Anyone with any sense at all understands that Granville Street is a maddening location during the weekend. As such, a great many locals avoid the Granville Strip like a house on fire full of rats.
However, there comes a time for everyone when they end up down there somehow. Say, you’re going to the Commodore Ballroom for a show. You want savour (or slam) a few pre-game pints. You wish you knew a safe haven to slip in to but, alas! You’ve neglected the area for so long you have no idea what’s good or bad.
Here, now, is a list of bars, pubs and dives to get some reprieve from the Granville Strip madness.
The Morrissey Pub
It’s dark, cavernous and the décor is oddly seductive. It’s somewhere you might spot a vampire – or maybe Dave Grohl who, legend has it, hangs out here whenever he’s in town. The Morrissey’s for a more mature crowd – the type that likes their rock music heavy and their whiskey drinks stiff. It’s the sort of place that could very well exist somewhere between the Whisky A Go Go and the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip, but thankfully is placed at the most remote end of the Granville Strip.
1227 Granville Street
Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug
Cozy and authentically Irish in the beat-up, luckless sort of way. The booths could all use a reupholstering and the beer menu is rather trim, but otherwise Johnnie Fox's a fine place to watch a game on weeknights, debate the merits of Ulysses with a friend at lunch or get slobbering wasted with randoms on a Saturday night. Club kids normally avoid the spot, which is a plus, nor is there anything remotely pretentious about it, unless you consider Closing Time playing on the speaker pretentious. But we don’t.
1033 Granville Street
The Factory
The Factory's a narrow, brick-lined hole-in-the-wall designed as a throwback to New York music venues of the 70s and 80s. This means faux-dank, faux-dirty, and dimly lit. But whatever, it’s cool anyhow. All menu items are $5.95, and the clientele skews younger and more alternative, so, again, you won’t see crowds of Caprice kids slamming shots at the bar. Expect Queens of the Stone Age, Motorhead and the like playing at volumes not exactly favourable to lengthy discussions with the hard of hearing.
1017 Granville Street
Roxy Burger
Technically speaking, this burger joint, located the heart of the insanity, really isn’t all that great. The draft beer tastes as though the pipes haven’t been cleaned since Mulroney was in power, and the burgers are, by and large, rather basic. (No option for goat cheese and arugula on that chicken burger, man?)
Still, Roxy Burger is reliable. No matter how crowded downtown can be, there’s almost always a booth available here. I’ve spent countless Saturday nights in my 20s, roving the Strip for a bar or club to get in to, and ending up at the Roxy Burger. Why? The booths are cozy, the music’s classic and the waitresses are friendly. It’s cheap, chill and dependable. What else can you ask for?
910 Granville Street
Cinema Public House
Yes, it’s tantamount to sacrilege to claim a Donnelly joint as a reprieve from mindless Granville shenanigans, given the homogenization of bar and bro culture that the Donnelly Group seemed to be fostering.
Lately, the Donnellys have upped the quality of their menus, their beers and, by all appearances…it’s clientele? In any case, Cinema offers an impressive line of beers, great daily food and drink specials and an ambience that’s New York speakeasy meets Las Vegas strip club. The wings are delightful and, um, so are the waitresses.
901 Granville Street
The Bottleneck
This relatively new gem is located directly under the Commodore and occasionally shares coordinates events with the music venue (they’re throwing an afterparty for the Interpol show on Sept. 15). Bottleneck’s modern décor and quality menu items will appeal to wide range of patrons, though the masses evidently haven’t discovered the place yet, because it’s rarely packed.
Because the seating area is tucked in the back of the building, without any windows, it’s easy to forget after a pint or five that you’re even on the Granville Strip to begin with.
870 Granville Street
