As the Scottish bard Robert Burns must have known well (“My muse! Guid auld Scotch drink! . . . Inspire me, till I lisp an wink”), few things are more intoxicating than the pairing of poetry and a good pint. To name a pub after a two-hundred-year-old pastoral ode to serenity, then, seems like a natural move—especially if that pub, housed in a former smoke shop and owned by three Irishmen (proprietors of the Wren and the Penrose), unabashedly exalts in the riparian. “The ceiling beams are taken from the floorboards of old tugboats, and the side of the bar is from shipping crates,” a bartender with a thick Cork brogue explained on a bustling Friday. Then he put down his espresso to tend to an after-work crew with a vodka-shot pep in their step. The music (Rolling Stones, Aerosmith) and cocktails (fruity numbers with names like Ruby Barlett and Saints of Liberties) are less Dublin than Astoria rustic chic. The gut-stretching fare—pillowy beer-battered fried pickles and smoked-gouda mac and cheese—seems designed to absorb stiff drinks of any provenance. Late one Saturday night, a young father whose wife was away on business fretted between a final Scotch on the rocks and relieving the babysitter. Two complimentary shots of cinnamon-and-jalapeño-infused bourbon from a sympathetic bartender solved the problem. “Even the missus wouldn’t forgive you for turning this down,” he said, and winked. ♦
