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Ireland Conquers The World 
Pining for a pint of stout, an earful of blarney, and a toe-tapping fiddle
tune but find yourself far removed from the Emerald Isle? Fret not. Edythe
Preet has the answer.
Be ye in an off-island bulwark of Hibernian society such as Boston, New
York, Philadelphia or Chicago, or the more unlikely locales of Milan,
Hamburg, Oslo, Paris, Johannesburg, Beijing, Dubai or Kabul, heritage
hankerings can be quenched. The Irish, you see, are conquering the world.
More to the point, the grand tradition of the Irish Pub has become one
of Ireland’s most successful exports. And it’s Arthur Guinness
to whom we owe our gratitude. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
By definition, a ‘pub’ or ‘public house’ is ‘an
establishment that sells alcoholic beverages to the public for consumption
on the premises, usually in a comfortable setting.’ The concept
as we know it was invented by the British.
Pubs are cousins to taverns, which have existed almost as long as have
alcoholic beverages. References to such places can be found in the historic
record dating back to Rome, Greece and Babylonia. While the inhabitants
of the islands in the waters just west of Europe had been drinking ale
since the Bronze Age, it was not until the Romans arrived and built roads
that places selling refreshments to travelers sprouted along their lengths.
The watering holes were so successful that by 965 A.D. King Edgar of Britain
ruled that any one village could only have one alehouse.
Long ago, the Irish kept bees hoping they would have enough surplus to
make mead, a fermentation of honey, water and herbs. It is said that the
cup of mead St. Brigid served the King of Leinster pleased him so much
that he gave the saintly woman a generous donation of land and money to
help with her charities.
Saint Patrick brought his personal brewer to Ireland, but it was hardly
necessary. The Celts had long been concocting a potent beer called coirm.
In the epic Tain Bo Culainge, King Conchubar spent “...a third of
his day feasting, a third watching the young warriors wrestle, and a third
drinking coirm until he falls asleep.”
When the Normans arrived, they instituted regulations to control brewing.
Only women were allowed to make ale, and although men owned the pubs,
‘ale-wives’ operated them. In addition to flagons of frothy
brew, they offered their customers oysters, smoked salmon and soda bread.
In the seventeenth century, the French traveler Jouvin wrote, “If
I drink two-pence worth of beer at a public house, I am given as much
as I want of bread, meat, butter, cheese and fish.”
That tradition continues yet today. Always bastions of hospitality, pubs
are now frequented as much for their grub as their brew. This is especially
true outside the major cities where regional specialties and authentic
country cooking showcase Ireland’s superb seafood and meats, luscious
cheeses, and legendary breads.
Some time around the fifth century, Mediterranean missionaries introduced
Ireland to the art of distilling alcohol. Used mostly for medicinal purposes,
this white lightning’s Latin name was aqua vitae or ‘water
of life.’ The Gaelic translation, uisce beatha, was anglicized to
whiskey by the Normans.
While whiskey is popular in any pub, it’s a properly pulled pint
of Guinness topped with a collar of creamy foam that’s the drink
of choice. On New Year’s Eve 1759, Arthur Guinness took possession
of a brewery located at St. James Gate, a defense point in Dublin’s
medieval walled city. With typically understated Irish optimism, Arthur
negotiated a 9,000-year property lease for an annual sum of forty-five
pounds sterling, plus free use of all the water he’d ever need from
the River Liffey.
When Arthur’s black beer took off like a rocket, the city fathers
realized their dreadful mistake. A sheriff attempted to block the water
line, but Arthur appeared brandishing a pickaxe and hurling a volley of
colorful Irish curses. After a twenty-year court battle, compromise was
reached and Guinness quickly became Ireland’s favorite brew as well
as one of the nation’s chief employers and sources of revenue.
Guinness production now exceeds 750 million pints a year. The company
funds numerous international cultural events and it’s advertising
policy leads the push for Ireland’s modern stance on alcoholism
awareness. To its further esteem, Guinness launched Ireland’s move
to conquer the world.
In 1992, Guinness threw its considerable global clout behind The Irish
Pub Company with the intention of developing high-quality Irish pubs outside
of Ireland. Its first offshore endeavor, Fado in Atlanta, GA opened in
January 1996 just in time to cash in on the crowds that would be attending
the Atlanta Olympics. The venture was a rip-roaring success. Currently
there are more than 130 IPC pubs operating in the U.S.
Called by pundits the design consortium that sells ‘a pub in a box,’
Dublin-based IPC is no joke. In the last 16 years, it and its imitators
have fabricated and installed more than 1,800 ‘Irish’ pubs
in more than 50 countries, including Ireland itself where IPC has opened
40 faux-pubs side-by-jowl the venerable establishments on which the winning
strategy is based.
Having developed ‘ways of re-creating Irish pubs which would be
successful, culturally and commercially, anywhere in the world,’
IPC offers five basic styles: Country Cottage, with timber beams and stone
floors; Gaelic, with Irish folklore murals; Traditional Pub Shop, with
fake grocery and apothecary items; Brewery, with empty kegs and brewer’s
geewgaws; and Victorian Dublin, the stained-glass Beaux Arts top of the
range.
An inquiry is all that’s necessary to set the wheels in motion.
Your pub will be assembled in Ireland, broken down, shipped, and assembled
in your chosen location. All in 18 weeks. And that’s not the whole
of it. IPC will also supply all the necessary decorative et ceteras as
well as the music, games (dartboards head the list), lighting, mirrors,
tables and chairs, pub grub menu, sources for culinary ingredients, a
list of believable ‘pub’ names, training on pouring ‘a
perfect pint,’ and staff who speak with lilting Irish brogues. They
even predict a pretty profit. According to IPC: “Sales per square
foot exceed the U.S. average by a factor of two.”
While IPC has built and opened more ‘authentic’ Irish pubs
than any other design group, imitation is the highest form of flattery
and other firms have jumped on the bandwagon with gusto. When I moved
to Los Angeles in the late ’60s, finding an Irish pub was an exercise
in dogged determination. Today, there’s hardly a major city anywhere
in the U.S. lacking the experience, and Irish pubs have sprung up on every
continent like mushrooms after a rain. There’s even a full-blown
Irish ‘village’ in Dubai!
How is it, one wonders, that the British who invented the ‘pub’
concept missed the boat? All I can say to that is: Ireland’s got
the Craic and God bless Guinness! Sláinte!
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