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St. Paddy’s Day: More than corned beef — try a blarney burger, other eats and arrive early

There are lots of ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and they are both traditional and newfangled, so don’t get your Irish up.
Lots of places offer corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, to the point where its sometimes less than noteworthy, but there are some such as the Green Mill and Season’s Tavern in North Hudson that take Irish food to a new level, and that’s no blarney. It’s also true that you might have the luck of the Irish across the St. Croix and get serenaded by a Sinatra songster.
But enter the blarney burger at Seasons, which has a seven-ounce hamburger patty (not paddy), plus corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and 1000 Island dressing, on an egg-washed bun. That means lots of two kinds of meat, despite the lingering presence of Lenten Fridays, and with all those other ingredients, it’s great tasting, Season’s owner Brad says.
But in back to the basics, Season’s last year sold 80 dishes of the obligatory corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day, but they expect that this year the sales could be up by 50 percent, to 120, as word about it gets around. Rueben soup rounds out the mix.
Brad says he is not a believer in the cliche green beer and other such drink specials, especially when it comes to holidays, although all the usual varieties popular for St. Patrick’s Day are available for purchase. He rather chooses to stick with what they do well, and not rely on what could be seen as a onetime gimmick. He says that many venues have plenty of beverage sales where an idea is forced, but when it comes to follow-through is not effective.
— On the flipside of a similar note, Dick’s Bar and Grill and other area venues are promoting Miller Lite for St. Patrick’s Day, but the beer mug photos shown in the ads display it as regular light brown in color, not the notorious green beer. However, this option is billed as appropriate since it is of a pilsner variety, and to boot, Miller Lite is the beer of this month, which obviously contains St. Patrick’s Day, at Buffalo Wild Wings. At least one other bar says that they’ve tapped a full kegger of green beer in recent St. Patrick’s Days, but it hasn’t gone over too well with patrons as far as orders.
— In the best tradition of St. Patrick’s Day, things get hopping early for specials at the Bungalow Restaurant and Bar in Lakeland at 11 a.m. (until its gone) with their corned beef and cabbage, and Irish beer and whiskey. A wee bit later, its both singer and deejay Gary LaRue and his Rat Pack Band from 7-11 p.m. LaRue plays the best of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nate King Cole, Chet Baker and more, for an evening of “dining, dancing and romancing.” LaRue was named best unique entertainer of 2015 by a publication just up the highway, White Bear Lake Magazine.

— Green Mill is again going totally green on not only St. Patrick’s Day, but from March 16-19. There is traditional mulligan stew with special seasonings and beef and four kinds of vegies, cream based Rueben soup, Rueben sandwiches and of course, corned beef and cabbage, and that’s just the eats. There also will be leprechaun jello shots, Jameson shooters, and three specialty drinks, Irish Flag, Irish Gold and Shamrock-Tini, which are heavy on Irish ingredients that include Baileys. The Shamrock-Tini even features a chocolate-rimmed martini glass. Add to that karaoke and a costume contest on the night itself and you have a party, the 17th annual St. Patrick’s Day one, no less.

— Paddy Ryan’s in the town of Hudson has all the standard fare that you would expect of an Irish pub, and in the evening of St. Patrick’s Day they add the vocal stylings of The O’Briens, a family group from Hudson that is big into Irish music.
— If you want to get your Irish up prior to St. Patrick’s Day, options for other kinds of music include Rough House and Country Outlaws, on Friday and Saturday nights respectively at Willow River Saloon in Burkhardt, Whiskey Stone at the Smilin’ Moose on Friday night, and Ella and Wade at Dick’s in an early Friday performance, starting around 6 p.m.

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