While in Destin, Dad and I discovered another great eatery. We had supper at The Back Porch restaurant. Our table looked out on the white sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. We had blackened grouper, amberjack, tuna and Mahi-mahi as the sun was going down on the Emerald Coast.
I had a pint last week at a very cool Irish pub in Destin, Florida. McGuires has been around since 1977, won numerous awards for its menu, and has been featured on The Today Show. Considered one of America’s great steakhouses, it satisfies your appetite with great food and satisfies your curiosity with the ambiance and good humor. The restaurant is littered with dollar bills. When the restaurant opened over thirty years ago, a waitress put her first dollar bill tip on the wall, as a wish for good luck. And, as Irish luck would have it, there are now 750,000 dollar bills lining the walls and the ceiling.
The restaurant brews their own beer, reminding their patrons with a sign:
No chemists allowed: nature and the old-time know-how of a Master Brewer get the job done here. Because McGuire’s Irish Ale is a natural product, we disdain synthetics, scientists, and their accompanying apparatus. This is a brewery, not a beer factory.
The pub is also home to some sacred relics with the skeletal remains of Bridget McGuire (1860-1879) who “strangled two British sailors with the straps of her bra. She was sentenced to the Belfast Gallows where she swung by the straps of her bra.” What a woman!
A journal of reflections on things seen and unseen, wimsical and wise, ordinary and odd, magical and mundane
