Things said in passing – to be embedded in memory forever, seemingly. My dear Mum read the restaurant review in this morning’s Tulsa World.

“I can’t believe you remembered Esther talking about shanty Irish,” she said. “How old were you anyway?”

It seems to me I was about five or six years old.

“So you remember the conversation too?” I asked. “How old are you anyway?” (Just kidding about that last part. I would never ask my mother her age. I already know it.)

I’m indebted to Mr Cherry of the World for his kind comments about the shop and the lunchtime fare. It was a nice article and I was only slightly mortified over his noting the retrieval of a bay leaf from his stew. Bay leaves are deceptive. You think you have them fished out, and yet there is another one – lurking in the bowl of Tulsa’s most influential restaurant critic.

Oops.

Maybe it serves as proof that I make the stew myself.

The article (which I’ve attached in the click-able image, not so much out of pride, but to let you read it for yourself – in case you don’t have the paper tossed on your porch these days…) – the article also mentions my Shanty Club sandwich, the poor cousin of the traditional sandwich. It has no bacon, you see.

Shanty Irish was a pejorative phrase back then that isn’t heard much anymore. It described (mostly in the Irish community) someone from the “other side of the tracks” or the poorer side of town. It could be spoken in a mean-spirited way the way “white trash” is sometimes used. There were plenty of Irish in Parsons, Kansas – a Katy Railroad town where many immigrants found work during the laying of the rail line across Indian Territory to Texas in the late 1800s.

The review created enough interest that I was making stacks of Shanty Club sandwiches at lunchtime today, along with the many, many bowls of Irish Stew dished up and served. Enough of these busy lunches and I may dwindle down to a shadow of myself, running to and from the kitchen. (Like THAT would ever happen.)

Five years old and overhearing the grownup talk, also called gossip, going on in the kitchen – a conversation that stuck with me for some reason for more than fifty years, and wound up on the bistro menu. I realize now Grandma Mimi could afford a little gossip about the shanty Irish. She lived near enough to St. Patrick’s church that should could lean out the window and say a prayer of contrition, and another on Esther’s behalf. (Like THAT would ever happen.)

Plenty of new visitors found the shop today, most having mentioned that they had seen the article in the newspaper, and many of them ordering Shepherd’s Pie and Irish Stew.

I made a particular point of fishing out the bay leaves…

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St, Broken Arrow OK
918-258-3301