Kildare’s Pub at Chapel Hill

The best place for a perfect pint of Guinness in all of CH! Traditional Irish Fare, always good service. My favorite is the Bangers and Mash!

The first time I visited Kildaire’s (sometime in 2011), I liked it a lot. However since then, I haven’t been so impressed. They changed their menu and that was really disappointing because not only did their selection get smaller, but I feel like they took a lot of the authentic Irish dishes off of it? Personally, when I go to an Irish pub, I want Irish food. If I just wanted a cheeseburger, there are plenty of other restaurants that I could go to. I think I’ll be trying some of the other Irish places in the Triangle next time.
They do have a fun drink menu, though!

Nice pub with Irish style on the walls and flat screen TVs every 5 feet. There is a stage where they could have a band play. There are plenty of large tables for large groups of people. On the menu is salads, burgers, sandwiches, wings, fish & chips, Bangers & Mash, Shepard’s Pie, Corned beef & cabbage. I ordered the salmon BLT wrap and it was tasty. Kildare’s does have a nice selection of beers. I would go back to Kildare’s again.
Food B
Staff B
Décor B
Location B
Health Inspection Grade 94.0

Came here for a gathering of the Law SChool Dems of the area. I really like the Franklin St area and I hope to come back. This pub was very spacious and accomodating of our large group. The barentenders were awesome and I will post a picture of their drink specials for the night later. But let’s just say no one was drinking a «Mit Romney» that night! Overall the drinks were strong, the staff was friendly, and the bar food was typical bar food. I would def come back and try some of the more traditional Irish fare and to shake my thang on the dance floor after 10.

Loud and dance-​club-​y late weekend evenings. Drinks a little pricier than other places. Service is good enough despite the loud, late, liquored crowds. This place deserves a review at other hours, but it’s definitely a college bar.

MehI have had better. Average run of the mill sports bar-​ish stop with an irish feel. I ordered the BBQ burger, with ‘Crispy fries’ when asked what the difference was the server couldn’t tell me, but said that she liked the regular fries better, I told her I would take a chance and stick with the ‘Crispy Fries’. I also requested a pretzel bun instead of the onion bun that comes with it.
Food came, I quickly noticed in a group of six, all of our fries were exactly the same, yet I was the only one who ordered the crispy variety. Also, the bun on my burger was onion and not pretzel. Apparently I was talking to the wall when I ordered. Things that make you go hummmm.
Anyway, not horrible, but I have had better.

Restaurant: The food is good, especially the burgers. Lots of great specials.
Bar/​Club: Full of goobers and hookers. Don’t go unless you’re with a big group ready to grind to some Top 40. Although it’s full of cornballs, it does feel safe, you won’t get shived on the dance floor by some G.

I always love a good Irish Pub. This particular one has a great location on Franklin Street in in Chapel Hill. Perfect for the college kids or whoever’s in town wanting a good beer. For other fun stuff, they have trivia on Mondays and live music on Tuesdays.
My one visit, however, was for dinner in late April with some family. There were quite a few of us and thankfully Kildare’s let us call ahead and held tables together for our party of 16. Our server told us all about the themed rooms at the Pub and was very sweet and attentive.
I had a Blue Moon to drink and ordered the Deluxe Burger with bacon added for my meal. This was a hard choice too because they have so many options to choose from and even more than most pubs, in my opinion! The burger was made well and a good-​sized burger too. I’m not in Chapel Hill too often, but I would definitely go to this Pub again sometime.

I gave 3 stars because the bar atmosphere is pretty good at Kildare’s. Just don’t ever go for food.
The first time I ate there, I ordered a vegetarian boxty, but it had chicken in it by accident. The second time I ate there, our waiter was too busy waiting on a 15-​top to give us the time of day. It ended up taking us 2 hours to eat and leave– and most of that was waiting for drinks, refills, our meals, our friend’s meals (which came out 15 minutes after ours), and the check.
Not to mention, the waiter couldn’t get anything right. Literally ever request we gave him came out wrong:
— We ordered 3 beers and a wine. He brought 4 beers.
— We ordered 4 waters. He forgot them twice.
— I ordered a side of fruit. He forgot to bring it, then came back later saying they were out of fruit.
— We requested ketchup. He forgot it.
— We requested extra napkins. He never brought them.
— We finally requested our check and it took him 15 minutes to print it out, and another 10 minutes to pick up our check. Then 10 minutes later he came back and asked a question about our checks.
— We requested a to-​go box and all he could find was a tiny styrofoam container because they were out of the big to-​go box.
Overall, pretty terrible experience. But again, the bar atmosphere is nice.

I went here recently to catch up with friends and have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the scene. Just people having a good time, nothing stuffy. Music and dance floor looked great. Diverse crowd. Hope to go back again.

