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Posted by Sarah DiGregorio at 10:57 AM, March 17, 2008
If you want to celebrate Saint Patrick's day with real live Irish people, skip the parade and head to Woodside, Queens, where you can eat and drink for a bargain, surrounded by unintelligible brogues. Go to the intersection of Woodside and Roosevelt Avenues, and pretty much any bar you stumble into is likely to pour a good Guinness. Some picks, after the jump.
Today, The Starting Gate (59-10 Woodside Ave), a darkly cozy, no-nonsense sports bar is showing the All Ireland Club finals: St. Vincents versus the Nemo Rangers. (Those are football teams, for those of you who haven't been following St. Vincents and the Nemo Rangers all season long.) If I were you, I wouldn't cheer too loudly for one or the other until you figure out which team everyone else is rooting for. The clientele seems...serious about football.
Moving on! You're hungry. Go to Donovan's Pub (57-24 Roosevelt Ave), where you can get a really good Irish coffee, corned beef and cabbage (above, with a phallic-looking boiled potato) or one of the best, fattest burgers in town (below).
For dessert, stop by Woodside Candy (60-04 Woodside Ave), where the helpful Indian owner will point you to his selection of Irish candy (it's actually candy from the U.K., but you can't blame the guy for marketing to the neighborhood).
All the beer and heavy Irish food might leave you craving something spicy. This is Queens, after all, so a fantastic Asian market can't be too far away. H Mart (59-18 Woodside Ave) features entire aisles of kimchi, banchan, ready-to-eat bulgogi and other Korean deliciousness.
