Shamrock Cafe: McGuire’s Irish Pub Offers Hearty Food, Plenty O’ Drinks
33 E. Highway 98, Destin, 650-0000
By Bruce Collier April 21, 2005 Issue
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McGuire’s Irish Pub in Destin is a good-sized restaurant, with two main dining rooms, a central bar, and a “Dublin Pub Room,” decorated with framed pub signs. Lighting is subdued, but not at the expense of menu visibility. Dollar bills, signed by hundreds of customers, hang from walls and the ceiling. The decor would fit most people’s idea of a somewhat theatrical pub.

And then there’s the beer. McGuire’s is technically a “brewpub,” a restaurant attached to a brewery (or vice versa), serving a varying menu of freshly brewed product to wash down the food. The brewing vats and equipment are on gleaming display next to the dining rooms. On offer daily is a selection of six beers, including ale, pilsner, porter, stout, wheat beer, and a seasonal ale. McGuire’s also brews excellent root beer. It’s dark, creamy, and every bit as good as what you remember from childhood.

My friend ordered a cocktail (there’s a full bar) and I had the beer sampler. Six small glasses—looking like a cross between a test tube and a pony glass—are served on a placemat. The placemat describes each beer and its characteristics, including alcohol content. I had a four-ounce taste of McGuire’s Light, Irish Red, Raspberry Wheat, McGuire’s Porter, Irish Cream Stout, and the seasonal ale, India Pale. This is a good choice if you are undecided, or if you just like a lot of variety. For volume, it’s about the equivalent of two regular beers; so it tastes great and is less...you get the idea. We got a pitcher of the root beer to go with our food.

As you might guess, McGuire’s food is intended to stand up to and complement the drinks. The menu offers appetizers, soups and salads, seafood specialties, steaks, sandwiches, steak burgers, and “traditional pub fare.” You can have beef, lamb, pork, meatloaf, corned beef, shepherd’s pie, pot roast, sausage, and fish and chips. I guess you could even eat light. Many of the items are available in lunch and dinner portions, and there are daily specials.

We started off with an appetizer sampler. On the plate were onion rings, several kinds of fried cheese, fried apples, grilled chicken thighs, and “boxtys.” The latter are cakes of garlic-mashed potatoes breaded and fried. My friend also had a bowl of onion soup, topped with cheese. Though billed as starters, either of these could make a meal.

Other choices include “Reuben” egg rolls, potato skins, calamari, tomato, asparagus, and artichoke pizza, crab cakes, chicken, salmon or Caesar salads, and “Senate bean soup.” The soup is made according to the recipe served at the nation’s capital, and when ordered as an appetizer, costs only 18 cents.

Pub eating, like steak house eating, is not for the fainthearted. McGuire’s bills itself as both pub and steak house. My friend ordered the New York strip steak and I went for a house specialty, Irish lamb stew. Both were huge, and much of them went home.

The steak, cooked as ordered, was both tender and satisfyingly chewy. The meat was topped with blue cheese. Other sauces and toppings are also available. On the side were fries and a broiled tomato, also topped with cheese.

The Irish stew was a treat. The light-bodied, flavorful stock was filled to overflowing with lean, tender lamb shanks (which I prefer to lamb chops), peas, carrots, onions, turnips and small potatoes. On top was a warm, perfectly made puff pastry in the shape of a shamrock. Both items were served with a small loaf of honey-glazed black bread and real butter.

If your appetite runs to seafood, you can have grouper, tuna, salmon, lobster, shrimp, and oysters. Burger lovers can choose from 24 varieties of steak burger, topped and seasoned in most imaginable ways, and some unimaginable ones.

Odds and ends of the menu include smoked prime rib, barbecue ribs, several pasta dishes, pork chops with a whiskey glaze, and a number of lunch sandwiches and wraps.

Because, after all this food, we were not yet in actual pain, we ordered dessert. McGuire’s has four. My friend got the chocolate brownie a la mode. I got bread pudding with Irish whiskey sauce. We ate a few bites—just enough to assure ourselves that the desserts are well up to the quality of the entrÈes, and boxed up the rest. Both were warm—the pudding was hot, actually—simple, and good. They’re worth saving room for. The same could probably said of the other two choices, “Irish Bash” cream pie, and a root beer float.

McGuire’s could easily have settled for being a tourist trap, a sort of Irish Disneyland with mediocre food served with lots of hooch by way of misdirection. Fortunately, they gave as much thought to the menu and preparation of the food as they did to the look of the place. So, in addition to scads of leprechauns, shamrocks, churchwardens (those long skinny pipes the wee folk are always toking), and loop after loop of “Molly Malone,” there’s a lot of really good food available. If you like robust eating, with an emphasis on red meat, McGuire’s could be your next favorite place.

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