Nightlife in Owings Mills

Classic pub fare combined with ample big-screen televisionery makes Padonia Station an ideal venue to catch your favorite game while indulging in the menu’s flavorsome features. Await the seventh-inning kickoff with six French-bread slices of crab toast served with tortilla chips and salsa ($8.99), or chase three meatball sliders with a side of apple sauce ($7.99), then condemn your mouth to a blazing eternity with 10 wings from hell, bleu cheese dressing, and celery sticks ($8.49). While legume lovers kick home runs with a vegetarian quesadilla ($6.89), meateaters might find themselves enamored by the antics of a homemade, chili-topped, Texas-style burger ($8.99) or a six-piece buffalo tender dinner ($11.99).

Jovial crowds of sports fans line the wooden bars and maroon booths at both Loafers Sports Bar and Grill locations to unwind with cool brews and a tasty spread of seafood and pub eats. Flat-screen TVs broadcast football games for die-hard sports enthusiasts and Antiques Roadshow reruns for appraisal fanatics as they enjoy burgers and plates of wings, nachos, and potato skins. Chef Joe Rocco packs jumbo lumps of meat into his crab cakes and steams pots of crabs year-round to complement pints and the Big Loaf beer, a 1-liter pour of draft ale. A variety of nightly events draw in revelers with specials, karaoke, and live DJs, as opposed to old computers programmed to play "Glory Days" in binary.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, the streets of Ellicott City echo with the footsteps and laughter of revelers making their ways between the city’s pubs and breweries. Bar crawlers visit four local pubs; The Diamondback Tavern, Ellicott Mills Brewing Company, Judge's Bench Pub, and La Palapa Grill & Cantina. Revelers sip domestic beers, spirits, and wines as they tactfully ignore bar-trivia rivals inside the Diamondback Tavern's rustic interior, between the wooden trim and hanging amber-colored lamps of Ellicott Mills Brewing Company and the Judge's Bench Pub, or between the exposed brick walls and colored glass mosaics at La Palapa. To help stomachs soak up excess alcohol, some bar proprietors lay out snacks for touring groups. Participants on both earlier and later crawls walk away with a souvenir T-shirt, as well as a new layer of bar-crawling memories to replace lingering remembrances of high-school-trigonometry lessons.

Built by a group of friends interested in camaraderie, cold drinks, and good food, Diamondback Tavern aims to put a contemporary spin on a traditional Maryland tavern, and its pub menu has earned accolades from the Baltimore Sun and Howard Magazine. Wrangling local meats, seafood, produce, and bread, the staff builds fresh sandwiches filled with garlic-braised pulled pork and caramelized bananas, crab-cake platters loaded with two 5-ounce jumbo lump crab cakes, and veggie risotto topped with grilled portobello. Behind the bar, chilled local and domestic brews and sangria blended from a family recipe cleanse palates and put out fires after fire-eating competitions gone wrong. Diners enter under a traditional hanging tavern sign emblazoned with a brown diamondback-turtle shell before nestling into a spacious sports bar or dining room. Diamondback Tavern also hosts open-mic nights and screening events around NFL games to keep ears and eyes entertained as mouths gnaw on the minimalist, modern decor.

Elliott's raises the drinking bar, lowers and fills it with beer, and raises it again with its 20-beer tap tower serving all craft beer. Happy hour runs 4 p.m.–7 p.m. Monday through Friday and refreshes with half-price drafts, $2 domestic bottles, $3 import bottles, and $4 mixed drinks. Delighted drinkers who arrive before 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening will discover that their drinks remain at happy-hour prices for the rest of the night. All customers are encouraged to ask about the nightly pint and bottle specials, but if you know what you want and won't be dissuaded, grab an all-day, everyday economy-buster special such as the $12 pitchers of any draft, $15 domestic bucket or $20 import bucket (six bottles per bucket), or $4 Orange Things. On NFL Sundays, kick back with the $1 domestic bottles whenever the Ravens are playing. Baseball fans can enjoy $2 domestic suds and $1 hot dogs during Orioles games.

The Life of Reilly Irish Pub & Restaurant recreates the feel of an Emerald Isle public house. Framed jerseys decorate an exposed brick wall opposite the bar, above which flat-screen TVs showcase the latest international rugby matches. The bar itself stocks an extensive selection of Irish whiskeys, and its 10 drafts spotlight classic Irish brews such as Guinness and Magners Irish Cider.

But the kitchen's head chef, Dale Fields Jr., hasn't forgotten he lives in Baltimore. Alongside fish and chips and shepherd's pie, he underscores regional classics including a melt comprised of two mini crab cakes served on toasted english muffins. He rounds out his menu with other pub staples such as chicken quesadillas, beer-battered buffalo shrimp, and steak fries smothered with cheese and bacon.