When my wife Bobbie and I traveled to Ireland in May, I had a mission: I was searching for the one, true, authentic Irish pub to which I could compare the so-called Irish pubs on Madison Street in Forest Park.
I thought I knew what I was looking for. I had a composite picture in my mind which I pasted together from the movie Waking Ned Divine, the PBS show Bally Kissangel, and the sections on pubs in my travel guides.
Here’s what the archetypal pub would look and feel like: It would be located in a small town off the beaten track. It would have an unassuming facade and a small interior. There would be a lot of woodwork, a peat fire in the fireplace, a relatively small bar with two taps-one for Guinness and one for either Smithwick’s or Harp.
This ideal pub would be patronized mainly by locals, so when we would enter, we’d be instant celebrities and dozens of friendly Irish folk would gather round us for conversation and storytelling. Oh yes, and a band composed of guitar, pipes, fiddle and bodhran would be playing traditional Irish music.
We landed at the airport in Dublin and drove south a couple hours to a small town called Enniskerry. We were exhausted. A two-hour drive doesn’t sound like much … unless you’re driving for the first time on the left hand side of roads so narrow that the hedges along the road scrape the side of your car when you make room for oncoming traffic.
I experienced my first disappointment of the trip when I asked our B & B host where we could find a pub without tourists. The elderly Irishman smiled wryly and replied, “There is no such place. We’re living in a global village, and visitors are everywhere.” He did say we could get a taste of what pubs used to be like by visiting Johnny Foxe’s.
So we climbed back in our rental car, made sure our seatbelts were buckled and drove up narrow roads flanked by stone walls and hedges for 20 minutes. Johnny Foxe’s promotes itself as the “highest pub in Ireland.” The pub is the only building at a crossroads a thousand feet above sea level. The view was grand, green pastures, stone fences, sheep and cows for miles. And the smell. Yes, it was smoke from a peat fire coming out of the chimney.
What luck. Finding a real Irish pub on our very first try. Opening the door, we were rewarded with a flagstone floor covered with wood shavings, newspaper clippings about John F. Kennedy’s visit to Ireland on the wall and a couple speaking in Gaelic at a table near ours.
The food, however, was a disappointment. It was a gourmet delight. Prawn salad and fresh salmon with vegetables that tasted like they had just come from the garden. I was expecting “real” pub food like Irish Stew and Shepherd’s Pie. What’s with this healthy stuff? On top of that, no one came to have “craic” (i.e. a good time) or conversation with us. The final flaw was the chef, whom we saw having a smoke outside as we left. He was an Asian guy.
Coming up short
The next stop on our trip around Ireland was Kinsale. Our Rick Steves guidebook advised us to drive 15 minutes out of town to a pub called Bulman’s if we wanted to be with locals. We drove down a steep hill to a two-story building painted gold with a beautiful view of Kinsale Bay. Walking through the front door, not only was there a peat fire glowing in the fireplace but a dog named Susie lying on the floor soaking up the warmth.
“Now we’re talking,” I thought as I spotted a poster promising a guy singing traditional Irish music at 10 p.m. Disappointment set in, however, when I noticed the crowded pub was filled with 30-somethings. Bobbie and I were the oldest people in the place, and loud rock music made conversation difficult. This was not a scene from Bally Kissangel. Yet, at different times, four of the pub patrons came up to us, asked us where we were from, and told stories about their families and being young professionals in Ireland.
A metaphor for the mix of Irishness and generic global culture in the pub was the variety of draft beers available at the bar-taps for Guinness, Williams Wheat, Kinsale Lager and Bulmer’s cider, but the pub also had Budweiser and Coors on draft. Can you believe it? Flying thousands of miles to Ireland to drink Budweiser? And, a good half of the patrons (mostly women) were drinking wine.
The next evening we drove out to a little town called Ballinspittle and ate dinner at a pub called Hurly’s. Both the outside and inside were nondescript. There was one other tourist couple eating dinner, but at the table next to us were three middle school girls having a snack after school. At the bar were three old gaffers trying to impress a blonde half their age, two men were watching rugby on the big screen TV and a woman was decorating the place for her brother Sean’s 21st birthday. I ordered beef and Guinness and Bobbie had lamb chops. Both came with five different vegetables. This was more what I was picturing, and yet no one talked to us the whole hour we were there.
In Kenmare, we went to a pub called Thaddy Quill. A couple named the Maguires started out the first set with Hello Mary Lou, and as I looked around, I realized that the place was packed with tourists who had come in on the buses parked out in back.
In Dingle we caught some traditional Irish music, accompanied by guitar and pipes at a pub called John Benny Moriarty’s. The music was good and the food was great, but the only conversation we had was with a family from England, “on holiday” as they say over there.
