Pogue Mahones

A decent boozer in which to watch football or GAA on the telly whilst enjoying a good vfm cooked breakfast and a properly poured (i.e. they take their time

Pogue Mahones is a great little pub, just on the outskirts of the city centre. There aren’t many proper Irish pubs left in Liverpool any more, and Pogue Mahone’s is one of the few remaining gems.
The atmosphere is welcoming and warm, quite literally when the fire is blazing in winter. The staff are helpful and make you feel at home whether you’ve been here before or not.
The furniture is a bit mismatched with rickety chairs and tables and comfy old armchairs which are far too comfortable.
The food here is homely and generous. The prices are inexpensive, especially the £5.95 3 course lunch on a Sunday. The food is prepared quickly and is just delicious.
This is an excellent place to start a night out, or while away the hours keeping out of the cold and getting fed.

One time, in Dublin, I stumbled into a rough local pub whose outside walls were plastered with posters showing the faces of innocents ‘murdered by the British’. My compatriot was a mohawked six-​footer with Union Jacks sewn onto his jacket. It’s a miracle we didn’t get our heads kicked in.
For this reason I may just have a skewed idea of what a ‘real Irish Pub’ refers to. In my mind, the phrase brings back memories of that place when in reality it alludes to the kind of congenial warmth you’ll find in Pogue Mahone’s. This dark wooden pub of vintage Guinness adverts and candles dripping wax down the side of wine bottles is best when you have room to breathe, although some great nights here have been when the place is a bit crowded.
The Monday night quiz used to be the best in the city, with a rambling quiz man and free pizza. Yes, I said free. Regrettably, this soon ended and now all the place has to fall back on is its masterful Guinness-​pouring, comfortable interior, friendly staff and general likeability. Pity them.

Liverpool has a rich Irish heritage and as a result there are countless bars and pubs within the city which pay homage to the emerald isle and Pogue Mahone is up there with the best of them. Pogue Mahone is everything you’d expect from an Irish Bar, the atmosphere is warm and friendly there is hearty food served and they produce a fantastic pint of the old classic Guiness (it was voted the best in Liverpool by the Guiness society which is High praise indeed). Sometimes Irish Bars can come accross as tacky and false but Pogue Mahone manages to create a feeling of being in Ireland without leaving your own city. The décor is excellent and again homely with Irish photos and painting strewn accross the walls and for a few hours you can really lose yourself within this fantastic establishment.
Just to go back to the staff for a moment, they truly are excellent and are always willing to give you the time of day and chat away with you (I had a twenty minute conversation regarding the county of Roscommon) and they never give the impression they are too busy.
Pogue Mahone really left a lasting impression on me and it is a place I intend to visit again and again, you should too.

After stumbling upon Pogue Mahone by accident, I couldn’t help but be attracted by its delightful Irish charms.
The atmosphere is particularly welcoming, with a tradtionally Irish bar decorated with football shirts to stare at as you order your beverage (drinks were a very reasonable price). The staff themselves are also Irish, so you forget you’re in Liverpool and feel you’ve been transported to Dublin (to coin a phrase, you get Irishified).
However, I did stumble upon something slightly worrying (in a comedic sense). When I went to use the toilet facilities, I found it difficult to distinguish male from female (they had Irish signs), which led to a very awkward situation indeed. Luckily my friend and I were able to guess!
If you’re a mite peckish on a Tuesday evening then pop down at around 5pm for curry night. Or, alternatively, on a Sunday afternoon you can have a delicious three course lunch for a mere £5.95.
Overall a nice place for a drink and some authentic live music. I’d say it was more suited to a winter evening drink than a summer visit.

Struck with the luck o’ the Irish, Pogues is one of the best Irish pubs in town. Memorabilia from every county and football shirts line the walls and it has a very welcoming and warm atmosphere. It’s more authentic than cheesy with a bubbling, lively crowd in the evenings.
You have to be brave to venture in here on St Patrick’s Day though, it’s insanely busy with people practically on top of each other, luckily for me, feeling slightly stir-​fry crazy our group pushed our way in there and it was one of the best nights I’ve had in a long time! La fheile padraig!
Anyways if you want a Guiness by a roaring fire in winter, some decent pub food, (Hello curry and steak nights!) or a good old fashioned knees up in an all Irish pub then give Pogues a go!

