Staying overnight in South Bend late last year, I decided that to try a German restaurant that wasn't far from the hotel. The only problem is that when I pulled up to the place, it turned out they are closed on Monday and Tuesday nights. Well, Plan B was going to be an Irish pub for that evening's food choice. I had already tried Fiddler's Hearth last year in downtown South Bend (click here to read the Road Tips entry on Fiddler's Hearth), but my old neighbor who is a huge Notre Dame football fan told me after my visit there of an Irish pub literally across the street from the University of Notre Dame campus on the north side of the city. I looked the place up and found the name - O'Rourke's Public House. That's where I went for dinner and some beers that evening.
Even though the O'Rourke's Public House is owned by a number of investors who went to school at Notre Dame, the backstory of how it got to South Bend is one of those "Only in America" kinds of stories. It all started with a young guy by the name of Dave Magrogan who, along with two siblings, were raised in near poverty by their single mother. Forced to move multiple times before Magrogan started high school, his mother always stayed positive with her outlook in life and eventually got her degree in nursing.
Magrogan inherited much of his mother's positive "can-do" spirit and after college he looked at becoming a chiropractor. He opened his first practice in suburban Philadelphia on a shoestring in 1996 and he quickly found that normal chiropractic techniques of multiple patient visits with fee scheduled payments wasn't working out. Moving to a "Pay-what-you-can" philosophy, adding seminars, and giving patient discounts for referrals turned out to be the Midas touch for Magrogan. Within a short time, he was seeing over 800 patients a week, opened a second clinic, and had a local weekly cable television program on chiropractic health where he was known as "Dr. Dave."
By 2003, Magrogan had grown bored with the practice of chiropractic medicine even though he was immensely successful with his business. He started to look into starting a restaurant, even though it was a risky venture as a study found that nearly 60 percent of all restaurants fail within their first three years. But, he had worked in restaurants since he was 12 years old all the way through high school, into college and through chiropractic school first as a busboy, then a waiter, then becoming a bartender to help get himself through college. He focused his first restaurant - an Irish pub by the name of Kildare's - in the wealthy suburbs west of Philadelphia.
By 2007, there were five Kildare's in and around the Philadelphia area and Magrogan drew the attention of Bernie Spain who, along with is brother Murray, sold their Dollar Express chain of dime-stores to Dollar Tree. Bernie Spain was looking to invest his money and he was taken by Magrogan's entrepreneurial spirit. He invested into Magrogan's plan to open 25 more Kildare's locations by 2010.
However, the Great Recession of 2008 put a large hold on those plans and Magrogan had to rethink his outlook. He discovered that putting Irish restaurants in affluent suburbs wasn't the smartest thing because most people didn't like Irish food - they would end up ordering burgers, sandwiches and appetizers - and they would only have a couple beers since most people had to drive to and from his restaurants. And beer was a huge money maker in restaurants. He decided that focusing on Kildare's locations in cities near college campuses to help cater to younger crowds would be the answer.
It was a group of 8 Notre Dame alumnus who entered into a franchise agreement with Magrogan's restaurant group to put a Kildare's in the new Eddy Street Commons just south of the Notre Dame campus. The restaurant opened in August 2010, but it wasn't long before the group of investors began to splinter away from the Kildare's concept. They broke their franchise agreement with the rapidly failing Kildare's concept and rebranded their restaurant as O'Rourke's Public House in the spring of 2011. (Kildare's formally closed their last company restaurant in Philadelphia in 2016, but Magrogan continues to run other restaurants today. He sold the original Kildare's in West Chester, PA to his manager there in 2015 and it continues to this day.)
Parking around Eddy Street Commons can be a little tricky, especially near O'Rourke's Public House situated at the corner of E. Angela Blvd. and N. Eddy St. (see map) However, there's a large public garage with free parking up to 2 hours most evenings just around the corner. That's where I ended up parking that chilly fall evening.
Inside O'Rourke's Public House, I found a nice open space with a long bar with a curved turn-out at one end. Like the other Kildare pub's that were built before this place became O'Rourke's, the interior of the restaurant was designed and built by a company in Dublin, Ireland that was shipped to South Bend for installation. The restaurant has five different Irish design themes depicted in the space - Victorian, Cottage, Brewery, Shop and Gaelic. I didn't know which was which, nor did I bother to ask anyone for a tour. It's an Irish pub, for god's sake! Let's drink and not worry about various architectural themes!
I ended up seated at the bar and I was immediately greeted by one of the bartenders, Aubrianna. She introduced herself to me, stuck out her hand and asked my name. I've been noticing more places are doing that. Actually, I sort of find it somewhat forced and canned on the servers part to do that, but I guess it's all right. She gave me a food menu and I ordered up a Bell's Two Hearted Ale from the somewhat impressive craft beer tap list they had.
Now, this was an Irish pub, right? I thought it was sort of strange that they were playing country music over the sound system in the place - something that would drive my somewhat Irish pub-puritan ex-neighbor crazy. (When I told him after the fact that they were playing country music in an Irish bar across from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, he went apoplectic.)
Well, it got better. At 8 p.m. they switched the music to urban. I just had to laugh over that. It had to be the first time I'd ever heard hip hop in an Irish pub. And at 10 p.m. that evening, they were going to have karaoke. I thought it may be pretty late on a weeknight for karaoke.
O'Rourke's Public House featured a number of sandwiches, burgers and entrees including Irish favorites such as fish and chips, and a Guinness beef stew. Their pub burgers consisted of ground prime rib and available with five different types of cheese and a number of other toppings including Irish-style rasher - thin slices of bacon. The Four Horsemen burger consisted of a prime rib burger topped with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing. It's for people who can't make up their mind between getting a reuben or a burger.
And I was sort of that way that evening. I was contemplating between getting a sautéed mushroom/Swiss cheese burger and the reuben. But the guy seated a couple seats down from me was just finishing up his Shepherd's Pie. Aubrianna asked him how it was and he said it was very good. I decided to go with the Shepherd's Pie that evening. After I ordered, the guy said to me, "Good choice. I was happy with this."
After getting a dinner salad that had too much other stuff on it than lettuce - it was covered in croutons and had too many sliced cucumbers and red onions on it, but the balsamic vinaigrette was very good - I was served the Shepherd's Pie. It was served in a dish with a ton of mashed potatoes topped with broiler-melted cheddar cheese (a $1 add-on) and onion straws on top. I certainly didn't need - or really want - that heavy layer of mashed potatoes covering the rest of the Shepherd's Pie. The potatoes really got in the way of getting to the ground beef and veggies mixed in with the stout beer gravy. It was good, but it was a lot of food. I was able to maybe eat just over half of the Shepherd's Pie, picking around the potatoes where I could. It was very rich, very filling and pretty good.
Given that O'Rourke's Public House was my second choice that evening since my first choice was closed for the night, I can't say that I was disappointed. The pre-fab Irish decor in the place gave it a true pub feeling, but the curious choices of blaring country music and then urban hip hop after 8 p.m. sort of destroyed any type of Irish ambience to the place. Aubrianna's service was friendly and efficient, and while I had a couple quibbles with the food - too many toppings on the salad, and too much mashed potatoes on the Shepherd's Pie - I thought it was good for what I got. They had a good selection of craft brews and there were enough flat-screen televisions to keep a single diner entertained for the duration of their stay. O'Rourke's Public House wasn't the best Irish pub I've been to, but it was better than others that put up an Irish flag on a wall and call themselves an Irish bar.
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