Dining Review
Kathy Mader
Muldoon’s Irish Pub, on Newport Center Drive next to Big Edwards Theater,
has long been a staple for the St. Patrick’s Day crowd. In fact, it is
required if you truly plan to celebrate that day like only the Irish can.
However, feel free to sample their extensive beer and Irish whiskey
selections as well as their Irish/American fare any other day of the
year.
For 25 years Muldoon’s has filled every definition of an Irish pub, from
its dark wood and dimly lit interior to its bricked courtyard patio
complete with trees and heat lamps. Spotlighting bands such as the Young
Dubliners only helps to authenticate Muldoon’s reputation.
You can’t have a restaurant in Southern California without succumbing to
some of the local influences, and Muldoon’s is no exception. For while
they offer Irish stew ($8.25) and pub onion loops ($4.50), they also
offer chips and salsa, chicken wraps, and tuna sandwiches ($7.50). Their
tuna sandwich is one of my favorite things to order. They make it with
fresh albacore and easy on the mayonnaise.
While you think of a pub as sort of a working man’s lunch place,
Muldoon’s is really a Newport working man’s lunch place, as it is
moderately expensive. But the food is fresh and genuine, from their small
loaves of soda bread, full of currants and rye, to their hearty wheat
bread, served with whipped butter.
There has been discussion in my office as to whether Muldoon’s serves the
best burger in town, and the majority says yes. Either way, their macho
burger ($8.40) with jack cheese, sliced avocado and a grilled Ortega
pepper, and their B.B.C. burger ($8.45) with cheddar cheese topped with
tangy barbecue sauce and bacon, is pretty much all you could hope for in
a burger.
The Jack Muldoon grilled chicken sandwich ($8.95), basically the macho
burger with chicken, is a nice, satisfying alternative and the single
most ordered item in my office.
Of course you can order corned beef ($8.75), shepherds pie ($9.95) and
bangers and mash ($8.95), but Muldoon’s is famous for its fish and chips
($9.50).
Catch them for lunch on a Wednesday, when you can enjoy all you can eat
fish and chips complete with malted vinegar and salt. Fresh tartar sauce
and pub fries are also served on the side, but the vinegar and salt show
your commitment to tradition.
Oriental chicken salad and the grilled chicken breast salad are good, but
Pat’s Cobb salad is what I mean when I say salad: resplendent with blue
cheese and bacon.
Muldoon’s offers several daily specials for both lunch and dinner, and
they range from fresh salmon pasta to pork tenderloin and lamb chops. If
you go in for lunch, ask for Patty to be your server, she is great.
Dinner at Muldoon’s includes porterhouse steaks ($18.95) and filets, both
served with a twice-baked potato. Mrs. Murphy’s pot roast ($16.95),
Gaelic chicken and Old Bushmills breast of chicken ($15.95) -- a breast
of chicken simmered in Muldoon’s award winning Dijon sauce -- fish and
chips, and shrimp and chips are also available on the dinner menu.
What about dessert you ask? What exactly do the Irish eat for dessert?
Well here at Muldoon’s the Irish eat hot apple pie with caramel sauce and
whipped cream, chocolate sundae with toffee crunch, and a traditional
Irish trifle -- sponge cake with a splash of sherry, homemade custard,
strawberries and cream.
The Daily Pilot has been really good about covering Muldoon’s special
occasions, so keep your eyes open for upcoming events. From Dec. 15-24,
Muldoon’s is celebrating with a Dickens Irish Christmas, complete with a
wait staff in period costumes and specials like roast duck, brisket of
beef, and a holiday special, wassail -- hot spice wine -- to warm your
bones. Gingerbread will also be on the menu.
Throughout the year on Sunday nights, Muldoon’s showcases different Irish
bands, and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights you can hear varying
other kinds of music. The pub is open until 1:30 a.m. daily except Monday
so it makes for a great after-movie place to have an Irish coffee, or
just a plain cappuccino, while you listen to music on the patio. Again,
they have heat lamps.
So next time you just can’t think of a place to eat, pray to St. Patrick
and ask him to remove the locusts from the farmland in your brain, and go
to Muldoon’s. It’s an Irish pub if there ever was one.
Muldoon’s Irish Pub
WHERE: 202 Newport Center Drive (next to Edwards Big Newport theater)
WHEN: open at 11:30 a.m. every day except Mondays
HOW MUCH: Moderately expensive
PHONE: (949) 640-4110
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