I’ll shoot you straight, when Kildare’s first opened in Chapel Hill, since I was living so close to it, it quickly became my «go-​to» spot for fun nights out with some girlfriends. The drinks were cheap, the music was pretty solid, and the crowds weren’t so large that you felt like you were breathing in a heady mix of Axe deodorant and hair spray. It was a fun place on a weekend night.
Since I’ve gotten a little older and moved out of Chapel Hill, my perspective has shifted a little (as has what I want in a bar). The crowds are definitely bigger on the big party nights, and sometimes the fog machine is a little… much. But I’ve brought some buddies to eat here a few times, and I learned that there’s more to Kildare’s than meets the (usually inebriated) eye.
Their wings are delicious and, for 35 cents on Mondays, can’t be beat. They tend to have great drink specials, even if the drink isn’t on special, you can go in and grab a tasty craft beer or an appetizer without breaking the bank. I know that my partner loves to go for brunch (a pint and a plate, can’t beat it!) and, though I don’t really make it out as often for the crazy bar nights anymore, I still recognize it as a quality establishment.
My one complaint might be that the bathrooms (at least the ladies’ room) always seems to be a little dirty, or wet, or both, no matter whether I’m there at 1 am to dance or 6 pm getting dinner. Then again, you occasionally get to dance on tables, so maybe it all evens out.

Definitely good for a chain! I have to admit, when this place first opened I was sure it wouldn’t survive in a town like Chapel Hill where people like things local, but I was wrong!
I’ve been here for lunch and dinner — both times the food has been really good. I especially liked the pretzel tower, but I’ve been really into soft pretzels lately so I might be biased. The Turkey Burger was really good as well. Kildare’s has a great beer selection and the last time I was there, they had $ 2 craft beers on special! What a deal!
The only time I’ve been here late night has been on half price Sundays, and a couple times we’ve had issues because the things we ordered just didn’t happen to be half priced… (but isn’t everything supposed to be half off one half priced Sunday??) I guess we just need to clarify next time. It seems like it would be a cool place to party though — the place is HUGE!
I like Kildare’s enough to go when I’m in the mood for bar food and beer, and I’m in the area. I probably wouldn’t drive any long distance to get there, but when I go I’m never disappointed!

Kildare’s is usually a great atmosphere. There always seems to be great food and drink specials. The food isn’t always amazing, but I don’t hold that against Kildare’s because it IS a pub. However, I can’t give it 5 stars because it’s always so freaking loud in there. Most of the patrons go with a group of friends to talk and catch up, but the music is almost always blasting, even on slow nights. The sooner that Kildare’s sorts out its identity crisis and realizes it’s a pub and not a dance club, it will get more 5 star reviews.

I still love Kildares. You want to hold an event here, they do a good job of putting together that event, and do a great job making sure the event is run well.
But there are some definite kinks. I can understand getting rid of Thursday trivia: with the World Series/​NFL/​NCAA games on Thursday, coupled with half off entrees, it does make some sense. But the result seems to be that service before everything goes crazy seems to have become far more haphazard. Maybe it’s that there are fewer people available, but something seems off.
My group sat at about 8:45, and our waiter immediately let us know that we shouldn’t move around, as he needed to keep us in order. That’s fine, but when it came to checks and people were ready much earlier than others, this became problematic. On top of that, they seemed understaffed: our waiter didn’t really seem to have the chance to check on us a great deal. Food also seemed a little haphazard, as they were running out of things like french fries by 10 PM, and the salmon in my salmon BLT was really dry.
All of this would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the fact that it took us until around 11 PM to get out of there. We finally got food at 10:15, and then took about 30 minutes + to actually get our checks and get out. By this point Kildare’s Thursday Night super party thing had started, which turned into lights and craziness and an overwhelming desire to get out.
So you’ve got people on the dance floor, and my group just wanting to get out of there. I dunno… it seems that one would want to give us our checks with our food in that situation, as you’d want to clear the dance floor immediately, but that’s just me.
As I said, I still like the place, but I can’t justify 5 stars anymore.

Dank, dark, and definitely good for casual night. The bar is huge, and there are plenty of tables to relax in. The crowd will mostly be UNC-​age — meaning undergrad students, prof/​grad students, and maybe some young professors.
I have been here on a Thursday and on a Friday, both nights had cheap drinks and a dance floor.
The dance floor is pretty size-​able, which is good and bad. Good, you don’t have to knock elbows with anyone. Bad, too knock elbows, you might have to go across the dance floor, then off it, and then find the bar, and then you might have contact with another person. The dancing picks up around midnight, and the music is definitely better after midnight. The DJ was not rocking it the night I went, and the dancing was a little lackluster.
The drinks, I can’t really complain, they had $ 2 wells, beer, and (house liquor) shots. I splurged and went for a round of Cuervo shots ($ 5.50/each). Being from NY, where a shot usually costs $ 10 and sometimes even $ 14 (they are crazy), even at sleazy dives, this was a steal of a deal. The bartenders were pretty friendly, and tried to be as attentive as possible in the craze that is the night life.
I am going to come back for Monday night wings (35 cents), makes me swoon.

