The Canterbury Ale House

Are you kidding me the DJ on Friday was amazing. We had a party of 40 throughout this joint to just have fun, drink, and eat. I was able to get a tasty mule drink ALL night long. I had about 8 and the last one was the melon one and that was soosoo good why didn’t I order that before. I had the pulled pork sandwich which was HUGE. I took the meat out of it and then ate the meat alone with the french fries. It was good I liked the meat but I had to share with my friends because it was very big.
The dance floor area was live and poppin with that DJ BB. He was great the music selection was fantasist and I was overall a very happy camper.
If you want to play shuffle board, listen to good music, trivia night, and much more check out this spot before settle a place or location!
OK can we also say HOW much we heart Alicia. First of all its insane in here and DJ BB is here and there is a huge party on the side and you have her working the whole spot to her self, NOT ok. I was sooo angry at this thought process. Its a friday busy with a DJ night and ONE person running this floor. YOU have got to be kidding me. I was not happy, however she was amazing and made it happen. She forgot a drink once but made up for it, Owenership is huge and I believe she is one valuable employee, treat her well!!!

Had dinner here on Mother’s Day with my friend, the bartender have us good dinner suggestions. It was the club sandwich and the house burger! Def coming back

The Canterbury is a sweet building with lots of seating and cool artwork. The poutine was fantastic and they have a good selection of beer. The waitress, however, had an ego the size of Capitol HIll. Her insulting banter got old pretty quick. It’s good that they stay open later than other places in the area and I would return just for the poutine.

We’ve had two bad experiences in a row now. The first time, it took 15 minutes for a waitress to come over. Didn’t give us menus, silverware or water and we had to ask repeatedly for those to be provided. We tried going back again today, but after waiting 15 minutes for a waitress to acknowledge us, we gave up and just walked out.

The petite bartender kept serving even after receiving a vicious gash on her leg from a broken glass. Badass. Great bar and servers, fun trivia night Wednesdays.

This is not your Grandpa’s Canterbury, closed then opened under new direction! They have a nice selection of beers and liquors, and the food is quite nice! high ceilings make the dark wood bar seem open and inviting, staff is fun and attentive!

I live within walking distance. On our most recent visit, at about 6:30 PM on a Friday, there was no host so we chose a booth. It took 15 minutes for the friendly but seemingly harried server to come to our table, another 15 for our drinks to arrive, another 10 for a food menu. Meanwhile saw three other groups leave before getting served, and decided to do that instead of waiting whatever it would have taken to get a meal. Went to the Thai place across the street, which was busy but efficient as usual.
My other complaint is that our (indoor) table was surrounded by three separate groups with dogs. These were not service animals so this is against the law. I like dogs but don’t want to encounter them in a restaurant, especially sitting up on the benches, with their feet on the table (for typical patron behavior see photo in one of the recent reviews). Especially when the wait staff doesn’t bother to clean the table or benches between patrons. I guess all of this is in keeping with the general laissez-​faire attitude at this place.
Won’t be coming back any more and will recommend accordingly to friends and visitors.

I love this place! I come here with friends. Nice booth areas to catch up with good folks. But, one thing, I wouldn’t recommend bringing a first date here though lol, hahah… because. it’s kind of loud? Can barely hear the other person and what they’re sayin! Anyways. HH is good here. Love it. And I love their logo. I love their wooden booths when you enter and go to the left. Good for group of friends to just chill. Drinks are good too!!!

Bottomless mimosas on the weekend are enticing — especially when football is on because there are loads of flat screen TVs to watch everywhere!
Unfortunately my food experience hasn’t been the best– I ordered a breakfast burrito and it came out cold in the middle. This happened to my friend as well about an hour later. Not the best brunch menu but I’ve had HH apps and those have always been tasty. The French fries and cheese curds are both delicious!
Shuffle board lines the right side of the bar which is fun and it still has the cubbies on the left like the old Canterbury does– it’s just a bit newer looking.
Service has always been fantastic and the drinks are great so reason enough to keep coming back. Great place for groups of people to meet up.

Had a great night. The Quiz Night was packed but a lot of fun. Too many people so if you are playing don’t go here.
The food was hit or miss. The vegetarian burger was either dry or overcooked. The fries are just okay. The reuben was spot on and the onion rings were good so long as they were hot.
The beers on tap were numerous and they let you sample till you find one you like.
Service was really good considering the number of people and dealing with multiple tabs.

