Collins Pub
526 Second Ave (Pioneer Square), 623-1016.
Open daily 11:30 am-2 am.
The Pioneer Square professional (PSP) works in a neighborhood at once seedy, historic, and boring. With alarming frequency, PSPs are forced to step over, observe, and avoid stinky homeless people (SHP), unhinged Mariners fans (UMFs), tourists on the Underground Tour (TUTs), and employees of the Seattle Weekly (ESWs).
At noon every day, the PSP is in a particular fix: Where to eat? This is, of course, the concurrent predicament of urban professionals across the country, but the PSP has it tougher than most. For all the hordes of people in Pioneer Square, washed and unwashed, there’s not a lot of decent, reasonably priced places to for PSPs to grab lunch. No human should ever have to enter the Quizno’s on First and Main.
Until very recently, in fact, there were only three really good places in Pioneer Square for a quick, cheap lunch: Mae Phim, Cafe Paloma, and the Elliott Bay Cafe. Joining that too short list is Collins Pub, a place whose name bears no ascertainable relation to its own aesthetic. Save for booze, there is not a hint of Ireland here. (Perhaps the name is a nod to Pioneer Square’s lock on booze-soaked St. Patrick’s Day celebrations?)
The menu is decidedly American and heavily influenced by the deep fat fryer. And so you have your crispy curlicues of calamari (crunchable, flavorful, $8) and your flaky fish and chips (beer-battered Alaskan cod, $8.50). You have worthy $8 options in the leafy green department: a house salad (bleu cheese, pecans, balsamic), a spinach-arugula salad (onions, oranges, Reggiano), a Caesar (better than average). You also have an artichoke, spinach, and Dungeness crab dip appetizer that’s good enough to be eaten with a spoon, forget the bread ($8). The crab dip is better than even the New York strip entrée (piled with Gorgonzola, $17). The Collins burger ($8.50) is what you’d expect of a burger in a pub.
It’s as if the person in charge of the menu simply culled the most popular dishes from the most popular chain restaurants across America. Not, as they say, that’s there anything wrong with that. While Collins Pub won’t attract eaters from all over the city, the Collins Pub is quickly becoming popular with PSPs at lunch and after work. And anything that brings more dining options to long-suffering PSPs–and UMFs, TUTs, and ESWs–has to be regarded as a good thing.
