AN POITIN STIL

I had heard about this Irish pub in Timonium a while ago and had always wanted to try it out. Timonium usually means a trip to the Corner Stable for spare ribs, but we had gone there a few days before so were able to justify trying someplace new. While we had meant to especially do so, our menus were whisked away before we remembered to find out how to pronounce the restaurant’s name or discover its meaning.

The beer and food list are standard, exactly what you would expect and want from an Irish Pub. Guinness, Harp, and some other Irish standards were on tap, so I ordered the Sam Adams seasonal. The food we ordered was standard if not memorable: Gaelic steak, an overly salted Shepherd’s Pie, and Fish and Chips. The last deserves a special mention. “Fish and Chips” usually connotes finger food, or at least multiple pieces of fish breaded and fried and served with what Americans would call steak fries. Their version involves one entire fish filet resting on top of a large portion of regular french fries. Both were well cooked, just not the dish I was expecting, and is it wrong that in an Irish Pub one of the most traditional of basic dishes was oversimplified?

They have not skimped on the décor, and that deserves a special mention of its own. They tried incredibly too hard to make it look like the designer’s version of an Irish Pub. The outside is built up to make it look like an Irish village street front. No problem, there, and I think it’s kind of clever although it makes finding the front door something of a chore. Inside, there are nice wooden floors, at least one fireplace, and far too evenly done stone walls. Between those uniform stone walls, the polished wood, the medieval weapons on the walls, and the light fixtures made from antlers, one quickly realizes that one is not in a quaint pub but rather some sort of hunting lodge for rich weirdoes.