McGuirk’s Ocean View Hotel Restaurant & Lounge

Very disappointing on all fronts. First, the lodging…
My wife and I booked an ocean view room here for the first week of October. As we got into town we called the hotel number for parking information. Three attempted phone calls all went unanswered. Upon check-​in there was no one at the front desk either. Waited several minutes for help checking in. The view from our room was alright, but the room itself was disappointing. Bed not very comfortable. Furniture mismatched and looking like it came from a thrift store. Smoke alarm missing and wires hanging from it’s outlet box. Cable box was just hanging by wires from behind the wall mounted TV. And the best of all… NO HEAT! I mentioned the no heat issue to the «desk manager» twice. No resolution. We did, however get extra blankets.
Now the dining…
The dining room is nice enough… looks recently remodeled. After being seated by the hostess, it was 15 minutes before we were visited by a server! The bread was warm but a bit soggy. So much so, that it fell apart just spreading refrigerated butter on it. After waiting nearly 20 minutes for our french onion soup, it arrived at the table mildly warm… not hot and it tasted quite bland. The cheese on top was not warm at all and required a knife to cut it. I put it aside after a few bites. Same story with the entrees. They were brought to our table before my wife had finished her soup. I ordered the Turkey Dinner. The potatoes were warm at best. The turkey and stuffing were okay, but again… not hot!
It seems to me that this place is riding the coat tails of it’s location. Great ocean front view… but there are many other establishments here with the same view and offer much higher quality accomodations.
I would not recommend this place for either food or lodging.

At best a 3 star experience, service was a killer they didn’t even take a drink order to start. My greeting after being seated was do you know what you want? Drinks were priced above the going rate, food was served warm at best. I would say it’s about equal to the other «anchor» establishments on the beach they focus on volume not quality or to bring you back more of a hit and run approach.

On our first time visit to Hampton Beach, over the Labor Day weekend, we didn’t have a clue where to eat since our hotel offered no food. I asked SIRI which area restaurants take credit cards and McGuirk’s did and was close to our hotel; one of our friends couldn’t walk far necessitating eating near our hotel. We made a reservation for five people at 6:30 and we were promptly seated. McGuirk’s filled up quickly as time went on. Our waitress was mostly attentive and friendly. Drinks and refills arrived within a reasonable time. We had to ask a number of times for a basket of bread, no big deal. The New England clam soup was thick and tasty, the salad wedges needed balsamic vinegar [why won’t restaurants follow the Outback’s recipe is beyond me]; my beef stew in bread was cold and tasteless, the haddock dishes were subpar and had an «off» taste, the pasta dish was bland. The place looks nice, but I think we could have done better. It is not handicap friendly because you face staircases upon entering; no ramp or elevator.

Ok I’ve never been here– first time Unilocal user and I accidentally started writing a bad review for this restaurant. Went to another one on the boardwalk and now that I’m writing this review and have viewed the menu… Should have gone here!

Terrible customer service. There was an oily spot on my chair before we sat down. Brought for my child a processed chicken/​pasta dinner with no flavor, no salt. There were 4 tiny cubes of chicken in it. There was so little sauce that it wouldn’t even cover the pasta even after I mixed it together. When I confronted them about the dinner, the guy (joe) said ‘what do I expect from a $ 10 dinner. Wow! Although no one touched it, they wouldn’t remove it from the check. Our total bill was a little short of $ 100. So the prices are as expensive as any fine restaurant, but the service and some food is worse than one you may find in a diner. Avoid like a plague.

We stayed at McGuirks Hotel, we opted for the more expensive «ocean view» room. The view was by far the best on the strip, the deck was a great feature and overlooking the beach from the large glass windows was a plus. However, that is where all good things ended, just shy of the great view and walk out deck, the room was not what I was expecting for the price. The sink in the bathroom was propped up with rusty old metal tubing, and had a bucket under it to catch the leaking water. The shower would fluctuate from scolding hot to freezing ice water cold. The lighting on the deck is nice, however the curtains in the room do not block out the light, so when you are settling down to go to sleep the room is lit up by the lighting. A better set of curtains would go a long way. The room was not the worst, although out dated it was clean. The biggest con was the lack of service. Nobody works on sight (or it appears that way) During check in i stood in the lobby for 20 min before a maintenance guy yelled into another room saying I was in the lobby. When the showers had the hot/​cold problem i went down to inform someone of this, and nobody was there again. And during checkout once again nobody was present. I had to leave the key with a note saying that I checked out. For the high price of the room, some simple updates would go a LONG way. But i guess during peak beach season they could pitch a tent and people would come.
Don’t count them out completely, but i would recommend taking a «quick» shower

