The Abbey

Thumbs up for The Abbey. They don’t have enough taps to qualify as a true beer destination, but connoisseurs should find something to enjoy. They have a nice menu, decent happy hour and a great location on Main St.
Don’t go to a tony little enclave like Seal Beach and expect bargain anything. What I find when I stay there is quiet and quality. I stay at the Pacific Inn and walk everywhere. It always feels safe and clean.

You get a real sense of a fun local place for the regulars. Great little bar and the staff are great. The little things like having fun when you are trying to make a decision on what to have really stand out!
The food was pretty good. I had the Abbey Burger with blue cheese. As they say, the sign of a good burger is when you bite into it the juice is running down your forearm. Well, they have good burgers here! Juicy, nice amount of blue cheese and excellent fries.
Definitely worth a return visit!

5 Stars. I come here weekly and I’ve never had a bad meal. Love the ambience and the service is top quality (be patient on super busy nights).

Oh my! Came here with a couple of friends visiting from the East Coast. So glad they picked the Abbey! Great food, great ambience, and great service — thanks JJ for being a fabulous server! I had the ginger flank steak skewers and they were absolutely delicious. My friend had the Asian nachos again totally delicious — I grabbed her take-​home box for leftovers! I highly recommend it. I live about half hour away and look forward to coming back sometime soon!

Comfort food and comfort people. Even if you’ve only been here once or you’re a regular, they treat you like an old friend. The food, the beer selection, and most of all the people are all great and a comfort to your soul!

Some friends and I visited here during a road trip a few weeks ago and it was a great choice to make. Brienne was our server, she was attentive and funny. I am a transitioning vegetarian — vegan and Brienne knew that their kitchen made balsamic contains parmesan [not vegetarian] and made sure my meal was Vegan approved. I appreciate the knowledge of the menu and the effort. The food was great — everyone else had the nachos with beef and said they would quite happily eat that all night if they could.

Best place for a drink and food in Seal Beach !
Had the steak sandwich, Top notch !
Atmosphere, staff and chef were all friendly .
Great neighborhood restaurant .
Don’t expect white tablecloth but just a great place to go with friends

Happy hour review only — I liked this place quite a bit. They have a good beer menu and decent happy hour choices. The place does get busy, but I was able to get the last seat at the bar and the bartender was friendly and efficient. The food looked quite good, but I never did eat anything. The open kitchen is fun to watch, and the pizza oven makes tasty looking pizzas. If I return, I would likely try to grab some food here.
Parking is fairly easy when i came, across the street in a free lot, but I imagine it could get tricky on weekend nights.

I came here for dinner because of the reviews on Unilocal.I had the west coast burger (with applewood bacon and onion ring) and sweet potato fries. Both were delicious. The service was great.
I will definitely go back for the sweet potato fries!!!

I didn’t have a great time. With paddys day coming they are running «Irish» specials so I got the corn beef sandwich. It wasn’t great but my friend had a burger that he compared to what we consider our favorite in the country. So, that’s a good sign there. The service was terribly slow, not too attentive and I asked three different drinks including lemonade that after quite some time I was repeatedly told they no longer had it.
All the while, my friend was continually blown off to where we had to stop the girl in her tracks to get him a drink. I guess they were to blown away by my inability to get one.
This place is a little small and way overpriced for the slow service and mediocre food that I had. Two mains, 3 beers and a coupon later was still $ 50.00!
I won’t be going this far in from seal beach for food in the future. No sir, I will not.

Gastropubs are the new thang! And apparently, this place had rave reviews in local magazines, so I knew I had to try it when my co-​worker suggested it.
I ordered the Baja turkey burger from here, which was overall very greasy and messy, though it looked like an enormous masterpiece because it came loaded with plenty of toppings (lettuce, red onions, and butter mayo). Although the guacamole was the perfect texture (not too chunky, but not overly smooth), the rest of the burger just tasted plain unhealthy, overly salty, and underwhelming. The best part was the soft brioche bun, as it added a bit of sweetness to cut the grease. I also liked the fries it came with, but otherwise, everything else was just meh! Even my Arnold Palmer was super watery and not good at all.
This is definitely more along the lines of dive bar food, if you ask me — and not very good bar food at that! Compared to all the other gastropubs I’ve been to in LA, this one just doesn’t measure up.

John is doing an amazing job, with very little support for a Saturday afternoon. The food always always comes out hot and fast. Chris B and his crew do a fantastic job.
I love this place, the vibe is genuine, and the regulars make you feel welcome.

Gotta say I like this place. Nice local hangout. Clean and friendly. The chicken wings are really great. They sprinkle cilantro on them for a really great flavor mix. Staff is very attentive and I will try the pizza next time. They have a pizza oven front and center behind the bar.

We came in on a Saturday afternoon, and the place was packed. Luckily a group was just leaving, so we snagged their table in the corner.
I kept reading positive reviews of the Westcoast Burger, so I ordered that with sweet potato fries. The burger was very large and filling, but a great deal of it was bread. There were a lot of ingredients, but the whole thing was just a hot mess that didn’t have one distinguishing flavor. I was pretty hungry, so I ate the entire thing, but it wasn’t all that great and I can’t remember much about it. The fries also had these large chunks of salt on them, which I thought was overpowering.

Updated review: I had great service this last time and I came in wanting to try the Asian nachos. The server recommended to try the nachos with steak and man oh man was he right! They were so so soooo good! Happy hour is great here! Everything was so good I decided to give them a better rating. Thanks for the great food and beer!

