Craic Den

The most expensive meal on the McCarty's menu turns out to be the biggest letdown. At less than $15, a 6-ounce filet mignon with baked potato and fresh broccoli would still be a pretty fair bargain. But our very thin cut, when we examine it closely, looks suspiciously like a tiny New York strip and not a true filet mignon. Though it is tender, it is charred way beyond medium well and yields only four or five small bites, hardly enough for a hungry meat-eater, even at that price. The side salad is right out of a plastic bag, one that has been open awhile, judging from the brown edges on the pale slivers of iceberg lettuce.

At both visits, a late happy hour weekday dinner and a mid-afternoon weekend lunch, service is attentive without being intrusive. Waitresses here are the sort of wholesome young women in tight jeans and swingy ponytails who'll tell you straight up when something on the menu isn't quite up to snuff that day and who'll apologize again and again—"I'm so, so sorry!"—when the kitchen can't produce a single slice of cheesecake. The cheesecake (brought in from an outside bakery) is unavailable at our first stop and is still missing five days later, so our waitress treats us to the only other "pudding" option, the chocolate mousse cake, a wedge of gooey overkill that starts with a base of Oreo-like cookie crumbs, proceeds upward to a middle layer of waxy mousse and caramel sauce and ends with hyperglycemia.

With rain bucketing down outside, we linger after our late lunch for another half an hour, catching glimpses of golf on the TV screens when conversation lags. We nibble on the Jelly Bellies in the plastic shamrock dish on the table and try for some Irish coffee, but the daytime bartender produces only a crockery mug of watery brew with barely a hint of whiskey and no cream and sugar.

Like any real "local" in Ireland, McCarty's draws a broad mix of customers. We see elderly foursomes at bar tables and young families with children dining on burgers and fries on the restaurant side. Singles do the after-work flirt thing up at the antique wood-inlaid bar. On the small stage in the northwest corner of the dining area, comedians noodle around with new jokes in the late-night spot after those Tuesday "spaggehti" feasts. Karaoke happens on Wednesdays. Bands set up on Fridays and Saturdays. (See the rock and roll cover trio 3 Drunk Monkeys on weekends this month.)

McCarty's keeps it simple. Prices are low, food is decent and the Guinness is poured with a creamy head of foam. It's a nice place for meeting friends for a relaxed meal, hoisting a pint or two and engaging in some of that good "craic."

If only for another order of those O'Reilley's sliders, we'll definitely be baic. 215 N. Central Expressway, Richardson, 972-234-2111. Hours: 11 a.m.-2 a.m daily. $$