Honk if you’re Irish
David L. Coddon, Associate Night & Day Editor
Night Watch
08/09/01
Lift a Pint in a Pub with an uptown Dublin feel
You know those big trucks with oversized flatbed trailers, the ones transporting an entire two-story house from one place to another? Kid stuff. Try moving an entire pub 5,400 miles, from Ireland to Southern California.

The trick is, you do it in pieces.

Dublin Square, the latest example of the greening of the Gaslamp Quartet, wasn’t hoisted onto an amphibious truck and driven/sailed around the world. The pub was manufactured bit by bit by a design company in Ireland, shipped to San Diego, then assembled by some Irish craftsmen who made the long trip with it.

The result is a Fourth Avenue watering hole that looks like a public house along Dublin’s well-traveled Grafton Street. It’s got an oak horseshoe bar that’s a replica of the one in 19th century Tynan’s Bridge House in Kilkenny, a seating are in back with a cast-iron fireplace façade that’s a replica of the Shelbourne Lounge in Dublin City, and all the carved oak, etched glass, and rugged plaster walls you’d expect in the Ireland of your travelogue or storybook fantasies.

Instant atmosphere, in other words. It’s not a new concept. The Field, on Fifth Avenue, basically did the same things a few years back.

Of course it takes more than the trappings of a real Irish pub to make one work so far from the Emerald Isle. Dublin Square, open since March, seems to be doing fine, with live traditional music nightly, a menu that includes shepherd’s pie and corned beef and cabbage, lots of Guinness on draft, and crowds that have no compunction about hand-clapping, breaking into a jig, or singing along at a given moment. Maybe the Guinness has a little to do with this…maybe not.

Does the Gaslamp, already home to Patrick’s II, Maloney’s, the Blarney Stone, and the Field, need yet another Irish pub? Samme Ladckie thinks so.

Samme Ladckie? He’s the publican (that means saloonkeeper) of Dublin Square.

“Others call themselves ‘Irish pubs’, but the only other authentic Irish pub downtown is The Field,” believes Ladckie, who describes the latter as a “village pub,” while his has “a city feel. It’s more uptown, as the Irish call it.”

Comparing one pub to another is best left to each’s respective regulars. It gives them something to argue about over their beer and ale. (Don’t order a glass of white zinfandel or designer martini in here, by the way. Looks bad.) Let’s just say that strictly as far as Dublin Square is concerned, it’s meticulously Irish in detail and unfailingly cheerful.