Melgard Public House

7505 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-651-1650 (I think?!)
twitter.com/MelgardNews

Parking: Metered Street Parking along Melrose and side streets, bring your quarters!

Monday-Friday (I think)*, 3-7 pm, Free Cheese Pizza with drink purchase

Running this website/blog, I know that it doesn’t cost hardly anything to have a website. Having a phone with voicemail, well, that’s just par for the course. As an individual, I like having the luxury of both – it makes it easier to communicate with readers, friends, etc. So, I can only imagine that a new up & coming bar would find it easier to relay information to their supporters/clients/etc. through a website (even one as simple as a free blog) and/or answering machine.

Melgard Public House is not the first bar we’ve encountered to not have a website and a phone that rings 68 times before you tire of waiting and hang up, but it certainly annoyed me on the night I wanted to check the bar out for their Trivia (which I knew about from happening upon a Trivia night in progress a few weeks before). I wasn’t sure if Meglard would be hosting Trivia that night as it was Game 2 of the NBA Finals. As it turns out, we checked out the bar for happy hour at 6 pm, but 7 pm Trivia had been pushed until 8 pm.

I know I sound a little like Bitchy Headquarters and I really don’t mean to because I actually really liked the bartenders at Melgard; they were all funny and charming and had a good rapport with the patrons. But I was already slightly annoyed at the lack of information available on their non-website and unanswered calls. They do have a twitter page, but it’s not updated frequently enough to let people know of deals. Plus, there’s still lots of people are just becoming familiar with twitter, including us so it’s not the best idea to rely on twitter only.

And their happy hour isn’t that great either. The good news is you get a free cheese pizza between 3 and 7 pm, and even better, it’s quite tasty. But that’s it. No drink specials – all beers (and there were a gazillion to choose from) went for $6, including my pint of Wyder’s Pear Cider and Tracy’s bottle of Corona Light. No other food specials – though we did each order a $5 garden salad (okay deal, nice portion size) to go with the pizza. But really, I don’t think it would hurt the bar to offer a handful of beer selections at $3/4 per pint during happy hour and to add a couple more food items to a happy hour menu. I’d sacrifice a free pizza in the name of Satan for five or so $4/5 food menu options.

From what I could tell, all food and drink orders have to be placed at the bar, which is strange because Melgard is set up more like a large restaurant with a bar, inside & outside seating aplenty, rather than a bar with food. Again, cool bartending staff makes this okay, but it seems to make more sense to have servers taking orders as well. Maybe there are servers, I just didn’t see any that night…

Long story short, I really do want to check out Trivia sometime – love that there’s a Trivia night offered so close to home. And Melgard seems like a great place to watch a game (NBA Finals or World Cup!). I’d also like to check out more of Melgard’s food menu – they have a Nutella pizza that sounds very, very, very tasty. But I don’t think I’d make Melgard a regular happy hour spot – unless they offered some better drink deals and maybe a couple more food options. And had a working phone.

Love,
Bitch Headquarters (JB)

*I think happy hour is Monday – Friday, I forgot to get the info from the bar and of course, the phone just rings when I call :).

Rating: 2 Martinis