Sammie Pub - Tonawanda Town CDP

Shannon's Pub never disappoints (unless you can't get a table, but that's only happened to me once on a Saturday night when there was a live band playing). Regardless, go for the Irish specialities or the Fish Fry. The fish fries are huge and come with macaroni salad, coleslaw, and choice of potato, I usually get the salt potatoes. The best value is to get it for lunch, but it's also a dollar cheaper if you order sometime between lunch and dinner. If you do have any room left afterward, their peanut butter pie is delicious. Lastly it wouldn't be a pub without beer. They offer quite a few Irish brews on tap, so try something new! I tried the Kilkenny Irish Red Cream Ale tonight and enjoyed it.

We came here to order a fish fry to go. Since I ordered it to go I can't comment on the service but everything was ready when we came to pick it up and our order was correct. I split the fish fry with my sister since it is on the large side. We ordered salted potatoes with mac salad with the fish fry. The potatoes and mac salad were good. I liked the fish fry and finished all of my portion. I put lemon juice on top which added to the flavor and really enjoyed it. Sadly, it was on the greasy side and my tummy isn't used to all the grease. Because of this I didn't feel well a few hours after eating it and probably wouldn't order it again because of how it made me feel. If you can handle the grease then I say go for it because it does taste good.

This is a decent neighborhood bar with a good kitchen. They stock a good line of draft beers and an impressive line of irish whiskeys including some I had never seen before. Lots of flavored vodkas for the ladies (or whoever drinks flavored vodka certainly not me But it is a comfortable place with VERY FRIENDLY VERY NICE STAFF. They make a very decent steak salad. The vegetables in the salad are fresh but are otherwise nothing special. But the steak is a superior econo steak tender and lots of flavor. They cut this with lots and lots of blue cheese and that is just fine by me. So you are basically chowing down a ton of steak and a ton of blue cheese but its healthy right? because its a salad. I like the way these people think. I My base review is printed in its entirety above and I still think everything I said there. The following section is written for people who love to Yelp Review and who write a lot of Yelp Reviews. Here is your bonus track: Is the Shannon Pub in Tonawanda New York an Irish Restaurant or a neighborhood pub? Or how do you tell the difference between an Irish restaurant and a neighborhood pub? Cheap cop out preliminary answer its both since it has two rooms. There is the all restaurant room with no bar and no TV and there is the all bar room with a bar and TV where you can order anything they have on the restaurant menu. Non cop out answer: There are two entertaining complexities in categorizing restaurants: 1 Globalized cuisine that the food off of one nation's menu shows up on the menus of a zillion other nations. Globalization comes in three flavors. 1a The Unity of English Commonweath food. Irish food and American food are very similar as are English food Scotch food Canadian food, Australian food New Zealand food and South African food. The stock of Anglo saxon settlers brought their food all over the world. There are a VERY small number of dishes that travelled less So not so many people do Lancashire Hot Pot making that dish truly English. However, lots of people do roast beef so even thought that is the quintessential English elegant dinner it is eaten all over the world. In the case of Irish lots of people have borrowed corned beef and cabbage not so many people eat colcannon. 1b The fact that people adopt other people's food left and right. Nothing is more American than pizza and nachos though in both cases we know where those dishes came from. 1c Some truly local dishes have clones all over the world. EVERY part of the world does a fried fish. Call it a parrillada, call it an Irish fish fry, call it a Cape Cod fish fry, call it just fried fish but eat it in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Korea or Ethiopia. And yet this is often a local dish in which people take great pride. (ever go to a Cape Cod restaurant? In the case of the Shannon you can order their Irish pot pie which only they have which is Irish. You can order corned beef and cabbage which is irish but also is heavily new england. You can order their Irish fish fry which is a global dish. 2 Cooks like to cook different things just to keep things interesting in the kitchen and they often like to spread their wings and show their range. Pretty much 2/3 of the Shannon menu is not at all Irish. They are located in a Buffalo suburb so they take pride in their Buffalo Wings. They do a lot of burgers. The steak salad with blue cheese that I had was quite fine and reflecting the chef playing around in the kitchen with a steak and greens figuring out what his or her angle would be. Cooks are often like actors or actresses who don't want to be type cast and want to show their dramatic range. The actress who always puts on a cheerleader costume, has illicit sex and then is always killed by the vampire thirty minutes into the movie would love to just once play a diplomat facing an international crisis. Application to Yelping and an entertaining story. In Japan I was once taken to a cutlet restaurant that was known throughout the region. There were fifteen kinds of Japanese cutlets on the menu and everyone was eating the cutlets which were justly famous. The sixteenth and last item after the fifteen kinds of cutlets was sashimi. I ordered the Sashimi and my hosts univerally said I was nuts and wasting a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was the finest Sashimi I had in Japan. It blew away any of the Sashimi I had in more pretentious all sushi and sashimi places. It was the culinary high point of the trip. The cook had always had this capacity to get good fish and do great things to capture its taste. He or she could never do that in their cutlet house. But given a chance the cook totally shined. So is the Shannon grill an Irish restaurant or a neighborhood pub? It is both. Places with good cooks are often places with lots of exciting and unexplored potentials. And they fit all sorts of different categories.

Found this on Yelp when looking for a Friday night meal with my wife and daughter. Easy to find, spacious dining room and bar. I love Guiness and they know how to pour one! The right temperature ! We had the sheppard's pie, the lamb stew and a steak sandwich! Their signature is the Potato Chowder, so of course we had to try it. The lamb stew was outstanding. Reminded me of my trip to Ireland. My daughter liked her sheppard's pie, way too much for one person, so she took out the leftovers! The atmosphere was great with the dim lighting and fireplace! Lots of beers on tap !!! Wait staff is wonderful!

I was genuinely impressed by the Shannon Pub, which took me by surprise. It has the typical Amherst vibe—with a crowd of young people, some of whom weren't the friendliest. However, the bartender was incredibly welcoming. The Fish Fry was a bit pricey for my taste at $12 before tax (which brought it to over $13), but it was also a generous portion. Generally, I’m not a fan of Irish pubs, but Shannon Pub completely defied my expectations. The fish fry was absolutely delicious. After just digging into what felt like a quarter of it, I was already satisfied—because it was that hearty. Thankfully, I stopped myself because I had ordered it for someone else. My bad! The only downside is that it’s quite greasy, which is probably why it’s so filling. But if you enjoy a greasy fish fry, I truly believe this might be the best one around. And if it’s not, then go ahead and spank me with a Guinness-soaked potato and call me Seamus. It's definitely one of the best fish fries I’ve had in the region—only Buffalo Joe's on Main Street does it better. But that’s just my opinion. If you ask Carly Simon, she’d say that nobody does it better. Just don't ask Shannon Doherty—please.