Why Dublin pub is best in Ireland!
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American writer Bill Barich claims he has found the perfect Irish pub. And all it took was raising a glass in pubs in five Irish counties; Sligo, Laois, Mayo, Kildare and Dublin.
Readers may disagree with Barich, but there's no question that he put his heart and soul into the task.
Barich, who lives in Dublin, says his search was inspired by Pat Cohan's bar in the 1951 film, "The Quiet Man." He says that Cohan's embodied the kind of things he was looking for in an Irish bar - an old, honest type of place where a person could sit in peace with a pint.
He soon discovered that his task would not be as easy as he had hoped. He found that the traditional Irish pub is in danger of becoming extinct, replaced by trendy modern bars or, even worse, brand new bars pretending to be old.
He despairs of Sligo saying that it shamelessly exploits dead Irish writers. After seeing the Yeats Country Tavern, Barich says he noticed the poet's name “slapped onto other bars, hotels and gift shops.”
In the village of Cong, Co. Mayo, he visits Ryan's and Cohan's and wishes he hadn't. There are no customers in Ryan's, perhaps because the speakers are blasting Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," and in Cohan's, all he finds are equally bewildered tourists looking for authentic Ireland.
In Co. Laois, he finds a pub called E.J Morrissey's in Abbeyleix, and derides the knick knacks, ads and antique cereal boxes, as being just for show.
And in Co. Kildare, in a village called Ballitore (pop. 750), he discovers a pub called "O'Connors." where the friendly owner Pat O'Connor says, "We only offer company."
Eventually, Barich heads back to the capital, and there, on the city's bustling thoroughfares, he begins to find what he is looking for.
He loves the conversation in Grogan’s, a TV-free pub on South William Street, Dublin. Barich notes that the bar’s ham and cheese toasted sandwiches (“toasties”) are simple but elegant: made from scratch, with mustard in a jar, and not in those little condiment packages. The bar also displays art work for sale on its walls.
