A cold Murphy’s beer, gratifyingly greasy fish and chips and the game playing on multiple screens: The Irish House at Phoenix Mills has many hallmarks of a good Irish pub, explaining why it was busy even on a Tuesday night. Slainte!

Housed in a large space with soaring ceilings, decor at The Irish House is predictable yet somehow inauthentic, consisting of (faux?) brick walls, wooden floors, a large horse-shoe bar and eight television screens. It reminded us of a beer saloon at Universal Studios, Singapore.

Hops, Scotch and Other Drinks

Much more pleasing is the robust list of beers, which includes Sagres from Portugal, Belgian Leffe and Italian Birra Moretti. We tried and approved of Murphy’s, Brooklyn Lager and Fuller’s London Pride, all of which were perfectly chilled and farm fresh (although this might change as the bar gets older). They also serve the usual domestic brews - Kingfisher, Tuborg, Fosters, etc. - have Kingfisher, Stella and Hoegaarden on tap and offer two and three litre beer towers. Frat pack!

Non-beer drinkers can pick from a long list of cocktails both usual and unfamiliar. We started with our bartender’s recommendation of the Belgavia, a mix of gin, cucumber and ginger as well as The Ruby, a tall glass of vodka, grapefruit juice, mint and honey. Both are delish and refreshing, although don’t linger over The Ruby too long or the ice will water it down.

Also good are pineapple-black pepper and coffee-passion fruit margaritas. These are boozy, different and just the right amount of pucker-ish. Traditionalists, they also do a mean egg white whiskey sour (ask for extra lime) and Tanqueray martinis, perfectly mixed and extremely pretty.

Eat Me

Soaking up the alcohol (all of the abovementioned drinks were consumed by our party of three) were platters of food from the elaborate kitchen menu, the best of which were crispy duck spring rolls that come with two spicy dips; fish and chips featuring crackling batter and succulent flesh, crisp fries and creamy tartar sauce; and a flavourful falafel burger piled high with tomatoes, onions and a mound of yum coleslaw.

Now, For the Bad Part

But it isn’t all leprechauns and happy drunks at The Irish House – the music, for one, sucks (think Enrique, Ke$sha and Justin Bieber) as do the nachos, a sad, droopy commune of chips, dried-out cheese, baked beans and out-of-a-tube guacamole. Also disappointing are cheese-mousse chillies featuring too much batter and too little cheese and the service, which went from attentive to annoying in the twenty five minutes it took them to compile our bill due to a failed computer system.

But teenybopper tracks and handwritten bills aside, The Irish House is a fun place to blow off some steam, catch the game, or just hang with cold beers and old friends.  And that’s almost better than a leprechaun.

Getting there: High Street Phoenix, next to California Pizza Kitchen, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, cocktails start at Rs 30 0; Rs 165 for a Kingfisher Blue Premium.