Had the steak and it was amazing! Also he chocolate torte was soooo delicious and the cheesecake (don’t judge me for having 2 desserts) is delicious, and has an extra hint of nutmeg. How have I not been here before?! I think I found my after work hangout!

The Canterbury Ale House is a good solid pub. Good beer. Good beer selection. Good food. Good food selection. Good service.
The problem I have with the Canterbury is not actually with the Canterbury. It’s with the clientele. The average age is of university years and I am well beyond university years and therefore I feel old. Really super old which reminds me I need to book an appointment to have my hair colored to cover up those pesky gray hairs growing on my head.

Great time at trivia Wednesday night. It’s like speed trivia when they give you all the questions up front instead of waiting for 1 question and answer to be done at a time. Great food and beers. Service was a little slow but our server had a ton of tables and was very on top of everything and very friendly. Was able to bring our cousins 13 year old dog into trivia.

Would love to give more stars. The service and and atmosphere were great, but the brunch items left a longing for the lunch menu. Overall great experience and will come back, but fix your brunch bro.

Came here to watch a Sounders game on a Sunday night. This place knows how to please. The staff were busy but always right there before you knew you needed them and were friendly to boot!
I enjoyed all of the different nooks in this bar that offer something for everyone and every mood. Sit at the bar, at a family style table, a booth, on a bench with friends. Tons of beer options on tap. Just a great place.

I love their lunch menu here! I work nearby and if me and coworkers are going out to eat i always suggest this place.
They have bomb poutiene!!!
Only four stars because sometimes it takes them a while to get your order even if they’re slow.

Not a bad spot for trivia night — lots of places to sit, quick service (s/​o to our sweet blonde waiter, you were a gem!), and decent pub food. I was really surprised to find plentiful street parking!
I think I had a French dip — not super memorable, but it did the trick. They were out of a lot of beers and ciders for some reason, so the drink menu was slightly limited. I was here more for trivia than food, so I was pleasantly surprised that it was a decent sandwich! The prices were a touch on the high side, $ 20+ for a cider and a sandwich, but it wasn’t egregiously over the top.
I doubt I’ll be back, unless it’s for trivia, but it’s good to know that places like this still live on in Capitol Hill.

For as many times as I had passed this place and was like…“hmm I should try it out sometime…” I finally did! This place is great on a sunny day as they have open air seating. Also, there are TV’s everywhere which is perfect for football season! The bf and I went up to watch a game and were pleasantly surprised by the beers on tap and food selections. I will say that it overall seemed a touch pricey, but not terrible.
My fish & chips were OK. A bit too greasy and the tarter sauce had a lot of dill in it? Perhaps too much? It was cooked nicely however and the fries were pretty good. $ 13 for this meal. The boy got a burger ($ 13) and noted it was pretty tasty. Beers were averaging $ 7 each, some were more… ouch. For 2 beers each and a meal it was near $ 60. Not sure how amped I would be to spend that much again for an average meal. Our server did note that brunch runs until 2pm and they do bottomless mimosas for $ 15. I may just have to try that out!

I attended a birthday party here, and I was very impressed not only by their beer selection, but by the food as well. We had pulled pork sliders, wings, charcuterie plates, and fries. Not only were they very good they were presented in a very appealing way. As a side note, my debit card was accidentally overcharged on that visit. I went in a couple days later and spoke to the GM Jay. He was amazing; attentive, took my concern seriously, and resolved to fix the issue no matter what it took. SUPER impressed. Great and friendly bar staff too. Will absolutely be back.

Came here for Trivia night– The drinks are pretty pricey, but matches the area. I ordered the wings and the chicken sandwich and fries. You get like 6 wings for $ 9 which is expensive (not happy hour). The Teriyaki Chicken sandwich was not that good. It had a strange burnt taste and I asked the server if it had mayonnaise– She said no but it came with a mayo/​cabbage mix. The sandwich was not good– It needs more teriyaki sauce or something. The fries though were delicious– I would come back for those, and very reasonably priced .
Trivia night was fun– We would come back for that and make sure we just stick with fries or come early enough for happy hour!

We went for brunch and the mimosas were very expensive and came in a small glass. We also got the bottomless mimosa and the waitress barely came by to refill the cups enough to make it worth the price. The food was decent and the old world ambiance was fun.