About 4 minutes after getting seated we were asked if we knew what we wanted, um no I haven’t even ordered a drink. When we finally ordered our drinks and food It took 20 minutes to get just our drinks and we were told our food would be up soon. the drinks were delicious. I ordered the «big poppy salad» with no red onions. And my mom got the «taco salad». 20 minutes later our food came, the salad was HUGE. The grilled chicken was dry and their was way to much feta cheese. The taco salad had dry meat and only sour cream as a dressing. It’s alright the staff was friendly.

My boyfriend and I stopped here for a drink because as he put it «it’s a downstairs bar and downstairs bars are cool». They didn’t have a drink menu so I ordered something off the top of my head, they didn’t even have any music until someone put something on the jukebox. It was pretty busy and there was only one bartender to serve everyone downstairs plus make the drinks for the restaurant upstairs. Before we left another couple ordered a drink called the shark tank… I wish I knew that existed beforehand it was huuugeee. Oh well, I think this bar is probably better mid season than end of season… It would have been better with a band or something…

I’ve been a couple times on our annual Hampton beach sun bake and body surf.
The downstairs bartender was in exactly the same really sour mood as last year. Carefully talking with no one and making no eye contact, no matter what the situation.
Geez Louise…
On the upside, the restaurant is smallish and cozier than any other place on the strip. Our waitress was wonderful and she was working 12 times harder than the downstairs bar maid. Our dinners were huge and quite good. The baked stuffed haddock and haddock picatta were everything we could have wanted. The prices were reasonable considering the location.
Worth a strong consideration in my not so humble opinion.

The good part about my visit to McGuirks is that we were quickly seated.
The bad parts were:
— Hard to get ahold of our server. Our drinks were empty for quite some time.
— It took a very long long time to get our food. About 25 minutes.
— While my chowder tasted good, it was also extremely thick. Too much flour in the broth? It was gluey.
The servers were pleasant, the space was nice (plus, live music!), and our waitress was great about splitting our check, but it could have been better.

Of all the restaurants and other eateries that I visited during my trip to New England this was by far the WORST! In fact I think even that is too good a word to describe this poor excuse for a restaurant. At first, it didn’t appear to be such a bad place. When me and girlfriend walked in there we were greeted by a nice ambiance of live music and endless chatter. The place looked crowded so I figured it must’ve been a pretty decent place if it attracted all this business. Well it seems my judgement was greatly and disgustingly betrayed as I sat down and sampled the abominable crap they considered to be food.
Initially I ordered a Guinness pie which look quite delicious based on the contents in the menu. However the waitress claimed they were out of it. Ok. So instead I ordered a shepards pie, ya know the usual Irish cuisine. My girlfriend ordered a halibut stuffed with lobster and a side of mash potatoes. She said they were out of that as well. Right (starting to scratch my head). After hearing this she decides to order a baked potato instead. At first there doesn’t seem to a problem with that but when the waitress returns (who by the way didn’t seem to act very professional) she said they were out of that as well so once again my girlfriend has to order another side dish which happened to be rice pilaf. At this point I was becoming very puzzled, trying to ignore the odd lack of potatoes (this is an irish pub right?) in lieu of enjoying my smithwicks on tap (probably the ONLY part of this place worth acknowledging). When she finally served our food I was a little surprised at how plain my shepherds pie. Granted, its not a culinary masterpiece as is w/​most Irish food but I’ve eaten much pies over the years with much more flavor and this just looked BLAND. Well it looks my intuition helped as the taste more than reflected the look of this dish. I really tried to enhance the flavor pouring a significant amount of much needed salt and pepper and not even that could save this dish. My girlfriends dish didn’t fare too well either as the stuffed halibut had 3 small pieces of lobster disguised as stuffing w/​some kind of red dyed breadcrumbs. Add the incredibly dry rice pilaf and you have yourselves a very disappointing meal!
To top it off the waitress didn’t even bother to come around ask how our meal was or how we were doing. It’s as though she was non-​existent outside taking our orders and giving us our check. To add more insult to injury the bill IMO was GROSSLY overpriced coming out to over $ 50! Shitty service and bland food that’s overpriced is a recipe for disaster in the eyes of customer satisfaction. I honestly believe that if it wasn’t for the bar, this place would’ve been outta business a long time ago. Not even Robert Irvine from Restaurant: Impossible could save this place from going under. Anybody who visit’s Hampton Beach, do yourself a favor and STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THIS RESTAURANT! There’s a much better selection of places if u walk down the boulevard a little further. Other than the drinks, this place isn’t worthy of being called an eating establishment unless u enjoy tasteless food and lousy service.

