New York City is experiencing an Irish pubaissance
By Luke Fortney
Some people make a point to visit McDonald’s when they travel, to try McSpaghetti in the Philippines and El Maco burgers in Australia. I like to visit Irish pubs. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Pittsburgh or Paris; eventually, I crave the cool touch of a curved, hardwood bar and that cooler first swig of Guinness. If there’s Tullamore D.E.W. and a television set to the Premier League, signs of a solid Irish pub, even better.
But the signs, they are a changin’. When I recently stepped into the Canary in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on a recent morning, a group of children squirreled around in booths while their parents ate avocado toast under a sign advertising Taco Tuesday. I was certain I had wandered into just another neighborhood restaurant and bar. Then a server brushed past me with a pint of Guinness in one hand and a full Irish breakfast in the other.
Is this a pub? You decide. It’s just one of a new set of bars that have widened what an Irish pub can look like, dispensing Guinness alongside plates of oysters, spice bags with curry sauce and Sunday roast in dining rooms fit for brunch. I hope you saved room for Tayto crisps.
The house specialty at Banshee in the East Village: oysters and tall glasses of Guinness. Heather Willensky for The New York Times
Not your old man’s pub
Banshee in the East Village isn’t another “old man’s pub,” the Irish euphemism for those dim bars that hearken back to the homeland. “It’s an Irish American pub,” squished between a Chinese takeout restaurant and a taqueria, said Jen Murphy, an owner. So along with a proper Guinness, her pint-size pub offers seven house martinis, including a tangerine-colored Pornstar with a sidecar of Champagne.
Ms. Murphy, who passed her 20s working in Manhattan bars, is originally from County Mayo, not far from Galway. For that reason, her shrimp cocktail is served with a side of Marie Rose sauce — ketchup, mayonnaise and Worcestershire — and the soda bread comes with Kerrygold butter (expected) and caviar (unexpected). The house specialty is Guinness with oysters: platters of sleek-shelled Bad Boys and mild Irish Points that look as good next to an Irish stout as a martini does with fries. (I’m a fan.) I’d seen this combination once before in an episode of “The Layover,” where Anthony Bourdain slurped away a hangover from a night out in Dublin. Turns out it’s just as effective after an evening in Bushwick.
143 First Avenue (East Ninth Street), East Village
For a quality spice bag, a beloved Irish tradition by way of Chinese takeout, try Bar Snack. Heather Willensky for The New York Times
If you bag it, they will come
Bar Snack doesn’t look much like a pub, not with its vintage Beastie Boys posters or twinkling, sequined bathroom. And the owners don’t call it one, either. “We’re a Guinness bar masquerading as a cocktail bar,” said Iain Griffiths, an owner, when I asked about it this month.
Still, I can’t help but think the name should be Pub Snack. For each Salad Negroni, stirred with nectarine and basil, there’s someone like me ordering Guinness, meticulously poured in three steps until the foam teeters over the rim. Or you could go for the Guinness eggnog: thin and latte-colored, the custard punched up with a few ounces of Irish stout. (Soon, it will be replaced with a frozen Guinness custard.) Throw back a few and your stomach will start to ache for a spice bag, an Irish staple popularized at Chinese takeaways featuring chicken tenders, fries and peppers tossed together in a paper lunch sack. Tear open the wrapper, flood the contents with curry sauce and ascend.
92 Second Avenue (East Fifth Street), East Village
Honey Fitz is a live music venue that also happens to double as a fantastic Irish pub. Heather Willensky for The New York Times
A pub in bar’s clothing
In Astoria, the bartender Sean Doran opened Honey Fitz last year to “freshen up the Irish bar.” And yet, the words “Irish” and “pub” don’t appear anywhere on its website, and its online bio mentions cocktails, not Guinness. If you ask Google Maps, Honey Fitz is a live music venue.
Even so, you’ll probably realize something is up when you flick through the menu and see McDonnels Original Curry Sauce. An Irish staple, this version packs a week’s worth of sodium in every bite and it’s just the thing you want atop French fries, chicken cutlets, cottage pie croquettes and all the other Irish American belt busters on the menu. Then there’s the Great Wall of Whiskeys: Honey Fitz offers more than 40 bottles imported from Munster, Leinster and Connacht, with most pours priced under $20. A posh pub this is not.
30-09 Broadway (31st Street), Astoria
One More Thing
Late Wednesday night, the chef René Redzepi announced on Instagram that he would step down from Noma, the world-renowned Copenhagen restaurant he co-founded in 2003. Today, Tejal Rao, one of our co-chief critics, has an essay on how Noma’s vision for the future of restaurants fell so short. “The restaurant shifted the creative center of the culinary world, and its financial and cultural capital, to Copenhagen. It profoundly changed the aesthetics of fine dining,” she writes. “But it failed to change anything below the surface.”
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