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Cavanaugh's Restaurant
Rating Details »
Categories: Bars, Burgers, American (Traditional) [Edit]
Neighborhood: University City119 S 39th St
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 386-4889
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Attire:
- Casual
- Good for Groups:
- Yes
- Good for Kids:
- No
- Takes Reservations:
- No
- Delivery:
- No
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Late Night
- Music:
- DJ, Live, Juke Box
- Best Nights:
- Wed, Thu, Fri
- Happy Hour:
- Yes
- Alcohol:
- Full Bar
- Smoking:
- No
- Coat Check:
- No
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Chili's Grill & Bar
- Category:
- Tex-Mex
- Neighborhood:
- University City
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22 reviews for Cavanaugh's Restaurant
I can't really knock on the bar scene here because I haven't experienced it yet. This review is mainly for the food & atmosphere.
Went here with a friend who considers Cav's the drinking hole for him & his buddies. It was the Sunday of the Eagles vs Giants & Phillies vs. Yankees games. First off I was totally shocked at the amount of TV's. Obviously the place to watch whatever sports game is going on. My friend was always going off about the cheese fries so we ordered that & for me a buffalo chicken wrap. The cheese fries were really good! I must say probably some of the best. The buffalo chicken wrap, BLEECH! There was no buffalo sauce, the blue cheese over-powered the whole thing. I felt sick. Sorry Cav's but going by everyone else's food reviews, i'll stick with the fries & a couple of beers.
I hate Cav's.
Everything is coated in a thin layer of...grease? Can't really be sure, but it's definitely not clean.
The food blows, the beers on tap usually blow. I think. (Miller Light? Ew. Yuengling? Ok!).
I used to come here after work with a friend because they never carded me (this was pre-21). Until they did. So I stopped coming up until earlier this week when I went with a few friends for a birthday. It was a $5 cover for 75 cent drinks all night. I was only planning to have one drink, so FANTASTIC FOR ME.
Amazingly, my friend and I got hit on TOGETHER, and our cans weren't even out for the world to see. I was wearing a scarf! The guy was nice enough, save for the fact that he interrupted our conversation and then ended the one he had with us with "So, do you guys have boyfriends?"
Yes, buddy, we do. Your dress shirt is tucked into belted light denim jeans. Go away.
They also have free pizza that's pretty solid pizza for being free and served at Cav's.
Criticizing a college dive bar for their food is like criticizing athletes in the special olympics for their talent: it's unfair and mean-spirited. Still, I've got to stick to my guns. Cruel to be kind, you know how it is. Am currently digesting a bruschetta burger with bacon. Still wondering why they put what is clearly a fajita-esque topping on my bruschetta burger (sauteed tomatoes, red and green peppers, and onions). If I'd wanted a fajita burger, I would have ordered one. Burger itself was cooked well, tasty wedge fries. Sorry I can't be more specific. If you've had one mediocre bar meal, you've had them all.
You don't come here for the food, obviously. You come here because you want someplace within drunken-stumbling distance of your place, and because you don't mind taking a shower when you get home. And I'm not referring to having a sweaty dancin' good time, I'm talking about feeling like you're in danger of contracting a low-level illness if you spend any measurable amount of time in here.
Cavanaugh's has all the trappings of a neighborhood bar: cheap beer, cheap food, more tv's per square inch than Best Buy... but it has one serious area it needs to improve on: lighting. The lights are always turned up to full blast, fully illuminating the shabby furnishings and shabbier patrons. I came to this bar once with some coworkers who had never been there before and upon entering they definitely experienced a "what the hell" moment as their senses tried to cope with the well-lit surroundings. We went on to have a pretty decent time as they were actually pretty happy with the on-tap beer selection (it's decent and cheap) but it's tough to recover from that initial shock and go on to declare the bar to be anything but a dive. Aspire to be something more, Cav's!
Oh yeah, the wings are good though.
I am pretty over the food here, but if you live in West Philly and want to watch Pac 10 sports (or some other sporting event) on some regional station that no other bar seems to have, Cav's is the place to go. They get automatic props for that, no doubt, but you'll never catch me there on any day besides gameday.
If there were other places to get solid sports, Cav's would be ranked lower, but it's surprisingly difficult to find reliable sports bars on Philly with variety.
Well everyone here has been talking about the bar and stuff... and it's a bar so I guess the food isn't that great but, in case you're wondering! I got salmon and it was really dry and kinda tasteless. They shouldn't offer food if they're not gonna make it at least taste good, forget making it healthy or beautifully presented or whatever.
