Haven't the Irish suffered enough?

Usually, this stuff just washes over me. There are a million phony Irish bars in Chicago. Who cares if someone opens another one. But somehow the extra-cloying fakey name, decorated with shammrock apostrophe's, together with a generic bar menu that didn't even pretend, not for one second or one item anywhere, to live up to its sub-sub-Disney Irish theme just gagged me.

Received in my mailbox the menu from the newly opened Paddy O' Splaine's
First the good news: No leprechauns, and it isn't called a "publicke house" in olde type face. End of good news.

If the menu is to be our guide to understanding Irish cookery, then they are famous for their:
* "pommes frites"
* Buffalo wings
* quesadillas
* ahi tuna
* calamari
* date salad
* Pizza (Margherita, Campagna, and "Montrose Monster")
* Fettucini with red or white clam sauce
* Gnocchi with tomato-vodka cream sauce
* Risotto
* Carbonara (served on rigatoni, natch, and including peas, onions, and cream---just like my Irish Nonna used to make)
* Burgers
* Chicken Caesar or Buffalo wraps
* Turtle cheesecake
* Key lime pie
* "housemade" tiramisu

Not so much as lip service to fish and chips, or perhaps even weirder for a bar, a mention of libations. I mean not so much as a line about beer, ale, whiskey.

So I'm just left scratching my head and wondering, if someone wants to open a 100% generic frat-boy bar and serve 100% generic food in large gloppy cheese-covered portions with a couple of wraps and salads for their girlfriends, they why even bother with "Paddy O'Splaine's?" If you don't even care enough to fake it, then why bother? If you want to run an Applebee's, then open an Applebee's.

It doesn't matter at all. I don't have to go. The burgers might be great. Hell, the pizza might be great for all I know. I just don't get it.

mrbarolo-

This is one of the funniest thread titles ever. And Conor McPherson would agree (about the Irish, that is).

My feelings about "Irish Pubs" in Chicago and probably everywhere else is also head-scratching confusion. Over the last ten years, they've multiplied exponentially, especially in Lakeview and LP. Is it that the large number of people of Irish-descent in Chicago create a market for the Paddy O'Splaine's? I mean, I get that these pubs are, in practice, ethnically-neutral - they all serve the same Amero-British-Irish beer and offer the same American menu of chicken wings, burgers and quesadillas (with the occasional fish and chips thrown in), and that this makes it easy to market and appeal to the masses. But why the Irish moniker and the ye olde decor? It's as if being Irish has become, in some way, synonymous with being American.

I wonder if the "real" Irish visitors to Chicago would find it amusing that their culture has been so badly reduced and mainstreamed to a Disneyfied stereotype and then transformed into numerous ye olde "Irish" pubs which purport to give visitors an authentic Irish experience by serving purely American food.

mrbarolo wrote:If you want to run an Applebee's, then open an Applebee's.

You mean Bennigans. Can't you keep your "Irish-American Grill & Tavern" s straight?

Although they, at least, serve "Guinness Fish & Chips" with their "Asiago Chicken Pasta." Otherwise, the similarities between the menu you listed and the linked one above is striking...

What a crack-up! My Grandma (from the old country) definately made such Irish specialties as quesadillas and buffalo wings....

I wonder how the many Irish bartenders and servers that often work in these places feel about this stuff. They must laugh their duffs off every night.

Cinny's Mom wrote:I wonder how the many Irish bartenders and servers that often work in these places feel about this stuff. They must laugh their duffs off every night.

As the obviously Irish bartender at the less-than-obviously Irish pub around the corner snarled at me, in the thickest of brogues, shortly after the shot of espresso he served to another customer was sent back...

"Fookin' espresso machine. It's a fookin' disgrace. Do I look like a fookin' Starbucks ta yeh?!?"

(In the customer's defense, the shot was pulled for at least 45 seconds and was little more than dirty water when served )

mrbarolo wrote:If the menu is to be our guide to understanding Irish cookery, then they are famous for their:
* "pommes frites"

At least they're "potatoes".

There is a short thread about Paddy O'Splaine's here. Nothing Irish about the place and really nothing good either.

