Here’s what makes an Irish pub an Irish pub — even in Minnesota

You might wish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in a fine Irish pub. A quick web search turns up your options. But what exactly makes them Irish pubs?

First you have to ask what an Irish pub means in Minnesota. There are more than 200 in the metro area, according to Yelp, with some variation. But it has to have the basics. A dark, woody interior. A sense of “tradition,” defined as “old stuff.” A pressed-tin ceiling. Taps with the accustomed brands: the dark stuff you don’t really like but pretend you do, the light stuff that’s made by the same company that makes the dark stuff. And, of course, whiskey. Lots of whiskey — the go-to brand everyone knows and the domestic ones for those who want the old familiar. There’s the food, of course — a good plate of shepherd’s pie and Irish stew from an old family recipe. Surely there also needs to be a map of Eire. And some signs that tout the brands of the Emerald Isle.

There also needs to be a small stage. It doesn’t matter if anyone’s on it at the moment. The stage suggests that if you came back on the weekend, there’d be someone with a stringed instrument and someone with a pipe or a fife, playing the tunes that summon up the soul of the old country.

But can you tell this from looking at the exterior? Not always. But here are a few things that identify Irish pubs in the Twin Cities from the outside.

A visual signifier for pubs that are “Irish” in the United States is the typeface. Morrissey’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis is a fine example. The font references the old Book of Kells and other monastery manuscripts, a style that somehow became intertwined with all things old and Celtic.

Another style that we feel in our bones as the sign of a pub from Ireland or England is the name, framed with carved wood in the shape of flat columns, painted dark, and frequently daubed with the cliche Irish hue — green. Dublin, Ireland, has many such storefronts, and they’re not all pubs. It’s just the look of old shops, transplanted to America, as you can see at Patrick McGovern’s Pub & Restaurant in St. Paul.

“The great old Irish pubs came out of the Victorian time. It’s the classic brass and stone and wood that gave it a beautiful look,“ says Ireland-born Kieran Folliard, who owned Twin Cities pubs including Kieran’s Irish Pub and the Local before selling his shares in 2011 to focus on a whiskey venture. He has since sold that business, started another and founded the Food Building in northeast Minneapolis.

“The Victorian period brought a very stylized look to the public house,” he said. “This was a reflection for the status, I suppose, of the status of the British empire at the time and so, that’s where the ornate and intricate carvings came from.”

What really sets an Irish pub apart is the name. Literally.

“The Irish pubs, instead of having names like ‘Cock and Bull,’ had the family name,” says Folliard. “So, the exterior was a reflection of the family name, the people who started it and owned it. In England they were owned by the brewery, they’d have a landlord, a tied house, and probably lived upstairs. In Ireland, it’s a person.“

The Irish Post reported in 2022 that the names were the result of a law: “Legislation passed in 1872 meant that it was a legal requirement for the owner of the premises to have their name over the front door.”

In the end, they’re reproductions of an authentic cultural expression. That doesn’t mean they can’t produce Craic; that doesn’t mean the Guinness doesn’t froth and the Jameson’s doesn’t catch the light as it tumbles from the bottle.

So did small town pubs in Ireland have the same flair?

“Not really,” Folliard says. “They wouldn’t have had the economic impact, and might have been looked as a bit of a show-off. The family name would still be over the door, but there’d be more. In rural Ireland, most of the pubs were also the hardware store, the shop. So they were both. The windows would have a lot of the goods sold in the shop in the window.”

Of course, it’s not the signs that make the pub a fine place to gather. Neither is it the wood or history. It’s the people.

“If you go back to the roots of the pub, it’s the public house,” Folliard says. “It’s egalitarian. It’s everybody. It doesn’t matter who you are, or if you have an Armani suit or torn jeans.”

And to that we all can say: Skol!