Your Guide to St Patrick’s Day in Brisbane 2014

We know what you’re thinking. This is going to be an article full of leprechauns and ‘top o’ the morning to ya’s and embarrassing attempts to coerce you into kissing us under the pretence that we’re Irish.

Well, you’re wrong. St Patrick’s Day may be around the corner but that doesn’t mean we have to celebrate in the style of so many supposed descendants of the Emerald Isle (if you’re pale and your great-great-great grandfather may have passed through Dublin in the1800s, that’s an excuse to wear a silly hat and drink green cocktails, right?). This year, we say commemorate the world’s favourite snake chaser in a way that would make your mammy proud. Brisbane is teeming with Paddy’s Day celebrations, and we promise none of them involve pretending you actually like Guinness.

Irish Breakfast

Irish cuisine isn’t all about potatoes and soda bread, y’know. Queen Street cafe, Room With Roses is busting the carbs-on-carbs stereotype this St. Patrick’s Day with its $37 dinner special. Choose from Rib Fillet with Irish whisky cream or homemade corned beef and finish off with a slice of Bailey’s cheesecake. Treacle Cafe is also going green with a two-course lunch and beer deal over the Paddy’s Day weekend and if you’re suffering from your own personal potato famine, O’Connor’s in Windsor can always be relied on for a generous portion of hot chips. They import their cod and haddock all the way from the North Atlantic for that special Celtic taste.

Paint The Town Green

Where true blue and emerald green merge, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is the centrepiece of Brisbane’s Irish Festival, which runs until March 17. The floats start their round at 10.30am on Saturday, March 15 on the corner of George and Elizabeth streets and move throughout the city. This year is extra special as the Parade celebrates its 25th year so don’t forget to sport your best shamrock-hued outfit.

Cheers!

If you have an unstoppable urge to dress up as a leprechaun and inflict your painful Irish impression of an Irish accent on unsuspecting victims, who are we to stop you? The city’s favourite Irish pub, Mick O’Malley’s is open from 10am on Saturday, March 15 to coincide with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and promises a ‘full day of good Craic until the wee hours of the morning’. For us non-Gaelic folk, that roughly translates as live performances from Queensland Irish Association Pipes and Drums and Brisbane Irish band Murphy’s Pigs and plenty of good ol’ merriment. Irish Murphy’s goes one better with its week-long St. Patrick’s Day Festival. Running up until the day itself, the George St bar hosts a series of live music performances and a ‘Craic’n Paddy’s Eve Party’ as well as the obligatory pints of Guinness. The Fox is also celebrating St. Paddy with a themed Soho Sunday night featuring the rather worryingly sounding green beer and performances from Slow Lovers and Brisbane DJ Gatling Gun.