There's some big soccer event about to happen in Europe, and the Irish are involved somehow. The Irish House is building an entire week's worth of activities around this, complete with big-screen television. When that's finished, Matt Murphy--whose Irish eyes are always smiling--will start some kind of game where you roll a rubber ball down the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground, to see who can cover the distance between the streetcar stop for Commander's Palace and the one for the Irish House. Then we'll all go inside for a beer.
New Orleans has had a scattering of Irish pubs over the years. Some of them even took a stab at serving Irish food. But Chef Matt Murphy's Irish House is the first major Irish restaurant here. It delivers everything you'd get in a similar place in Ireland, excepting only a brogue in the speech of staff and customers. Even that gap is filled by Matt himself, who sounds as Irish as his name suggests. Although he cooked New Orleans food for over twenty years, he grew up with Irish stew, soda bread, and black pudding, and knows how it's supposed to taste.
A native of Dublin, Matt Murphy was one of the lead chefs at Commander's Palace when Chef Jamie Shannon died. When his torch was passed to Tory McPhail, Matt sought a top job elsewhere, and got it at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. He was there for most of the hotel's history until a bizarre illness brought him to death's door. A fundraiser to pay his extreme medical bills (and those of the quadruplets to which Matt's wife had just given birth) was the biggest gourmet grazing event in the gleaming history of local restaurant generosity. Matt recovered, and the Ritz-Carlton named its main restaurant M Bistro in his honor. In 2011, he left to open the Irish House, which started serving in August.
The Irish House inherited two large, spacious dining rooms and a generous parking lot from the extinct Taqueros/Coyoacan, and made them very Irish. Spaces on the walls not taken by mirrors advertising Harp Lager or Guinness are covered with increasingly small ads and articles from old Irish magazines. The first floor has the most formal dining space, plus a big bar. Upstairs it's more of a pub atmosphere, completed with live music most nights. The place becomes fully involved with anything going on outside--like the St. Patrick's parade.
If you want an Irish pub experience, tell the host, who will not only seat you in the appropriate location but give you the more casual menu. (Although you can get anything you want anywhere you want it.)
| Attitude | 2 |
|---|---|
| Environment | 2 |
| Hipness | 2 |
| Local Color | 2 |
| Service | 1 |
| Value | 0 |
| Wine | 1 |
