Don't Make These Drinking Mistakes On St. Patrick's Day

An Irish Penicillin at Exchequer in Dublin. Photo: Elva Ramirez.

Originally published in Forbes Life.

“I hate it. I really do.” Conor Myers, creative director at Underdog and recent transplant from Ireland to New York, slumps slightly in his seat at the bar. He looks down and shakes his head ruefully.

Myers is talking about St. Patrick’s Day, the annual global toast to all things Irish. Or, more accurately, he’s describing how he's seen so many people get the March 17 celebration wrong.

“It’s like Santa Con,” Myers sighs, invoking the harshest pejorative in the bar industry. Myers, a 2017 Bacardi Legacy finalist, worked in bars in Dublin, including six St. Patrick’s Day shifts. Before moving to Brooklyn last year, he was most recently manning the bar at Exchequer, a popular-with-the-locals Dublin spot.)

Jack McGarry, a Belfast native and the co-owner of the Dead Rabbit Grocery & Grog in lower Manhattan, echoes Myers almost exactly. “It’s almost as if these people have a green card to go bananas for one day,” McGarry says. “Like the way they go on Santa Con. That’s not what it’s about for us.

“It’s not about paddy whackery. It’s not about green rivers, green beers and the Dropkick Murphys.”

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