Probably the best pint of Guiness in the city? Well that’s what Pogues will have you beleive and why wouldn’t they as this is a full on Irish pub and if there’s one thing they can do it’s pour a decent pint of the black stuff.
And Pogues isn’t any third of fourth generation ‘my-​great-​granddad-​paddy-​came –over-​here-​on his-​way-​to-​America-​but-​never-​left’ type of place, this is an Irish pub maily for Irish folk. On Sunday the place has a real buzz about it as loads of football and hockey teams from the universities decend down here as will many of the Irish drinking parties finishing their weekend in Liverpool. Generally what follows is a day of sport — mainly football but they will often screen a game of Gaelic footy too — drinking and lots of singing — God the Irish love a sing song!
They also do a small selection of food here which maily consists of Irish breakfast and stews but on Tuesday’s it’s curry night.

There’s a heck of a Scouse/​Irish connection, and nowhere is that clearer than in Liverpool itself. My entire family’s from the Mersey and I know for a fact that somewhere along the line our clan goes back to the green, green grass of Ireland.
So Pogue Mahone fits right in on Seel Street. It’s an Irish bar, and the live music is often traditional, with the atmosphere very cosy. This is exemplified by the wooden walls, giving it the feel of a warm cabin. Irish bars should be like Mulligans in Manchester as opposed to your Waxy O’ Connor chain — you want to feel transported to a different realm, heck, a different time even. And stepping into Pogue from the hectic bustle of Seel Street really feels calming and soothing.
The bar is decorated by Irish football shirts, and the crackling coal fire in the main bar is a definite draw in the winter months. The owners and staff are Irish born and bred which adds to the authenticity of the place, and occasionally you’ll find proper stew on the stove, free fry-​ups for early punters and of course the quintessential Irish bands.

I most recently went to Pogue’s to dispel an urban legend I had heard many years ago about St Patrick’s Day. You see, I was told that on Paddy’s day, Pogue’s had a morning lock in, whereby you had to get your name on a guestlist and arrive at 10am, and once everyone was inside they’d lock the doors, feed you an ‘Irish’ breakfast and throw Guinness down your neck until 12noon, when it was opened to the general public. Now this always sounded fantastic to me, so I found myself, a wee bit inebriated the day before Paddy’s, asking the barman in Pogue’s if any of it was true.
As luck would have it, they do have a breakfast at 10am on Paddy’s Day, they just don’t lock you in and force-​feed you Guinness. Nonetheless, myself and a friend found ourselves bleary eyed and confused, squashed onto a small table at 10am, waiting for our ‘Irish’ brekkie. By 10:30am the place was packed, and the band was tuning up before settling down for a few pints — they weren’t due to start til 2pm!
If you’ve got the stamina to do a full day of Paddy, then this is the place to start. Just avoid the cider — it may have been my hangover, but it didn’t taste quite right washing down my brekkie!

For being such a large, bustling city, Liverpool has surprisingly little to do after nighttime hits. Unless it involves drinking, of course. Tired of wasting nights at our regular hangouts, BF and I decided to try somewhere new. He’d been to Pogue Mahone’s many times before, but I hadn’t. Most of my pub experiences in Liverpool at that point had been either been in hole in the walls or in trendy, studenty places. None of them had really impressed me. Pogue offered a really nice alternative.
Warm from the blazing fire, we ordered Guinness and sat down in the big arm chairs around the fireplace. The pub had an old-​timey, homey feel to it– exactly what you picture when you imagine an Irish pub. I like the décor, especially the dark wood and scattered bookshelves– and I really want to steal their idea of using Jameson bottles for candle sticks. It’s not a big, thumping night spot but it has a fun energy that is perfect for the nights when you want to drink (possibly heavily) without getting into a fight.
Someone mentioned once that Pogue Mahone has live, traditional music on some nights, but I haven’t caught that yet. Either way, I am really tempted to make this my regular watering hole, especially since they have quiz and curry nights on Monday, the true way to my heart.