is clean and the prices during happy hour makes it well worth the money. This review may of been different if I was paying full prices and I couldn’t get a seat at the bar. That brings me to seating.
The dinning room area seems very awkward with tables and chairs thrown together. Whenever I look over to the dinning area while I’m seated at the bar, the people seated in the dinning area look like monkeys trapped in an elevator. I don’t ever sit there so it’s irrelevant to me. But there’s no standard «booth» seating at this pub. I imagine the space is a multi-​use space.
My advice is keep up the good work and keep those quality bar maids. They’re really good at fast service with the right attitude. And also, keep improving the menu. A good kitchen is the key to any pub imo.

«The Deer Hunter»
by Josh K.
I have never been to the Center Square Pub sober. Nor have I visited it during daylight hours. I don’t think I ever will. I think it is best visited post-​1 AM when you are on your way back to your apartment but aren’t quite ready to call it a night just yet. What this really means is that it is usually a bad idea and that I should have gone home hours ago.
It’s the kind of place where dishing out 10 bucks to take turns with the guys blowing away all walks of life in the animated forests with plastic shotguns is not a good idea, it’s a great idea.
At Center Squire Pub you are also too inebriated to mind paying 6 dollars for the good micro beers because earlier in the night you did shots of Jameson and need to get that awful taste out of your mouth.
I have never had the food here. Kitchen is always closed by the time I stumble in.
But I have drunk quite a few pints of overpriced craft beers, played a lot of darts, and shot a lot of digital deer.
And I am always out of money walking home.

In the Lark area and thirsty, but don’t want to go to one of the bars on Lark? Try Center Square! They’ve got a great bar, a couple of dart boards, clean bathrooms, and something going on every day of the week.
So I’m not sure where the name comes from; I suppose «center square» could be the name of the neighborhood, but I’ve never seen a square there, and it’s not particularly central to anything. I found myself wondering if the name might actually have more to do with the layout of the place: brightly lit, a strong after-​work clientele, and quite clean — this place is somewhat «square», as in nerdy. Which isn’t to say that it couldn’t be intimate; the patio definitely has an air of intimate, but the kind of intimacy this place has would definitely go well with a pocket protector. And I LIKE pocket protectors, mind you.
So anyway, the pub:
The bar’s great. Good bartenders, big pours, quick service, and enough seating for the size of the place. The dartboards are just behind the seats for the bar; not close enough to pose a hazard to those who’ve sidled up to the trough, but definitely hazardous to those traveling to/​from the bathrooms; you often have to walk through someone’s game to get to the bathroom.
But speaking of the bathrooms: they’re great! Spacious, clean, and — get this! — the door locks! Perhaps this isn’t so persistent a problem with women’s bathrooms, but I’ve been in plenty of men’s rooms where the door doesn’t lock and other dudes waltz right in while I’m pinching a deuce. I hate that! As soon as that door opens, the works get all bunged-​up, and my bathroom experience has been ruined. So, locking door = +1.
The music they play isn’t my favorite, and on the weekends it’s often live. And loud. Like, really loud. So loud that hardly anyone actually goes into the room where the performers are, which is a complete waste of space. Center Square needs to put in a music system in the bar so that they don’t have to make one room extremely loud so that the other room can hear it.
Given the proximity of several friends’ abodes to this place, and given that it’s reliably attended, I’ll be going to this pub again; it’s a sure bet.

Great selection of beers, and a nice change from the normal Lark destinations. The setup inside is nice, and the staff was friendly. I found the atmosphere to be a little too quiet — we were one of the only ones there. But hopefully it’ll get a nice reputation and business will pick up a bit.