To be fair, when I went to Ireland some years ago, it was full of places trying to be French restaurants (imagine every misguided place you've seen on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares) and the most popular chain in Galway was called Abra-Kebab-Ra.

I think lots of people open places with Irish-sounding names because they're trying to trade off of some generic notion of the Irish as infinitely, hospitable scamps always ready with a cold beer and a good story.

It's typical marketing b.s. that tries to reduce a culture down to a set of stereotypes and then use them to sell a product rather than trying to actually explore and embrace the culture it claims to represent.

They've got a lot of O'Splainin' to do.

riddlemay wrote:They've got a lot of O'Splainin' to do.

/groans

aschie30 wrote:I wonder if the "real" Irish visitors to Chicago would find it amusing that their culture has been so badly reduced and mainstreamed to a Disneyfied stereotype and then transformed into numerous ye olde "Irish" pubs which purport to give visitors an authentic Irish experience by serving purely American food.

Last time I was dragged to a Benihana, the entire wait staff were amazed that an actual Japanese person had come to eat there.

Not to drive a thoroughly inconsequential thread into the ground but, I completely understand the business reasons to create a fake Irish bar, with a fake Irish name, cutesy Irish decorations, and fake Irish food with jokey Irish names. Completely understand trading on plasticized, cartooned, stereotypes in order to sell something to a lowest common denominator audience. Makes all the depressing sense in the world.

What I don't get about Chez Paddy, is starting with the name, and then not going one single step further. It's like opening Papa Giovanni's O Solo Mio Pizzeria Italiano and then serving greek diner food instead of bad fake pizza with straw flasks and check table cloths on the tables. Just doesn't compute.

mrbarolo wrote:Not to drive a thoroughly inconsequential thread into the ground but, I completely understand the business reasons to create a fake Irish bar, with a fake Irish name, cutesy Irish decorations, and fake Irish food with jokey Irish names. Completely understand trading on plasticized, cartooned, stereotypes in order to sell something to a lowest common denominator audience. Makes all the depressing sense in the world.

What I don't get about Chez Paddy, is starting with the name, and then not going one single step further. It's like opening Papa Giovanni's O Solo Mio Pizzeria Italiano and then serving greek diner food instead of bad fake pizza with straw flasks and check table cloths on the tables. Just doesn't compute.

Remember the bad Mexican/Irish named places of the late 70's. Places like Carlos O'Briens, etc. used to abound. They were basically all TGI Bennigan's, only the food wasn't as good.

mrbarolo wrote:Not to drive a thoroughly inconsequential thread into the ground but, I completely understand the business reasons to create a fake Irish bar, with a fake Irish name, cutesy Irish decorations, and fake Irish food with jokey Irish names. Completely understand trading on plasticized, cartooned, stereotypes in order to sell something to a lowest common denominator audience. Makes all the depressing sense in the world.

What I don't get about Chez Paddy, is starting with the name, and then not going one single step further. It's like opening Papa Giovanni's O Solo Mio Pizzeria Italiano and then serving greek diner food instead of bad fake pizza with straw flasks and check table cloths on the tables. Just doesn't compute.

Most especially when the Irish-American Heritage Center is about five blocks away. I'm just befuddled at the choice of neighborhood...

mrbarolo wrote:What I don't get about Chez Paddy, is starting with the name, and then not going one single step further. It's like opening Papa Giovanni's O Solo Mio Pizzeria Italiano and then serving greek diner food instead of bad fake pizza with straw flasks and check table cloths on the tables. Just doesn't compute.

If you were to ask the average Chicagoan to name Irish food, they couldn't get past potatoes (a New World vegetable) and corned beef (Irish-American). I bet Paddy's has a corned-beef sandwich and Irish beer. The latter is all that most people going to an "Irish pub" in Chicago are really interested in, anyway.

Unless there are two Paddy O'Splaine's, it is nowhere near the Irish-American Heritage Center. This thing is on the Lincoln Square side of Montrose in the same block as Lutz's and a short block west of Welles Park. Given the durability some of the other dubious bars with food in the general area, the location makes sense.