Coach McGuirk rocks my socks, and he does a wonderful job at maintaining this hotel, forget all these negative reviews! I had a nice stay, service was friendly and the restaurant was good. I gotta tell you a coach is very good at running this.

This review is only for the downstairs bar. The place was great. We had a party of about 10 and the bartenders were awesome. They made great drinks, great shots, and poured ice cold brews… There was a duo playing irish music and everyone had a great time. The only thing i’d point out in case McGuirk’s is listening is that they should have servers downstairs on a Friday night. The bartenders did a great job but for a party of 10 to be going up all night to the bar for drinks is a bit much… Great job all around though.

My boyfriend and I ended up here to wait his brother and sister-​in-​law to get out of a concert happening down the street and I am so glad that we did! We spent about 3 hours here eating and mostly drinking.
Our food was pretty decent. By boyfriend got the Reuben and said it was OK but not the best he has ever had. He also had some of the clam chowder and said about the same for that as well. I don’t remember what I had off the top of my head but it was pretty decent as well.
The drinks were good as well. I was really happy they had Magners on tap since I love hard cider. They also had a drink called the Shark Tank which my boyfriend and I shared. It comes in a fish bowl sized glass and was very tasty! I would definitely recommend it!
The waitress we had was very nice and very attentive as well. We never had to wait too long to place an order and the food and drinks came fairly quickly.
The best part of the night was the music! We sat in the downstairs bar area a few tables back from the band. They played some great Irish music and told some pretty funny jokes in between.
I would definitely come here again if the same band was playing!
All in all a nice place to relax for a few hours after a crappy day at the beach.

NEGATIVE STARS. where are you?
We came to McGuirk’s after a long, hot Sunday at the beach. Some locals recommended it to us, after they saw us searching for restaurants on the beach. Also, it was inside, air-​conditioned and looked family-​friendly (it was myself, five friends + a baby). Now mind you, we looked a little sticky after sitting in the sun for hours, sundresses, Celtics jerseys and all, but come on now– It’s Hampton!
We placed our drink order, and two of us got alcoholic drinks. One friend had an expired ID and was unable to get one. Okay, that’s fine.
Now, our waitress (Rachel) went to every other waitress to tell them to watch us to make sure we didn’t share drinks. Then she went to this big table sitting by us (we later found out it was the owner’s family) to watch us as well. Not only the waitress, but also members from that table continuously walked past us and stared at our table. Not discreet glances, but *staring*.
We placed our food order, but the looks got out of control. A teenage daughter at the table stared and laughed at us, ran back and forth to whisper to the waitresses. I felt as though we were in 8^th grade. Almost immediately after ordering, my friend asked to speak to our waitress, and let her know that we felt very uncomfortable with people staring, that we understood that our friend had an expired ID, but there is a more respectful way of making sure that their patrons are obeying the law (which we were!)
There’s also a difference between an expired ID and a fake ID. She had an expired ID of only a month or so. Okay. She couldn’t drink, that’s fine, we accepted it. It wasn’t a fake ID, illegal, etc. Calm down.
She pretty much laughed in our face, at which time I asked to speak to the manager. The manager was the most disrespectful person I’ve ever encountered, refused to actual any wrongdoing, said I had a complex and must just think people stare at me all the time, continously laughed in my face. I asked them to stop, and that I did not want to order the food. He said that since the order was just put in there wasn’t a way to cancel it.
I half-​way get it. Okay, it went in. But every time I’ve worked somewhere, if the customer had either pretty much IMMEDIATELY cancelled or was very unhappy, the manager can cancel the order if you go into the kitchen and let the chefs know.
But that wasn’t an option for him. In fact, he said if I refused to pay, he’d call the cops. I asked why it was necessary to immediately state calling the cops. Because i wanted to know if this was legitimate, I called them myself. As I waited outside, the manager and waitresses ran around laughing and he told the waitress to tell the chefs to hurry and bring our food out, ensuring that we’d have to pay.
ARE YOU SERIOUS?
I’ve worked in the restaurant industry before, both in hometown family joints, bars and city restaurants, and NEVER have I ever felt so disrespected in my life. I understand the owner is there. However, as a manager you should not act as he did or make me feel as a customer as I did. If all he’d done was apologize, I still would have eaten there. In the end, I paid, because it’s not the money that matters, it’s the service.
This is the worst place I have ever been.