So I have gone here so many times for lunch because it is literally right next to my school so I just walk next door and relax. The environment is nice and relaxed with dim lighting and a nice «woody» theme going on.
The service on the other hand is pretty lax. Most times for lunch I am lucky to get out within an hour even when I emphasize my time limit. Regardless of how busy they are you will wait and wait. The servers are usually very friendly however and I almost feel bad asking them to rush for me but I also have to keep in mind, thats what they are there for.
The food is really really good. The burgers are delicious as well as the entrees. I usually get a blue burger because the blue cheese is seasoned to perfection. The chips on the other hand come with the burgers as a side and are almost always days old. They are hard and don’t feel like I am getting a fresh batch ever. So order the fries if you do go.
Over all I have had better and I feel like I am going to your standard Chilis or Ruby Tuesday because the food is the same as well as the atmoshpere and the service is just as friendly as well.

I literally created this account, while still at Kildare’s, to warn future patrons about the atrocious experience we had here tonight. We had a large party of 13, but we called ahead and made a reservation so they were well aware that a crowd was coming.
To start: The service was horrible. One waitress was training, but the one who wasn’t, was just as bad. Blind leading the blind. We had to order and reorder multiple drinks and items of food that were simply forgotten about. It got to the point where we had to go to the bar to order our drinks bc of the slow and forgetful nature of our TWO servers.
They were out of several things. Even limes (who runs out if limes at a bar?!). One of our group members ordered the meat lovers quesadilla which was stocked full of nothing but chicken and cheese bc the kitchen was out of… everything else? Including the bacon that was found on the 2 orders of cheese fries at our table. And yes, we could order a side of bacon but I guess the bacon the quesadilla originally came with was a rare type and thus, they ran out.
Watered down drinks (ordered an LI Tea, 2 rum and cokes and, at 110 lbs, can still articulate this post), charges for drinks we didn’t order, bad service, 1 beer that cost $ 15 (which he had to open himself) and mediocre food– don’t waste your time unless you’re already wasted.

I had not been under this roof since it was BW3’s… and as my first foray into this Irish pub was at four o’clock on St. Patrick’s Day, well… that’s timing for you!
I was really pleased with the effort that went into properly pouring each pint of Guinness. I don’t think I’m being overly sensitive here… some things just have to be done right, and they did it each time.
The volume inside — from all of the revelers, the televisions tuned to March Madness, the bagpiper (remember, it WAS St. Patrick’s Day) was a bit much in which to carry on a conversation, so we opted for their outdoor seating. Bar or no bar (excuse me — pub or no pub), I was disappointed with the amount of second-​hand smoke we had to endure while sitting out there.
We had only appetizers there, and they were… okay. While the calamari was really good, I have to agree with Lauren B.‘s take on potato-​chip nachos. They were… nachos on potatoes. Oh, well.
I’ve heard that Kildare’s has trivia games on Monday nights. That may just be worth fighting the traffic and hassling for a parking space.

I totally forgot about this incident, it was a while back.
So I’m there with my buddies from Pub Crawl … we get there maybe 9:30 on a weeknight? Sit down, get beers, order some potato skins or some shit…
Then all of a sudden at 10pm, the big guy on staff says, «We’re sorry sirs, but it’s our policy to card everyone in the joint at precisely 10 pm».
Now I don’t get carded most of the time anymore … and my buddy across from me has a good 10 years on me. And I start laughing out loud. «Seriously, you’re carding THIS guy?»
ANyway… I do hope they stopped doing that, it’s kind of textbook «buzzkill» behavior.

Kildare’s burgers are decent, I once had an apple-​and-​goat-​cheese dish that was alright, but as far as pub food goes, its just average. They serve these nachos which, admittedly, I WILL eat if they are sitting in front of me. But they are ridiculous. Nachos should not be made with potato chips, I know you’re an «Irish» restaurant and need to use potatoes, but do us all a favor and don’t venture into Mexico’s territory, please.
Sorry. Those nachos make me angry.
I have had a really nice server at Kildaire’s, she was a little older but she was really good to my date and I. Service is overall, ok. Food, overall ok. My burgers are usually dry, although the descriptions on the menu look delicious (go to Spanky’s for a great burger).
I go to open mic comedy at Kildare’s sometimes, which is always good, and the décor is cool, but overall this isn’t a place I choose to go unless I have a coupon or I’m with someone who wants to go (they ARE good about rewarding their customers with special offers, which is nice)
I give three stars, all things considered.