Storm Crow Alehouse

We found Storm Crow from a couple of Summer Groupon offerings for this pub along West Broadway located just west of Granville street.  This pub boasts to be a nerd friendly pub.  Throughout the pub you can see a sci-fi comic book type of theme from their decorations, posters and collectibles.  At the back of the restaurant there is a giant shelf filled with all the board and card games you can imagine.

They allow patrons to take the games at the table while eating.  This seems like an innovative idea at first since it deviates from the traditional local pub.

We actually went on 2 different occasions, but we’ll blog both visits here at the same time as this place is definitely not worth having separate blog posts.

Our first visit was for a late lunch. It was not too busy and we were seated right away. I would say it’s more of a pub than a restaurant.  There aren’t many tables for eating.  Most of the area was occupied with the the taller bar type tables where you’d have to sit on a stool.

Our first item was the fish and chips. 

The batter looked kind of dark so we are thinking maybe it’s beer batter doing this.  It also had some peppery spices within the batter which you can kind of see in the pic.  It came with a generous serving of tartar sauce.

What turned us off immediately was that the batter was soggy.  No crunch to it at all.  We lifted the fish off the plate and saw it was drowning in a pool of oil. This would happen if the oil is not hot enough when being fried.  We tried to finish it without the batter.  The fries were too dry.

Next is the Crow Burger.  It’s a chicken burger with lettuce, tomato, onions and a pickle.

The chicken breast was way overcooked and was burned as you can see from the black char.  It was not that great.  Fries were kind of dry too.  The bun was a bit hard.  The best part of the burger was the lettuce, tomato and onion which were fresh.

This was not a great lunch, but we had a Groupon so that mitigated our disappointment a bit. 

We went back a couple of weeks later to try their brunch.  It was a Sunday early afternoon and was not busy at all. Only a couple of tables occupied the restaurant.

The first breakfast we ordered was the Crow Classic breakfast.  We chose Chorizo sausage for the meat, and scrambled eggs.

It came with home fries, a side of fruit and some toast.  The sausage was horrible.  It was sliced in half and pan fried till it was dry like cardboard.  The home fries were not that great either.  They were fried like there was no tomorrow.  What’s up with this place overcooking the food?  Scrambled eggs way overcooked.  The best part of this breakfast was the fruit. 

Next we tried the Hillbilly chicken and waffles.

The waffles were cut into finger sized pieces and had a big serving of chicken breasts fingers seasoned Cajun style with some honey mustard for the chicken and some sort of sweet creamy dip for the waffles.  Everything about this was wrong.  The chicken was super dry, again over fried crazily.  The waffles were totally bland. The serving was large, but was difficult to swallow both literally and figuratively.  We won’t say more about this disaster.

Next we ordered the Huevos Rancheros.

It comes with two poached eggs on an English muffin.  It has chili, guacamole, salsa and sour cream served with home fries and fruit salad.  The eggs were both cold.  Not just the yolk, but the egg white was cold too.  We wonder how long the eggs were sitting around.  The home fries were also dry like the above breakfast as they were probably made at the same time.

Storm Crow has a unique setting targeting a unique crowd.  They have a wide selection of beers on tap with daily beer special too.  The servers seemed friendly and attentive at both visits. However, as you can see, the food is far from being up to par.  Everything we had in both of our visits was overcooked or over fried.  Improvements need to be made in the kitchen. 

It’s probably OK to visit here just for a beer and to play board games.

We won’t be returning here in the short run with or without Groupon.

SFDD gives 1.5 out of 5 Delights.