The REAL Irish Pubs of Iowa City

St. Paddy’s Day in Iowa City can easily devolve into a grotesque debacle, a cavalcade of fake accents, leprechaun abuse, green beer and vomit — the traditional parade of stereotypes.  Did St. Patrick go to the trouble of ridding Ireland of snakes (even if he really didn’t) for this? But in spite of it all, certain Irish pubs find a way to maintain their dignity. What, then, is the cliché-proof appeal of a real Irish pub?

Sara Morgan, a bartender at Iowa City’s Dublin Underground on Dubuque Street, suggests a few basic elements: a variety of Irish whiskeys, good people, good Guinness and perhaps a certain understated assurance. “Any place that yells and screams ‘This is an Irish bar!’ probably isn’t.”

When you order a pint at a real Irish bar, it should be understood you mean a pint of stout. And don’t trust a bartender who hurries the pour. “If you get a pint in under three minutes you aren’t getting a real one,” says Morgan.

Indeed there is an art to drawing a proper pint insists Rory (Ruardhi on the birth certificate) Brown, owner of the Dublin Underground. “You’ve got to build a good pint of Guinness,” says Brown. “Build. Not pour. When it’s three-quarters full, let it settle. The head’s got to come just proud of the rim of the glass.”

Then the head is decorated with the outline of a shamrock, a crowning flourish beyond the ken of many bartenders. “An Irishman will travel an extra distance for a properly built pint of Guinness,” says Brown.

Beyond the booze are intangibles — a strong core of friendly regulars, bartenders who can tell good stories and jokes, the possibility of carrying on a conversation without screaming at the top of your lungs. “You’re paying as much for conversation as anything,” says Morgan.

Kate Gadient is something of a regular at the Dublin and a friend of Morgan. Her surname is Swiss, but her middle name is Eileen, which she says makes her sufficiently Irish. She isn’t “a connoisseur of Irish bars per se, but of dive bars generally, which line up with the qualities of a good Irish bar pretty well.”

“But unlike bars in Ireland,” Kate says, “there’s no drunken band in the corner here.”

The word pub, short for public house, reveals a community-oriented intent. “It’s a place where people meet after work,” says Brown. “It’s not a meat market. A real Irish bar is not a ‘party-till-you-puke’-kind of place.”

Brown’s parents come from Cork, Ireland, but he grew up in Iowa City. They spoke Gaelic only when they didn’t want the children to understand what they were saying, but they didn’t push the “Irishness.” Brown did pick up a few essential Gaelic phrases along the way, such as “Erin go bragh” and “Pog mo thoin” (“Ireland forever” and “Kiss my ass”), if not from his parents. He graduated from Regina High School and received a bachelor’s business administration from The University of Iowa in 1996.

Brown opened the Dublin Underground 17 years ago to escape the clutches of a career in retail. But being your own boss isn’t all sweetness and light. Over the years some other nominally Irish bars opened by his Regina classmates — Hanrahan’s, Rock’s Road House, and Fitzpatrick’s – have all closed. It’s a struggle for Brown, too, with constant repairs and upkeep. The drop ceiling of the Dublin is pocked with rectangles cut out to accommodate the installation of a new fire suppression system.

“That was going to be a Harley Davidson,” says Brown. “The truth is it’s a lot of hard work making it look easy. You have to deal with the fire department, building inspector, police department, health inspector, and they all want you to do something different next year, and none of it is cheap.”

When it comes to Irish bars in Iowa City, Harold Donnelly set the standard. His namesake downtown tavern was a landmark for 40 years until the city-mandated “urban renewal” put it in the way of the wrecking ball in 1974. As Jerry Schmidt wrote in the March 1992 issue of Iowa City Magazine, Harold Donnelly presided over a uniquely congenial mix of town and gown — businessmen, farmers, writers, students, professionals, laborers and artists. The bar’s sad end, sacrificed on the altar of “progress” inspired appreciations and laments, including John Birkbeck’s “Parting Glass,” from his 1976 book of poems, Donnelly’s Beverage.

“Parting Glass”

And we were there
so many haunted
autumns ago
twirling barstools
at Donnelly’s place
veterans of each other
hard recollections
and confabulatory
troothes put right
and otherwise
failure-bound
fair starters we
and soddenly so
from roots
to split ends
running to
grey hairs and age
a great disguise
for long past error
and settling in
to finely tunes
versage . . .

Let’s dampen
the glasses again
dearest old
conspirators
not lacking of
manner and
banterisms
before the
soddeness of parting
for midnight comes
well into the
dearth of night
for such as we are.

And where are
they all now
and all who’ve
become ghosts
of this place
alive or maybe not

somewhere else?

Like a saint’s relics, remnants of the original Donnelly’s bar – in one form or another — can be found in other places around town. The magnificent old oak and mahogany bar from the original Donnelly’s resides now at the Jim Mondanaro-owned Micky’s on Dubuque Street. When Mondanaro wanted to open another Irish-themed bar on College Street in 2005, he named it “Donnelly’s.”

Rory Brown speaks with a certain reverence when asked about the original Donnelly’s. Its heyday was before Brown’s time, but he’s duly aware of the pub’s pre-eminent position in the firmament of Iowa City pub lore.

Reflecting on my queries about the past, Brown climbed up on a counter behind the bar, scanning the bric-a-brac antique shop curiosities on a high shelf. He was looking for a glass from the original Donnelly’s with a placard signed by Harold himself, but it’s gone missing for the time being — lost, broken, stolen, hiding behind a dusty mug or God knows where.

Brown was able to find one treasured artifact: a yellowed matchbook from the original Donnelly’s. The green text reads, “Beer, Cocktails, Food and Kind Words.” That will have to do.