The ideal pub
I had almost given up on finding the archetypal Irish pub until we stopped at a place called Killeen’s in a little town call Shannon Bridge. Killeen’s is really two businesses in one. On the left as you walk in is a bait shop/convenience store and on the right is the pub. When the owner brought us the menu, he also gave us two photo albums filled with pictures of bar patrons and fish caught in the nearby Shannon River. The specials listed on the short menu included Shepherd’s Pie and pannini. Five guys were drinking at the bar.
When we returned for the music (after going to Mass at the local parish) around 9 p.m., the place was packed. One of the patrons was playing an old upright piano and many in the crowd were singing along. A lot of giggles and an occasional shriek of laughter came from a bachelorette party in the corner. Four Girl Scout executives from England, who were in Ireland for a conference, were swinging pints of Guinness in time with the music coming from the guitar-playing duo, which followed the piano player. Fishermen were at the bar trying to top each other’s stories. And in the bait shop wing, some older folks-i.e. people the age of Bobbie and me-sat around tables drinking Guinness.
When I pointed my camera at the Girl Scout execs who wore matching red shirts, they held up their glasses and posed for me. The bride-to-be, wearing pink Playboy bunny ears, smiled for the camera as she was serenaded by her bridesmaids and half of the patrons. When I asked the pub owner if I could take a picture of him pouring a Guinness, he motioned for me to come around to his side of the bar, so I could get a good angle. We weren’t drinking beer that night, so when we ordered tea, he brought a plate of raisin bread too and told us it was all on the house.
Except for the pannini on the menu and the omnipresent Budweiser on tap, this, I knew, was as close as I was going to get to the ideal I was looking for.
Forest Park vs. Killeen’s
Ten days after returning home I set out to visit every pub on Madison Street bearing an Irish name: Horan’s, Healy’s, O’Sullivan’s, Slainte, Molly Malone’s, Doc Ryan’s and Duffy’s. It took me three nights and five friends to hit them all. How did they compare with the real thing?
First, and you can’t blame them for this, there were no peat fires in fireplaces and the views from their front windows-not exactly sheep in green pastures or sunsets over Kinsale Bay. Another difference was smoking. In Ireland it’s illegal if you’re indoors.
Neither did anyone strike up a conversation with me, except for the friendly bartenders. Bev Thompson said hello to me and my two friends in Horan’s, but that was it for conversation.
Most, however, did have aspects that were authentically Irish. Duffy’s has the facade that most reminded me of the pubs I’d seen in Ireland. Molly Malone’s has the closest to real Irish food on the menu: salmon, steak, brown bread, cockles and mussels, fish and chips, Guinness stew and shepherd’s pie. It also has the least neon among the pubs on Madison Street, and traditional Irish music is featured often.
Slainte, Healy’s and Molly Malone’s had cider on tap, a must in a real Irish pub. Healy’s had a kids menu, a clear signal that children were welcome for dinner. Duffy’s and Horan’s feature karaoke. Doc Ryan’s and O’Sullivan’s have live bands playing at times. O’Sullivan’s, to me, had the nicest space-small, intimate, conducive to craic.
They all have a variety of beer on tap. At Healy’s, for example, you can get a draft pint of Sam Adams, Cider, Harp, Swithwicks, Miller, Leinie’s, Harp, Blue Moon, Fat Tire, Anchor Steam, Weihanstephen, Sierra Nevada, Stella Artois, Warsteiner, Pabst, Newcastle Brown Ale, and, of course, Guinness.
Speaking of Guinness, all but one bartender poured it the right way, the way the owner of Killeen’s in Shannon Bridge taught me. First, you pour the stout down the side of the glass to maybe the half way point. Then you let it sit for awhile to get rid of what a B & B owner in Trim called “fish eyes.” Then you fill the glass the rest of the way so it has a nice creamy head.
All told, I would have to say Molly Malone’s is most like the pubs I experienced in Ireland. That’s not a put down of the others by any means. Many of the pubs in Ireland were not all that Irish, according to the fantasy I brought with me, and the “Irish” pubs on Madison Street are not located in Ireland, after all. The fact that Doc Ryan’s has a lot of Mexican food and pizza on its menu and rock bands performing on the weekend reflects the taste of its clientele.
That, after all, is what the pubs in Ireland do. If Thaddy Quill in Kenmare has mainly senior citizen tourists for patrons, then Thaddy Quill gives them a cute couple singing “Hello Mary Lou” for their opener and lots of nostalgic songs like “Danny Boy” and “When Irish Eyes Are Shining.” If, like Bulman’s in Kinsale, you have a younger crowd, then you turn up the volume on the rock music coming out of the speakers.
I learned that pub owners in Ireland are out to make a buck-or rather a Euro-just like bar owners here in town. They’re not in the business of running museums, unless, of course, they can make money at it. If the tastes of their patrons change, they’ll change with them. Even Killeen’s in Shannon Bridge served pannini.