Went for Sunday brunch, the Old Fashion Blueberry Waffles were pretty good, but they were small and cost eleven dollars. I ordered a side of over medium eggs and sausage — the egg was undercooked, and four dollars for two, the sausage wasn’t that great, and was four fifty for four small links. The prices are pretty expensive for the medium portions.
The waiter was fun and upbeat but also a bit too much at times, and a bit annoying. The ambiance is okay, it’s what you would expect from a bar restaurant in the area.
Overall mediocre, would like to see the food be cheaper and prepared properly/​taste better.
Edit: The urinal had crusted vomit, presumably from Saturday night, with flies around it. There were no paper towels left.

The «new» Canterbury is fine… I guess. (I see that all the reviews for the «old» Canterbury got deleted, including mine. Fine. That’s fair. I still can’t help but compare incarnations, but I’ll try to be impartial in review 2.0.)
The re-​design of the interior is great — much more light, far cleaner and sharper. I love the murals that have been unearthed and the modern bar; I also love that the middle of the bar area opens right up onto the street — great for warm summer days. I had my birthday party here last year and they reserved one of the banquettes in the middle for our group, which was nice, but got crowded quickly as the night wore on and the place became busier. Our server was phenomenal that night, but one of the bartenders ‘lost’ a friend’s tab and made someone else in our party pay it, which put a huge damper on the night. (To clarify: bartender claimed that my friend left without paying, so I texted him and he responded right away that he’d paid with cash (and, of course, didn’t get a receipt). He was sober and not the type of person to lie or forget… which makes me wonder where his tab went. Hmm.)
I’ve been here a few more times since, for happy hour or a drink or a pool game. The food’s been fine, the service also fine. Some bartenders are really friendly and some have a holier-​than-​thou attitude. The food is also fine (notice a trend here?). I ordered a ‘charcuterie platter’ once and received a plate of cheese cubes and thick slices of pepperoni and salami cut into quarters, which was kind of odd. Another time I ordered fish & chips and the fish had a good quarter-​inch of breading that wasn’t cooked all the way through, so it was like eating raw batter. Luckily, when I mentioned it to our server she took it back to the kitchen and came back with properly crispy, thinly breaded fish.
The worst thing about the «new» Canterbury is the influx of techbros that descend on the joint every weekend. It’s packed, loud and kind of obnoxious and I’m too cranky to want to deal with that sort of crowd. If I wanted to wait fifteen minutes at the bar to get a mediocre well drink at an unreasonable price, I’d go out in the Pike/​Pine corridor. Dear Amazonia, please leave 15^th alone.

Really cool spot. They let my dog come in as a support dog and they were really cool about it. It’s really open and the kind of spot you can have a good conversation in.
Great beer selection here. I got the RPM IPA from Boneyard, a must if you have yet to try.

Walked in, seated ourselves, then spent 15 minutes waiting for our waitress to appear. She brought us menus, then proceeded to spend another 15 minutes ignoring us while dealing with other tables checks.
The menu looked good, as did the beer selection. However, after 30 minutes of waiting, we decided to leave.

3.5 stars. We stopped by Canterbury Ale House for dinner because we got a coupon in Val Pak $ 10 off when you spend $ 20+ there. We thought we would give this place a try as we live close by enough to just walk there. This place seems to be a popular enough event that when we stopped by around 6pm on Friday, there were many people there, mostly meeting up for drinks and talks there already.
The service was pretty friendly. Both waiters and waitresses definitely do help each other out from bringing the menu, taking orders, clearing out dishes. I got a veggie burger while my husband got a Canterbury burger (beef patty, gruyère cheese, sauce) and both of us got sodas. Their burgers did come with fries and we were quite happy with the fries – they were hot and tasted fresh out of the fryer. The burgers though were just ok. We also shared their chocolate cake. It was just $ 4.5 and it also tasted great – very rich. but not overly sweet. If I come back here again for quick bites, I’d probably not go for the burgers. but maybe just some fries and aioli and maybe a small dish of dessert.
Overall, a good place to hang out at a bar, for a chat. An ok place for a meal, especially given their great srevice. Their menu isn’t big and the food is so so. but if it’s just for a quick, basic meal when you are just too lazy to cook anything at home, this place will work fine for you.

