I saw the issues with doing Irish this week. On the one hand, there is almost no way to do anything other than Irish on the weekend of St Paddy’s day. There is no way I could imagine writing a blog post about something like Korean food on a weekend like this. But on the other hand, St. Paddy’s Day is the weekend where it seems that everyone and their mothers go out to their local bar and have way too much to drink.

But Baltimore’s whole St Paddy’s Day celebration was only tangentially Irish. Maybe it was Irish inspired, or maybe it was just a huge celebration at the beginning of spring to have a reason to get out in the city.

St Paddy’s Day

Maybe its appropriate to find out that many Irish expats celebrated St Paddy’s Day much more than the Irish in Ireland do. Parades outside of Ireland started in the 18th century, and then spread back to Ireland after the fact in 1903. That’t not to say that St Paddy’s Day isn’t a big deal in Ireland, as its a bank holiday, and St Patrick is considered the patron saint of Ireland.

In fact, the bank holiday status of the day meant that pubs were actually closed in Ireland on St Paddy’s Day, and didn’t start opening until the 1970’s because tourists would go to Ireland to celebrate, and find all of the pubs closed. Dublin was probably one of the worst places to celebrate the holiday!

So, now that we know the truly Irish way of celebrating would be to take the day off, go to church, and fast (as it is during lent), lets throw that all out and celebrate it the way its actually celebrated.

The Celebration

I didn’t do a post last week because I had friends in from out of town, but that also gave me a chance to take part in some of the festivities downtown. I thought it was odd that Baltimore was having its parade a week early until I found out that Annapolis did theirs the week before on the 5th! We really turn this into a full month celebration around here.

There was the Shamrock Shindig in Pierces Park, which involved two non Irish food trucks, some Irish music, and space for kids to run around. I took Zuzu down for a walk to check out the 5k race and the parade which were starting back to back at 2pm, and by the time I got there at 1:30, it seemed that they were already packing up.

Since the parade was going down Pratt St from Charles to Market St, they were just getting all of the traffic off the road as I got down there. So I got to have the unusual experience of walking right down the middle of Pratt St, until I was yelled at and told to get out of the street because there was still traffic coming (there wasn’t).

I love running in the city, and regularly use it as a way to get down to the MARC train on my way to work. Baltimore has a lot of really good running spots, including the Waterfront Promenade along the harbor (5 miles), the Gwynn’s Falls Trail (15 miles), the Jones Falls Trail (8.1 miles), and Patterson Park (2 mile figure 8, but a bunch of other trails). With those options, I have never felt the allure of paying an entry fee to run with a large group of people. I prefer running alone, and I am not blazing fast.

But I can go out there and support everyone that did make it out. Running your first 5k can be a huge deal, and a little encouragement around the last half mile might be appreciated. Or at least that’s what I did!

The people running had a cross section of ages, and of levels of effort. The guys that ran by drinking beers definitely stood out, as well as the grey haired guy that was pretty close to the beginning of the group. I was also surprised at the number of young kids cranking out 3.1 miles out there. And of course, all of the costumes.

The parade was similar to one you would expect during a 4th of July parade: local groups, politicians, old cars. It did also have some Irish types of things like the Teelin Dance School from Columbia, who was one of the high points of the parade.

The other high point was two string bands that were in the parade. They look like something you would expect in Mardi Gras, and it surprised me that it was an Irish thing!

Turns out that I was right to be surprised that it was…because it wasn’t. It was cool, but it had nothing to do with St Paddy’s Day in any way. And they were from Philly, not Baltimore. Just seemed an odd fit.

Dinner

The original plan was to go to the Life of Reilly for dinner on St Paddy’s Day. But when I picked this as the Irish restaurant, it was because it was in Butcher’s Hill, which had no other representation in this project. But their menu has loaded tots, Jalapeno Poppers, crab cakes, linguini alfredo (Italian) and burgers. They had some Irish looking things, like Guinness Stew, but I wasn’t getting very authentic feeling from the menu.

And it didn’t get much better when I looked elsewhere. Most of the Irish pubs that I looked at seemed to be normal pubs that had an Irish sounding name, and put up some shamrocks around the bar.

There are about five bars that seem to have some kind of Irish theme around Canton, so I decided to hope that one of them would be good and set out.

We started at Mahaffey’s because I knew they were doing corned beef for at least St Paddy’s day, and you can’t go wrong with corned beef. As you would expect around 7 on a Friday St Paddy’s day, it was pretty packed. But they also had an upstairs where we were able to catch a bit of March Madness and sit down with a couple beers and crab dip while we waited for some friends.

They only had three real Irish beers: Guinness, Smithwick’s Irish Ale, and one other. The interesting thing was that they were all between 4–5% ABV, and had a similar flavor. I started with the Smithwicks Irish Ale, and then had Guinness, because it’s not St Paddy’s Day until you have had a Guiness. I don’t have to spend much time describing Guiness, but I did notice that the Smithwick’s had a similar flavor to Guiness: the non carbonated nitro feel, with a dark, heavy look, but light taste. Not my go-to type of beer, but not bad.

But it was the corned beef which made me realize how un-Irish this evening was really going to be. Besides the plastic cup for the beer, the disposable plate, and the plastic silverware, they thin sliced their corned beef, left the fat all in there, and cooked it in such a way that it was really tough. And they definitely did not cook the cabbage and potatoes with it.

The corned beef you get at the store might be a step down from brining your own beef, but this meal was a big step down from there.

Our friends got there later, and we decided to try and find them a better Irish dinner than we had.

We walked along the, very Irish sounding, O’Donnell St toward the Canton Square. Canton was first settled by the Irish merchant, John O’Donnell, after which the street is named. The neighborhood is named Canton because the port did trading with a Chinese port also called Canton. Canton is a beautiful neighborhood that has the water to its south, and Patterson Park to its north. Normally, its a quieter bar scene than you find in Fed Hill or Fells Point.

But not on St Paddy’s Day.

Claddaugh’s Pub is one of the Irish pubs in the area, and they had a long line out their door, a tent extending their room across Curley St, and probably a capacity crowd. We were not going here for food.

We then went to Mike McGovern’s Irish Pub off the square. It was a very chill bar that I would definitely go back to. They had a good selection of Irish whiskeys, and fair selection of beer. I am more of a whiskey kind of guy, so this was speaking my language. However, they did not have food for our friends.

So, we set off for O’Donnell’s Pub and Grille, which I knew had food, and even had corned beef. We got up there, only to find another completely packed bar. They had their minds set on Irish food, but there wasn’t any room to even think about getting diner there. They bailed to head out of the city for their Irish fix, and we decided that we might be beyond the point in our lives where we would go to a Claddagh’s style St Paddy’s party.

So I went to my neighborhood watering hole. I had my normal beer, a Boh (or five) at Bender’s. Sometimes its fun to get out of your comfort zone and explore, but sometimes its fun to kick back with your neighbors, drink a Boh, and watch my March Madness bracket get decimated.