But my friend got a calzone and it was like a baby mammoth! I have never seen one that big, I didn't know it was possible! Seriously it blew my mind.
I may be dating myself - but I went here when I was in college at Penn in the mid nineties. Cav's is still kicking (and they also have the "River Deck".
It's your basic bar. Bar food. Bar Music. Frat-boy (and college-gals) crowd. Meat-marketing and bozzing of the basest nature. Decent wings as I recall.
I preferred Smokey Joe's.
What. The. Shit?
Seriously the exchange that I had here was so awesomely horrible that I'm almost at a loss of words to describe it. And it was so bad that I still can't figure out the punch line. After we left Carnivolution my friends and I decided to take the evening to their backyard and chill with some beers. Since they did it the last time I volunteered to make go on ahead and pick up a six pack at a nearby spot. Unfortunately the closest spot to the Tiberino Museum had so much shady activity going on outside of it that I decided to go nowhere near the inside. and that's what bought me to Cavanaugh's in the first place.
Upon first glance it didn't seem horrible, and just seemed like your typical 3 star college bar with a decent selection of take out six packs. But the exchange that I had at the bar when I tried to pick up my six pack was hands down the WORST that I ever experienced. After waiting by the bar for a good 4 minutes with a six pack and $ to pay for it clearly visible I had to put up with the same 3 female bartenders looking right at me and walking by totally ignoring me, and a guy who clearly looked to be in another world of busy. I was tempted to leave by then, but it was past 1:40 am by then, and the last thing that I wanted to do was risk arriving empty handed, so I put up with the bull crap. Finally I caught the guy who looked to be in another world of busy standing by another register, so I made my way over thinking that it was where I had to pay all along, and the bartenders were just bitches who didn't feel like telling me. But as I got there, found out that the register was closed for the evening along with the guy, and he made his way over to the previous register to get my change, I realized that they were just bitches who chose to flat out ignore me. To add insult to injury, as I was watching this horrendous exchange unfold, a polite server was kind enough to come up and inform me that I could have just paid for my six pack by the bar. Thanks Cinderella, now maybe if you could just deliver that memo to your evil step twins (maybe that's the punchline.).
I realize that getting a six pack isn't much of a basis to form an opinion of a place. But if it can make such a simple exchange so damn complicated then I have no desire to find out what else their capable of screwing up. epic fail Cavanaugh's. EPIC FAIL!
My coworker had a craving for burgers and fries, and I happily jumped on the bandwagon-- I was getting a little tired of the three places I frequent for lunch.
So a cheeseburger from Cavanaugh's with a side of Old Bay fries it was!
The fries were great. The cheeseburger was on the dry side, although I had ordered it medium well. I would actually love to come here during a game, where okay food is permissible when you're buzzed/drunk!
These guys are amazing. Where can I go to watch a 10pm West Coast Cal football game with other Cal alums? Here at Cavanaughs. They even let us not pay the $10 cover charge for the Hopkins fight and were willing to negotiate on a cheaper cover for us.
Miller was 7.50/pitcher and we were able to get the game on two TVs with audio!!!!
Thanks again to these guys to hooking us up with the game, while other Philly bars may have had a hard time getting us this late starting game.
1 Previous Review: Show all »
-
9/27/2008
I am a fan as they were able to get us our Cal Golden Bears football game as Fox and Hound couldn't.… Read more »
Definitely a college-level sports bar, with TVs hung everywhere, a little karaoke station for the adventurous on some days (most days spotting a DJ there or a jukebox spitting out tunes), and drinks. Nothing special about the beer selection or bar, here.
The food was actually pretty good. In the booths, you sit down and face a TV pretty much no matter which direction you're facing. The fries and onion rings are delicious, but the burgers, chicken, and full meals like the eggplant parm special were surprisingly not too bad, just not the place I'd normally get each... plenty of bar food selections, basically, the appetizers and snacks are the better part of Cav's.
I will never forget you, Cavanaugh's. Going there on a fine Sunday evening to witness alleged history in the making, I was humiliated and betrayed in front of all my friends. 18-1. sigh. 'til next season.
