Some of the best restaurant stories start with someone just trying to watch a game. That’s exactly how Maria’s Sports Bar in Brockton Village ended up under new ownership.
Last summer, sous-chef Mikel Nieces brought Graham Pratt — one of the minds behind Bar Bowie and Milou — to Maria’s to catch a game. Pratt noticed an underused wood-fire pizza oven and asked longtime owner Maria Leandro, who had run the bar for 32 years, if she’d let him organize a pizza pop-up. Her response: why not just buy the business outright?
Pratt, along with Mikey Kim and Adrian Montesdeoca, did exactly that. The trio cleaned up the space, removed a dividing wall, and added touches like neon lighting, while deliberately preserving the bar’s lived-in, neighbourhood character — the pool table and 100-seat capacity stayed put. From there, Pratt built a menu squarely focused on beer-friendly comfort food: 10 pizzas (five classics, five signature creations), three baked pastas, and a rotating cast of salty appetizers. As Montesdeoca puts it, healthy eating was never the goal.
The standout feature, though, might be the happy hour. Running a full 30 hours a week — every weekday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. — it offers two house lagers for just $10, with the first pint including a branded poker chip redeemable for the second, usable any time during a future happy hour window. It’s proven popular with longtime regulars and local parents bringing kids by for a pizza alike.
Looking for a low-key spot to watch a game without the downtown markup? Maria’s Sports Bar is back in Brockton Village, and the happy hour alone is worth the trip.