This bar, from the outside feels like ¬three or four different storefronts shoved together into one, at least on the outside. Once you locate the entrance (closest to the end of the block), you are welcomed by the fact, that it’s a bar.
Yup, it’s a bar, with an olde pub theme. Dimly lit, as most bars should be, the setting sun, through all the windows, gives you a welcome contrast, and plenty of light, until it sets. The wood lined décor is old feeling, and there is a good combination of booths, and finally with one long wall of banked seating, with tables. The wall seats have padding for your bottom.
Drinks are priced at par with what you expect, and they have a fairly wide range of options, from your classy Rainier Beer (which I like)… to local craft beers like Mac and Jack African Amber, as well as ciders. The food, is your slight-​more-​expensive-​than-​it-​should-​be hipster bar food, in that, they included items like Poutine (with deep friend curds and a loose brown gravy), to items like Meatloaf, topped off with vegetables and served with an arugula salad and mash potatoes. They also have simple items like a grilled cheese, and a house made Chicken Pot Pie. It’s all bar food, and at least my items were bar portions, and in terms of flavor, right in the middle, probably needed some salt. If we got more food for the price listed, it would help.
Typically this could conclude this as a «three star» Unilocal restaurant, but service brings it up to about «three and a half stars.»
The service, it’s all about the service. The two servers, who were young, one male and later one female, they made the experience much more enjoyable. The young man, I believe is named Bobby was chippy, witty, sarcastic and sassy. Pretty much made our table constantly smile, and we happily ordered items from him. He adjusted his personality to match our crazy group, and it was grand! Secondly, there was a young woman, who was absolutely lovely. That’s looks and personality, if I may be so bold. She came by after our initial server ended his shift, and took care of us, taking additional orders, clearing and cleaning, and just being awesome. She smiled, even tho it felt like she was the only remaining server in the area, and she did it with grace. Did I mentioned she was Lovely?
Finally, we came here for trivia night (Wednesdays at 7pm, teams of 6), and it was done well. The Public Announcement (PA) system was a little muffled, but overall it was a good setting, and the hostess for Geeks Who Drink, was also just a lovely, smiling, and kept the bar happening. It was an overall good experience, I don’t normally go to bars, but if I’m in the neighborhood, and I just need a drink, I know this is a okay bet.

My longer review didn’t seem to post, but I will try again.
Our group spent an hour here and was ignored by the waitresses the whole time. After a while (15 – 20 minutes) we went to the bar to pick up drinks. One waitress definitely saw us multiple times, but was too preoccupied with other patrons (friends?). Even when our first drinks were finished, she glanced at our empty glasses and walked away. Maybe no one was covering our table?
I was hungry, but didn’t get a chance to order food. If it is anything like the service, I should probably grateful that I didn’t waste my money.
There are plenty of other hipster-​ish bars around here to go to, so don’t bother with this one. In fact, you would be better off hopping down to the grocery store to save yourself some money and time.
Something needs to change here; it’s really just unacceptable.

I did not know that The Canterbury Ale House received a remodel about six months ago. To be honest, I did not know that The Canterbury Ale House even existed until a group of friends took me here. While that was quite gracious of them, there are certainly much better places in Capitol Hill. The Canterbury Ale House has a huge uphill battle to fight.
Prices, as everybody has been saying, are too far on the high end. I had nothing to drink but ordered two dishes: a SuSu chicken curry (whatever that means) for $ 13 and an arugula salad for $ 7. The first one was a slightly inflated price, but the second one was just ridiculous. Seven dollars for such a simple salad is just crazy.
My chicken curry dish came with rice and… another arugula salad. To be fair, the waitress had forewarned me about the salad coming with the dish, but that’s perhaps even worse because it just makes the salad by itself seem superfluous. Glad I didn’t order any drinks on top of all this, because I’m about to go broke.
I did, however, ask for a refill of water from the waitress at one point. She gave me an attitude and responded with «here you go» while moving a half-​full pitcher of water from the adjoining table closer to me. This would be funny if she later went on to retrieve a full pitcher of water for the table, but that definitely did not happen.
My companions may have found the waitress’s apathy to be amusing, but I really didn’t appreciate the snarky attitude and terse response especially in a customer service environment. The food was just barely passable, and everything else was mediocre. They’re lucky I happened to have a good time here, because otherwise the rating would have gone straight into negative territory.