The Ale House

No Longer In Business

Very nice beer selection and good food in an historic building in the center of town. Decent service and prices add to the appeal.

Stopped here recently while in town for a meeting. Nice large bar with seating in the back. Very nice selection of taps. Good service. Ordered an app - it was tasty. Above average overall.

I’ve been in a few bar/pubs located in old New England mill buildings and they’re all pretty much the same. Exposed bricks, high ceilings, exposed duct work, lots of wood. Makes for a nice looking location with the downside being, the’re a bit noisy. The food here was very good We ate from the "pub" side of the menu. Waitstaff was prompt and the food came out quickly. It was a Sunday evening. Not to busy. Beer selection was quite impressive. Nice place.

Tin ceilings, dark bricks, dark woods, nice atmosphere. Yes, there are TVs which were showing the Red Sox / Yankees game, but I wouldn’t call it a sports bar. They’ve got about 30 beers on tap, with a good selection of locals (Riverwalk) as well as some good craft from across the country. There were a few nitro drafts (BBC Coffee House Porter is amazing on nitro) and at least one beer on cask. Selection gets even better in bottles, and includes mead and cider as well. The bartender was very knowledgeable about what he was serving. I listened in while he helped out a curious BMC customer at the bar, offering samples and suggestions. My waitress was not as much of a beer sommelier, but was friendly, efficient and got everything right. Onion rings were very good, my short rib grilled cheese was decent and prices were okay... Maybe a little on the high side, but that’s typical of eastern MA.

Absolutely tremendous beer selection and the bar staff have an incredible knowledge of the beers that they are serving.

Finally got to drop in and try this place out last night as I had some free time on my hands and hadn’t haunted any bars in a while and very much needed to do so. Before I can even attempt to comment on the service, the atmosphere, the selection, and the food I have to firstly express my unwittingly frustration with the location of Main Street. Has anyone felt the same? Basically it’s in the middle of a four-lane intersection and there are many turns to make even when sitting five minutes from the restaurant. I’m not a native New Englander so anything not on an apparently traditional grid system I find distractingly distressing to say the least. But as for the place itself, it’s warm, inviting and everyone working was wearing all-black sweaters and long-sleeves which I found enjoyably minimalist. One of the prime reasons I had gone, had been because their website promised Wormtown Be Hoppy, but after sitting down and asking, my bartender had told me quite plainly she didn’t know what I was talking about. There were a few other offerings from their website that I was itching for a sample, but only a few managed to in fact be present at the bar. Needless to say, their website needs to be updated. That being said, I had a good time at this place and would indeed be back. When I had walked in my first impression was that this was a sports bar with decent beers on tap. That impression has yet to change, but unlike a typical sports bar wherein the people who generally can found be there are the obnoxious kinds of Football lovers, at the Ale House I found an unprecedented sophistication amongst tourists and college kids alike. There was enthused bantering but virtually no drunken banshee screaming to be heard from any direction. The food was fine; I only tried a couple plates of appetizers and a soup, and they were certainly filling, just not an "amazing" experience I was believing it’d be. For the service, just about top-notch.. The waitstaff here never missed a beat of an order and also were super-fast in putting the sequences on the table in front of me. It was a busy night, as most probably are, so I was becoming increasingly on the worried side when it took a little longer than expected for my order to make it to my counter.

Stopped in on my way home to Maine from MA. Nice little spot only a ten minute detour off 495... and links right back up with 95 when skirting through town. Decent draft selection with over10-20 beers listed. Great bottle lists and prices..though I don’t know if everything on the list is actually available. The food was good...and the service was fast and courteous. I had a couple local brews from Jacks Abby and Mayflower. Nice atmosphere with a high tin ceiling and a lot of seating options; booth high tables, bar and it looked like an outside patio as well. Good diverse draft selection... cant really complain with anything. Would certainly go back when Im passing through.

Visited on 23 August 2012. The pub has a nice Old World feel to it. They have a small loft on the second floor with a few flat screens TV’s scattered around the place. Our waiter was very educated about beer and knew most of the drafts that were on. We had a great chat with him. The food was nothing less than fantastic. I had the marinated turkey tips with garlic mashed potatoes. The tips were cooked and seasoned perfectly. My girlfriend enjoyed her meal as well. No complaints at all. And if you want to see an updated draft list it is best to look at their Facebook page. Taps are rotated often and I have to make sure I find a reason to make my way back here soon. The taps happened to be so great I forgot to look at the bottle list altogether. Nice establishment!

I went here for the first time today with the wife and kids. I know St Patrick’s day probably isn’t the best time to bring the family to a pub, but they enjoyed it. The beer selection is really good for the area with probably 20 taps and a bottle list that’s at least a hundred deep. The food we had was fantastic, my wife and daughter raved about the French onion soup and my shepherds pie was great as well. Our server was less than attentive, but it was busy and hes did apologize more than once and took some stuff off the bill for making us wait. I found the beer a bit pricey, 5 bucks for Guinness, 6 something for smuttynose. 8 for breakfast stout and choklat. I’d go back again the selection a food were great. I would have rated higher if the prices were a bit more reasonable.