There are many ways to celebrate Easter Sunday. We chose Guinness.
For our last full day in Dublin, we booked only one thing we had to show up for, an Airbnb Experience focused on traditional Irish music led by someone who led us through “sessions” of Irish music in various pubs. As she explained, Irish music has never really belonged to concert halls or recordings, but to rooms that smell of hops and the accumulated breath of centuries of good conversation.
The music isn’t played by “bands,” but by musicians who simply gather and play together regularly. They don’t play on a stage; they just sit around a table. Everyone else sits, orders pints, and listens with unabashed adoration. Patrons shift in and out, sharing tables, making new friends. It was the best afternoon of our entire time in Ireland.
Our first stop was O’Donoghue’s, just off St. Stephen’s Green on Merrion Row, a building that dates to 1789, when it first opened as a grocery store, before the O’Donoghue family transformed it into a pub in 1934. The walls are thick with photographs and history, and for good reason: this is the pub where the Dubliners began performing in the early 1960s, where the folk revival found its heartbeat, where musicians like Christy Moore, The Fureys, and Phil Lynott all played at one point or another. My parents had the Irish Rovers and the Dubliners on 8-track, and I surprised Sally thoroughly by singing along, word for word, to several songs.
From there, we made our way to another second pub before ending at The Brazen Head, a place with a hostelry on the premises since 1198, the present building constructed in 1754 as a coaching inn. It sits on Bridge Street, the very spot where the original settlement that became Dublin got its name, where reed matting once crossed the Liffey at low tide and travelers made their cautious way from one bank to the other.
Over the centuries, revolutionary patriots including Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, and Daniel O’Connell all frequented the pub, and something of that restless, defiant spirit still clings to the low ceilings and dark corners.
Whether it is technically the oldest pub in Ireland is a debate the Irish seem to enjoy having. Sean’s Bar in Athlone has the older paperwork, dating to around 900 A.D. The Brazen Head holds its title with such conviction that you find yourself unwilling to argue the point.
You can’t help but feel deeply happy listening to traditional Irish music. Even the saddest songs carry a certain lyrical quality that lifts the heart rather than weighing it down. We drank more Guinness than anybody needs on a Sunday afternoon, yet we had no regrets.
That evening, we felt the need to line our stomachs with something other than stout. We found ourselves at one of the few pubs still open, lured in by the Easter special and the live Irish music.
This was our only true disappointment in ten days of eating. When the Easter special, leg of lamb with mashed potatoes and popovers, it arrived beneath what I can only describe as an oil spill of treacle gravy.
Treacle, for the uninitiated, is a thick, cloying sweetener not unlike molasses but with a biting hint of Marmite (aka Vegemite). Let’s just say it’s an acquired taste.
While I will happily forgive a great many sins in the name of classic brown gravy, treacle on lamb is a different proposition entirely.
(And, I understand, that at this moment, Irish folks reading this may be yelling at their screen. “The treacle gravy, it’s the whole point, Kathleen! You just don’t get it, do you, lass?!”)
I excavated my way down through the dark tide to find overcooked meat and under-seasoned potatoes. Sally’s sea bass arrived both overcooked and lukewarm, a particularly dispiriting combination.
In ten days of eating our way across Ireland, it was the only meal that missed. One meal in what, twenty to twenty-five? Also, let’s be honest. It could have just been an off night, and all the good cooks had the holiday off, as they rightfully were due.
Those are odds most travelers would take without a second thought. Which is exactly what we did. We just ordered fries, drank more Guinness and clapped along to the music.
This post is part of a series of culinary travel pieces from my travels in Ireland and the UK in 2026. See the main page for more stories like this one. All images copyright Kathleen Flinn and cannot be used without written permission.
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