The Spot: Con Murphy’s
17 S Fort Lauderdale Beach Blvd.
We don’t want for great Irish pubs around here. Waxy’s, The Field, Dicey Riley’s, Stout, McSorley’s – if you want to celebrate St. Pat’s with a traditional beverage and meal, you’ve got options. One other excellent choice is Con Murphy’s.
The oceanfront pub offers a menu that’s largely American bar food. But they do a killer Guinness beef stew as well as an excellent shepherd’s pie and several other traditional dishes. We’re also not sure exactly how authentic the “Murphy’s Margarita” is, but if Guinness isn’t your thing, maybe it’s worth a shot.
Con’s also the Florida outpost of a longtime Philadelphia Irish pub. So if you’re heartbroken about this being the final season of Always Sunny, here’s a place to drown your sorrows.
The Beer: Orchestrated Minds Stouts & Porters
If you want a local alternative to Guinness, Lauderdale breweries will hook you up. One place we’ve been enjoying lately is Orchestrated Minds Brewing, 803 NW 1st St. Like many local breweries their menu changes regularly, but they’ve always got at least one excellent stout or porter on. Two we’ve really liked recently are notes-of-blueberry-and-coconut imperial stout Blue Wraith and “French toast-inspired” imperial stout Breakfast Batter.
The Whiskey: Old St. Pete
Fort Lauderdale’s liquor-making scene is taking off, but at the moment it centers more around vodka and rum. Around the state though, there are a number of places churning out bottles of tasty whiskey. One such enterprise is St. Petersburg Distillery in, would you believe it, St. Pete. Their Old St. Pete whiskey offers hints of smoke and vanilla; its subtle sweet palate gives it a perfectly Floridian character.
