The export and installation of pre-made Irish bars

Spotting and calling out "insta-pubs" was one of my hobbies in the US rust belt. It was one of the more profitable things to do with an old gas station in the late 90's/early 2000's, apparently. This led to some incongruous moments. I was in a musical group playing a regular thing at a very fancy insta-pub in Covington, KY. Our band leader was born in Ireland, but his college professor dad had moved to Atlanta, Georgia when he was just 13 or so, but he defiantly tried his best to keep his accent and not talk like he was from Georgia. Since the pub was new, it was staffed by a lot of native born Irish. So it came to pass that a young woman from the staff accused our Irish born band leader of faking his Irish accent.

(No one on the staff commented much on my being a Korean-American playing Irish traditional music, however.)

especially irritating given Ireland's former colonial status

Musician and professor Mick Moloney has often commented on the "reversed colonialism" of Irish traditional music and culture. It also applies to a lot of other traditional cultures. The past several hundred years of Irish culture can be characterized by various forms of destruction, warping, and rebirth/resurgence of cultural forms. (One could joke that the 78 record did a better job of destroying regional diversity than Cromwell, but not be too far from the truth.) That Irish traditional music should be in pubs at all could be taken as a bit of a cultural distortion, actually.

The ones they talk about in this article seem to at least be slightly decent: they at least have stuff handmade in Ireland by Irish people. That takes a certain degree of commitment that's at the very least more authentic than a Panda Express.

I think what it boils down to is that people want to go to a "foreign" bar, and Ireland is a nice target. So at the end of the day -somebody- will open one, and you have a choice between this (which is at the least handmade in Ireland) vs some monstrosity decorated with dollar store shamrocks and green accent lighting.

We do pretty much the same thing here. Most new-build pubs try to ape the traditional. The only thing this company is adding is a middle-man so you can import it all in one shot, rather than dealing with a myriad of vendors.

I realise it plays to the plastic-paddy stereotypes perfectly. But the nerd in me sees it as a simple solution to a logistical problem.

and where's the feckin' darts how are we gonna make friends without a glass game

Of course in a more post modern vein: how do you know the customers aren't in on the joke?

That is a serious question. What is it?

When I was in Dublin the thing that really surprised me was how every bar.. er... pub had these amazing Irish musicians who sort of picked up various instruments and just went at it. I would identify it as "irish folk music" though if they were belting out lesser known Richard Thompson tunes, I would not know.

Were they paid? Did they carry their instruments with themselves? Who knows.

Now, I consider that authentic. Was it authentic? Do Irish people read this and think "he was stuck in that tourist trap area" or do they think "yup, that's good 'ol homestyle music"?

And can we reproduce that here?

There are exceptions: New York City has a very high density of people from different countries. It's possible to walk around Flushing NY (part of Queens) and sit down at a completely genuine Chinese restaurant, where you will be given a menu with either a highly questionable English translation or none at all. Everything you will be surrounded with, from the language to the people to the decor, will be Chinese, and it will be a very authentic experience, and I personally love it.

But that can only happen where there's a dense population of Chinese people. It can happen in Flushing, where the population is 71% Asian. But it cannot happen in most of the US, where the local population is mostly homogeneous.

That's why bars like this are in demand.

So corned-beef and cabbage is an Irish-American tradition, but not an Irish one.

American Tourist in an Irish pub in Ireland: I'll have two Irish Carbombs please!

Bartender: No problem, coming right up!

Bartender: Sets down two tall shot glasses filled with vodka, then knocks them over.

Tourist: What the hell man!?

Bartender: Oh I'm sorry, I must have mixed up your order. Didn't you order a 9/11?

The carbomb drink always seemed like a WTF to me. I wondered how people from Ireland felt about it.

...or Fanta? :)

Regarding cuisine, on the bright side I also haven't seen soggy chips with a mountain of vaguely garlic scented mayo plopped on top exported to other countries as an example of Irish cuisine. The first time I had those I really missed Gordon Biersch :-).

There's some good food here (cheeses come to mind) but I think there's a reason the cuisine hasn't exactly been recognized by UNESCO, unlike Italy, France, or Mexico.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO_Intangible_Cultural_Her...

It's different for, say, wine, because the economics are weird (the economics of grape growing and terroir in particular) and even with an ~2x markup from import and shipping you can grab a random $12 bottle of (say) Spanish wine and there's a very good chance it'll be a hell of a lot better than a random Californian at the same price point, plus, ignoring questions of quality, there's going to be significant demand for (especially) French wine for reputation and signaling reasons. European protection/assurance of production processes probably aids consumer confidence in European versus new-world wine, too, especially on the lower end.

Beer? I can get some damn good $10 US-made 4-packs. I've had some really wonderful $5 bombers. Good luck competing with that after the cost of importing, unless you've got something incredibly special.

Shipping liquids is very expensive which is why soda companies have bottling plants all over the country. You ship the dry ingredients and add water near your destination.

Beer is more difficult to produce so it's harder to create brewing/bottling all over the place. Larger brewers, like Heineken, can set up local bottling plants because they have the resources, but small craft brewers are not going to have the capability to do that. That means you've got to ship the brewed beer everywhere which, especially overseas or internationally, is going to be super expensive.

Americans in college towns probably tolerate or perhaps, yes, even like 'intellectualism'. A bar like that could very well become a community institution and reputable business. Have some perspective.