Pros:
Great sports bar (read: more LCD screens than a LAN party)
Fun-loving, spirited cross-section of West Philly denizens
Wall-to-wall refrigerators of beer (take-out or drink-in)
Tasty wings...although on super bowl sunday, the wings on our last plate looked like a bunch of midget Lilliputians...which, on second thought is probably the anatomically-accurate size of a pre-steroid era chicken
Cons:
Can be armpit in your face, holding onto the ceiling, NYC subway at rush-hour crowded
Philly liquor laws suck...nothing like getting ripped for a 6-pack
Bottom line:
Get a table, watch the game with friends, drink macro-brews, and cheer for the Eagles like mad
Cav's is the ideal college bar. Young staff, cheap specials, and friendly people. Tons of TVs throughout the bar so you can watch any game at any time. The wings are some of the best in the city. Huge selection of beer for takeout or in house. As far as sports bars in the city go, this has to be my favorite. I've been going there since college and haven't stopped.
Wednesday night is college night, so if you don't like drunk 21 year olds then pick another night.
Yoo college! Everyone in this bar is in it. Wednesday they have 75cent drinks til 12. There's over 40 TV's in one room - plus a huge projector. It'd be a nice place to watch a game - esp. if you live in the area. Def fun on Erin Express.
I went here last weekend on a Saturday night. They were busy because it was a fight night and they were charging $10 to get in. They were nice enough to let us chill until the fight actually began and then would come around to see if we wanted to stay for $10 or go. I had a beer and some fries, the fries were pretty good.....mmmmm....wedge shaped.
There was a nice mix of people, college alumni (yup, there were a few Drexel alums there), college kids, and locals. The service was decent, it was a pretty comfortable environment, but I'm warning you, tv's are everywhere.
I absolutely *hate* this place. Either you stand at the bar, or you sit at a booth - standing at the bar is kind of awkward for both drinking and watching the game, and sitting down at the booth, you can't see squat.
It's a dive bar - go there with a big group, sit at the booth, tell stupid stories and drink. Or, go there and get beer for take out.
I stumbled across this place on a random weekday with a coworker because we were in West Philly on business. It was definitely not a "nice" place but the food was decent and the prices were not bad and the service was actually pretty good that night. Maybe because it was a Wednesday and there were no games on.
If you just need a quick place to grab a decent bite, grab a beer, and watch a game, this place will do just fine. It's also really spacious inside.
GREAT FOOD! Ever since I discovered that this bar served take-out and delivery, Cavanaugh's has been on my speed dial. No joke. The food is amazing. Typically bars serve alright food.. Hey, after a few drinks you aren't going to notice!
Not the case with Cav's. Everything that I have tried has been a treat for my mouth. Especially the Nachos Grandes and the Chicken Quesadillas. Their desserts are pretty amazing as well; I especially recommend the carrot cake. The only thing I don't like about the cheesecake is the lack of crust.. which, to me is the best part.
I highly recommend Cav's, even if you don't want anything to drink.
Aside from Smokes and MarBar, this was the most convenient bar for me when I went to Penn, and yet NONE of my classmates went there. It was taboo.
I still went, though, from time to time. It's a pretty fun group of Drexel kids on the weekends, and the cover is low (when they have one). The ambiance is dive-barish, but you won't pay an arm and a leg for a drink either. It's also a decent place to watch big sports games.
The layout is a little awkward, honestly. You're either standing around the bar or you feel like you're on a separate planet, and the "dance floor" makes absolutely no sense for dancing.
Somebody today asked me, "Where are all the sports bars in Philadelphia?"
There aren't any. That's because places like Cavanaugh's have become more "college" than sports bars. I too, when in college, knew of this place. It was popularized by the Greek-life folks.
This place has cheap domestic beers, good chicken fingers, and lots going on. If that's your scene, load up. But I would not catch a game here, or a cold.
it is what it is.
watch that god damn step!
Desperation is a major theme in my reviews of Philadelphia restaurants and bars--especially when it comes to West Philly. Cavanaugh's is another place I've come when I was desperate for basic pub food and/or beer. The prices aren't terrible and the food's better than the Philly Diner around the corner. They run your standard boring American / Stella Artois / Hoegaarden taps and there are a lot of TV's, which may be a pro or con depending on your taste. If you like sports and loud sports bars this could be just what you're looking for. But consider that when the college kids are here it's intolerable (unless, I suppose, you're a 21 year old Drexel kid with your dad's credit card). I'll probably come here at least one more time before I leave this godforsaken city. It won't necessarily make me happy, and it hopefully won't make me too sad. In short, visitors should adjust their expectations carefully before venturing into Cavanaugh's as this isn't a bar for everyone and it's very different at different times.