McGuirks is what any good seaside restaurant should be. It is all about the lobster. My wife and I visited Hampton Beach in May expecting some decent weather and great seafood, and only got 1 of the 2. Despite the rain and the cold, we had some of the best lobster you can imagine – and it all started at McGuirks.
Before dinner we went downstairs to the pub for drinks, and immediately noticed the fireman’s memorial. Apparantly the family (and this is a family run establishment) lost family members in the horrible Worcester fire in 1999. It gave the place both a homey touch, as well as reminded us of the incredible sacrifices that firefighters make.
We then moved upstairs for dinner. We started with the Hampton specialty – steamed clams (or steamers, as they call them) and they were just as we hoped. Clean, fresh, very tasty clams with the requisite butter sauce (my wife loves it but I am more of a hot sauce kind of guy) started the meal wonderfully. We then moved onto something not on the menu – grilled pineapple. A delicious little treat. The main course was lobster – 1 ½ pounds each. I went old school and got the boiled lobster, prepared perfectly. My wife got the baked stuffed lobster – who would guess that they would stuff lobster with more lobster? This is a lobster lover’s dream! The dessert was fine, and we were pretty stuffed.
We so loved it that we went back for lunch. We chose the obvious: 2 lobster rolls. They advertise it as the biggest and best on Hampton Beach, and although we didn’t try lobster rolls anywhere else, I cant imagine it could be better. I thought we’d get a little lobster with a lot of mayo, but it was just the opposite. I had two full lobster claws and probably close to a half pound of lobster meat, with just a little mayo to hold it together, on a soft fresh baked baguette. The fries were hand cut as well and seasoned perfectly. Yet again, this is a lobster lover’s dream.
So go to McGuirks! And be sure to say hi to the manager/​chef, Tommy. He may well be the «unofficial mayor» of Hampton Beach.

My buddy took me here for my birthday. McGuirk’s is a casual family restaurant & pub which serves up American fare with some Irish flair. We were seated immediately in the upstairs dining room which has a decent view of the beach and ocean. The dining room was packed with vacationing families and couples. The pub area is located in the downstairs portion of the restaurant.
House ice water was poured and we put in some drink orders while perusing the dinner menu and specials which offers steaks, seafood, lobster, pasta, chicken, burgers, sandwiches, appetizers, chowder, salads, and kids menu. The prices are moderate with entrees $ 12.99 to $ 24.99 and burgers/​sandwiches $ 7.99 to $ 9.99.
We started out with a Lobster Dip ($ 10.99) which was a hot bowl of baked Maine lobster in cream cheese & horseradish with toast rounds, very heavy and rich. The bowl of New England Clam Chowder ($ 4.99) was very thick and creamy with lots of clams, potatoes and celery. For dinner, my buddy had the Prime Rib (Mate 14 oz for $ 19.99), which was cooked medium rare and served with rice pilaf, decent overall. I had the Shrimp & Lobster Medley ($ 24.99-a heaping portion of al dente angel hair tossed with lobster claw meat, baby shrimp, in a heavy cream & sherry wine sauce) which was served lukewarm and had a very salty taste. The waitress came over several times to check on us throughout the meal offering reorders on drinks (informed us there were no free refills on soda, which was fine).The reorders for a Diet Pepsi ($ 2.25 each) and Captain Morgan & Pepsi ($ 6.25 each) took a while since the waitress was very busy handling other tables.
For dessert, I ordered the Mud Pie ($ 3.99-coffee ice cream, chocolate ganache, whipped cream in a chocolate cookie crust) and the staff came over to our table to sing Happy Birthday to me. That was very nice and I did not expect it. The Mud Pie was excellent and the best part of the meal! I used the Entertainment card for $ 17 off the $ 90 check, which my buddy picked up.
Overall, we both agreed most of the food served here was okay (except for the awesome Mud Pie) and the service was friendly and informative, so this place gets a solid Hampton 3 STARS. Thanks for the wishes and we hope to visit the downstairs pub for burgers and beer soon.