MY REVIEWS KEEP GETTING DELETED.
The food is not good for the expensive prices they advertise. THE OWNER IS OBSESSED WITH Unilocal AND GETTING RID OF HIS BAD REVIEWS. He’s a rude person, looked at me strangely when I ordered a pizza. I don’t know why. He talked to everyone else at the bar but didn’t treat me well. When I asked for water he ignored me. I never got my water.
JUST SO MY REVIEW DOESN’T GET DELETED LET ME TALK MORE ABOUT THE FOOD.
Way too expensive. If you want to spend a lot of money for a lame pile of grub, come here! It’s overcrowded, loud and just not a fun place to be.

Great Vibe in the cutest town! If you have the opportunity to meet Tom the owner you won’t be disappointed. His energy is infectious and he always has a smile on his face. Everyone feels like family at The Abbey. The main chef Chris is amazing and his skills behind the grill are perfect. Toms beautiful wife is usually greeting new faces and chiming in on conversations ensuring everyone is having the best time. I wish I was able to be here more often. I usually only get to go for special occasions and I’m always beyond satisfied.
The Asian Nachos are delicious. Tonight we shared the west coast burger and the lettuce wraps and it was a great portion and cooked to perfection! The beer selection at the Abbey is cool is you want to try something new or they always have your favorite beer on tap for the big game!
We Love The Abbey!

Found it on Unilocal,decided to give it a try…
Ordered a Patty Time Burger, taste good, i like they use garlic bread instead of burger buns. Another highlight is the salad, the burger can cone with salad instead of fries, the salad is very fresh
People are friendly, John the bartender is very nice and helpful.

I gotta say, this place was awesome. I’m so happy we came here before going to O’Malley’s because their food really isn’t all that good. This place however was great. My Uncle showed this place to my Dad and I, we had never been here before. I checked in on Unilocal and we got 25% off their lunch specials, which is a pretty good deal. Probably one of the best deals I’ve had on Unilocal so far. My Dad and Uncle got some beers while I got an iced tea. The lady behind the bar was really nice and seemed to be in charge of the whole place. She made sure everyone at the bar got what they asked for. I ordered their chicken wings and beach sliders, no bread and lettuce wrapped. We could watch the chefs from behind the counter and one of them seemed kinda new and out of place. He took all his directions from the waitress behind the bar and ended up doing a really good job.
We got our chicken wings first with the sauce on the side, I got medium spice and dad got spicy. The cook ended up confusing our order a little bit and had both medium spicy sauces, but our waitress solved the problem and got my Dad his spicy sauce. The wings were super crispy, the skin crunched and cracked like glass. The sauce was spicy, but not overpowering. I just had to get their sliders because some other people at the bar got burgers and they looked really good. I was a bit worried about my sliders because they kinda sat on the grill for a while, but they ended up pretty good. I topped my sliders with ketchup and they were good to go. The fries were good too, I wish they were crispier though, they were a bit limp, but not bad. They were seasoned well too.
This place has some of the best bar food I’ve ever had. The service was great and its a nice looking place. I will be back whenever possible.

The Abbey is located on Main Street amongst many unique shops and restaurants. I’ve walked past The Abbey on numerous occasions and for some unexplained reason, I never gave it a second look. We happened to be in the area and had our hearts set on eating at a nearby restaurant. Sadly, they were serving brunch at the time and nothing on the menu appealed to us. So we strolled down Main Street in search of a better alternative. Initially, we were taken aback by how small The Abbey was inside and thought that the wait time to be seated would have been too long. However, there were lot of selections on the menu that appealed to us. Therefore, we waited maybe 25 minutes to be seated.
To the right of The Abbey is a bar that was packed with people. A television prominently placed in the center of the bar featured popular sports entrainment: The Kentucky Derby. On the left side of The Abbey, there seemed to be a bit of a family seating arrangement in which long padded booth style seats stretched from the front of the restaurant to the back. Tables were placed approximately one foot apart to accommodate larger groups. The restaurant/​pub is small back packed a big punch when it came to their food!
Once seated, we were handed a menu and I began to feel overwhelmed. Many of their menu items were quite tempting and well-​described. Feeling hungry, I ordered garlic cheese bread as an appetizer. Our waitress forewarned us about their generous servings sizes and when the garlic cheese bread arrived, we were amazed as to how large it was. There were three of us and honestly, the appetizer was large enough to feed up to 4 people. There was garlic flavor was faint, the cheese was well-​melted, and the crust was thin and slightly crispy. It was amazing!!!
For my main meal, I ordered fish and chips! While waiting for my meal to arrive I drank a tall, cold root bear float! Soon after, a large plate was placed in front of me with three enormous pieces of fried fish resting on a bed of largely cut French fries. The fish was golden brown and crisp as I used my fork to cut into the meat. I didn’t taste any oils as I took my first bite which shows that they really know how to fry fish without serving a greasy meal to their customers. The fries were perfectly salted and slightly crisp on the outside and soft in the center. I could not finish my meal as the appetizers and main meal were too much for my tummy to handle. I was full!
Many times throughout our visit, our waitress checked in on us to make sure that our meal met our standards. The vibe in The Abbey was upbeat! For the amount of food that we ordered, we felt like the bill’s total ($ 65) was fair. I wouldn’t hesitate to come back and explore more items on their menu in the near future. Expect a bit of a wait but now I understand why this place is so popular. I’m glad that we had a chance to dine at The Abbey as this really is a neighborhood gem that people should consider visiting more often.