St. Paddy's Day is always a pleasant occasion because it makes no demands on the celebrant except maybe to hold one's liquor well enough to dance far into the night.Originally, the March 17 holiday honored a religious theme, commemorating St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, who founded a mission near Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, in 432 A.D., bringing Christianity to the island for the first time. But you don't hear much about that now.
One restaurant that does St. Paddy's Day up big is Four Green Fields, which calls itself "America's only authentic thatched-roof Irish pub." Housed in a unique building designed to resemble an Irish cottage, complete with a $25,000 thatched roof, it even carries a U.S. federal trademark, something like a patent.
The holiday is a good chance for those who may not have tasted Irish fare to sample it, as many of the restaurant's dishes typify the cuisine you might enjoy in Ireland. The menu also offers a few respectable American standards, like hamburgers and Reuben sandwiches, for those who prefer the familiar.
"Dance and drink are the traditional methods of celebrating St. Patrick's Day," explained restaurant co-owner Colin Breen, who opened the 80-seat restaurant in 1992 with a big, four-sided bar occupying a prominent central location among its 2,400 square feet. He thought it would do well because there was nothing like it anywhere nearby.
"It's been profitable since Day One," said Breen, who owns the restaurant with Bob O'Neill.
Each St. Paddy's Day, a mellow crowd of 2,000 to 6,000 partiers jam together on the restaurant's big outside wooden deck, parading the usual shamrocks and green hats, hair, vests, etc. — and even flashing green underwear.
This year, the restaurant plans its typical, over-the-top blowout, complete with a lunch buffet featuring fish 'n' chips, shepherd's pie and Irish stew, among other things, along with an outside tent housing food vendors hawking other less-stringently Irish foods, like hotdogs. Pat and Andy Dunlea are slated to perform inside, and an Irish rock band called The Prodigals will play outside. (See the Music column.)
One celebratory feature some American bars employ, however, will not appear at Four Green Fields: green beer. "My God, no," was Breen's reaction when asked if partiers might expect to down beer the fair, gauzy color of the verdant Irish countryside. "There will be no green beer."
He said the Guinness Stout, a favorite among patrons, would be pretty difficult to color even if you wanted to because its natural hue is almost black.
Though Chef Randy Burns is not Irish, he does a good job with Irish stew and shepherd's pie, and produces respectable American dishes as well.
On a couple of recent forays there, we enjoyed the food, which has remained much the same over the years. It's simple, hearty fare, almost always accompanied by the Irish national dish — every form of potato imaginable. In fact, the potato is one reason the U.S. has so many millions of Irish-Americans: During the 1840s, potato famine in Ireland triggered an exodus of more than 2-million starving people.
As a starter, try the homemade Irish potato leek soup (cup $2.50, bowl $3.75), a rich broth heavy with vegetables, steamy and satisfying on a cold day. For light eaters, a bowl of soup and a plate of the restaurant's handmade brown soda bread and cold butter would be quite enough. The soda bread is delicious and is supposed to arrive free with every entree, but during both visits we had to ask the server to bring it.
Other appetizers included Hogan's Goat, crisp toast points bright with tangy red sauce and lavished with creamy goat cheese ($5.95), and an Irish-American hybrid, fried onion rings, distinctive because the batter was made with the Irish beer called Harp ($5.50).
We devoured the appetizers and soda bread while tossing down alcoholic beverages in unusually great quantities.
The Martini Tester on this occasion took a sabbatical from his favorite libation in honor of his ancestors, Irish on both sides, effortlessly switching to Guinness Stout ($4.75). OK, it's not as chic as a martini, but its potent punch and dense, acrid flavor kept him happy.
I was downing whiskey sours ($5.25), made with Jamison Irish whiskey, toasting my own family tree, a genetic non sequitur that is rakishly Irish on one side and ploddingly German on the other.
The restaurant's menu lists a modest selection of sandwiches and salads, turkey with Swiss on wheat ($6.50), tuna salad, and even a corned beef Reuben ($6.95), which Breen said used to have an Irish name, but he changed it to something more Americanized because customers would not order the Irish-sounding dish.
"We used to offer Dublin coddle, and nobody wanted it," Breen said. Dublin coddle is a dish made from pork sausages and Donnelly bacon, matched with sliced potatoes, parsley and onions, and baked in an oven.
At one time the restaurant also offered a fantastic peasant dish called colcannon, milk and butter-moistened mashed potatoes mixed with finely-chopped, cooked onions and cabbage, and fried to a crispy brown, sort of like a fat potato pancake. On my most recent trips there, I was dismayed to discover it had disappeared from the menu.
Apparently, I was the only one who would order it.
"You've gotta sell them what they want," explained Breen.
I didn't care much for the restaurant's side salads, which came with the entrees. The greens were limp, and some carried brown spots. The salads' content could have included more interesting and varied vegetables.
My favorite entree for years has been Irish stew ($10.50), beef braised in Guinness and thick with gravy-covered onions, carrots, celery and potatoes. It arrived hot and delightfully heavy, farmer food with hardly any seasoning at all, not even salt.
Another night, a companion order broiled salmon ($13.95), a charbroiled filet carrying a creamy spinach sauce and accompanied with simple, boiled potatoes and carrots. The fish was cooked exactly right, and the modest sauce gave it just the slight flavor nudge it needed. But to those accustomed to garlicky, tomato-y dishes of Cuba or Spain, or to the fierce, peppery proclivities of Mexican favorites, Irish food might seem bland.
Since the restaurant does not offer dessert, we adjourned.
But I hoped my Irish luck would hold out long enough that I could return for St. Paddy's Day festivities, four-leaf clovers tucked in my hair.
Food Editor Sara Kennedy dines anonymously, and Weekly Planet pays for her meals. She can be reached at sara.kennedy@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 116.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2003.