MacLaren's Pub

MacLaren's Pub

First appearance	Pilot

MacLaren's Pub is the bar where Barney, Lily, Robin, Marshall and Ted hang out. Many important moments of the show happen at MacLaren's, so it is very important to the gang. Over the years, the bar has had many notable employees including Carl, Doug, Wendy and Karina.

History[]

The Apartment is located in the building above the bar, making it a convenient place for the gang to hang out.

Although they can be seen at a variety of tables throughout the series, the gang is most often found at the favorite booth near the bar. The gang is there so often that Carl offers free shots in The Pineapple Incident, and entrusts Barney and Ted with the keys to the bar in Three Days of Snow.

MacLaren's is known to have a full kitchen offering a variety of food as well as the usual bar fare.

In Tailgate, Ted and Barney are outraged with the price to get into MacLaren's on New Year's Eve, so they invite everyone to come upstairs. They then open their bar, named Puzzles, at The Apartment.

In The Perfect Cocktail, Carl bans the gang from the pub due to Barney and Marshall fighting.

In Rally, Future Marshall and Future Lily hold their victory party when Marshall successfully wins election as a New York State Supreme Court Justice. Marshall, who had initially believed he would lose to Brad Morris, became heavily drunk and, at the press conference to give his victory speech drunkenly claimed to be police commissioner of Gotham City and vowed to make Batman work harder.

MacLaren's Pub is based on four York City bars where Carter Bays and Craig Thomas used to drink, and is named after an associate producer of the show.^[1] They wanted the gang to sit in different booths for realism, but were told that filming would be easier if the actors always sat in the same place.^[2]

MacLaren's Pub is an Irish bar as mentioned in The Time Travelers by 20-Seconds-From-Now-Barney.

Employees[]

Carl MacLaren (Owner, Bartender)
Wendy (Waitress)
Doug Martin (Bouncer)
Karina (Bartender)
Travis Frenchroy (Back-up Bartender)
Lou (appeared in Good Crazy as a bartender that turned into Robin Scherbatsky)
Mark (Deceased, mentioned in Monday Night Football)

Gallery[]

The gang at MacLaren's
Exterior of MacLaren's in winter
MacLaren's Pub (left) in the background of the set of Bones
MacLaren's Pub and the stairs leading up to Ted, Marshall and Lily's apartment

See Category:MacLaren's Pub images.

Notes and Trivia[]

In Moving Day, Barney laments that MacLaren's Pub is exactly a 23-minute cab ride from his own apartment, which is often a cause for his conquests to fail.
In Showdown, Future Ted states that there are 11 deep-fried appetizers on MacLaren's food menu. In the same episode, Lily orders all of them in an attempt to gain weight so that her wedding dress will fit.
A variety of MacLaren's-themed merchandise is available in the How I Met Your Mother store from CBS. ^[3]
MacLaren's is based on a bar at 240 West 55th Street in New York City called McGee's. ^[4]
- In Right Place, Right Time, the pie chart describing Marshall's favorite bars includes McGee's.
The bar appears in the background of the set of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 12 Episode 6.
It has a mural that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas both liked and wanted to incorporate into the show. ^[5]
It is named after Carter Bays's assistant, Carl MacLaren, who was also the namesake for Carl the bartender. ^[6]
The bar appears in the background of the set of Bones Season 5 Episode 3 (approximately 3 minutes and 43 seconds into the episode). It even includes the stairs leading up to The Apartment.
- The same "street" (on the Fox Studios Lot) contains the Royal Diner, a frequent setting on Bones.
The gang's booth is always seen and is thought to be near the middle of the bar, and it can be entered from either side. However, this is a slight continuity error, as in Slutty Pumpkin, the booth is shown from a different angle and is actually joined onto the back wall of the bar, although it has been seen in later episodes to be in the middle, with another row of booths on the wall behind the camera.
Throughout the seventh season (and later seasons), the No Boogieboarding sign has remained in front of the bar.
The opening sequence of How Your Mother Met Me shows that the Mother and her gang frequent MacLaren's as well, although it is a different MacLaren's in another part of town.
In the music video for the song "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, you can see the entrance to MacLaren's Pub around 3:04. ^[7]
As Simon Tremblay mentions in "Sandcastles in the Sand", a beer costs 4 dollars in the bar. Later on, in The Fight, Doug mentions that one beer costs $7.50.