Spurs with a side of Barbeque, Part 4

My Home Pub, and the NLD !

Welcome back, everyone! Hope that you all enjoyed my exposé on the organisation of Tottenham Supporters Clubs in the United States. I have a small update from that story to send your way that came in early Sunday morning- the folks in Atlanta, Georgia have sent in their paperwork, and Atlanta Spurs are (finally!) going official! This is a huge deal for the US Tottenham contingent, as the Atlanta (and the surrounding area) is the ninth-largest city in the country, and the “Capital of the Southeast” (also known as the region of the country that I call home). I happen to know their Chairman-elect Matt Stigall, and he’s a great man who is going to do a fantastic job leading the Yid Army in Hotlanta (where Summer days see temperatures that are routinely around 36º Celsius!). Go on and send them a congratulations or two on twitter by tweeting at @ATLSpurs!

This week, I want to shine a spotlight on my humble home pub, Finnigan’s Wake (http://finniganswake.net/). In my relatively small hometown of Winston-Salem, this place has a reputation as the best pub in the city, and is also known as the best place in the area to watch a game of footy on the tube.

 

Now, I suspect that the first thing a lot of you will notice (if you look on their website) is that Finnigan’s Wake is an Irish pub. I know that this will send a lot of the English
contingent here up in arms (“watching the Prem at an Irish pub? Blasphemy!”), but to be fair we really don’t have a good English pub in Winston-Salem. This is the best we can do here in the States, since the pubs are nowhere near as ubiquitous here as they are on the British Isles.

I say this is my home pub, yet it is located about 15 minutes away from my actual home. I imagine that this is a foreign concept to most readers who merely have to walk down the street to get to their local pub, but again, this is America, and we have McDonald’s to fill in that role for us here.

All that being said, this title doesn’t come without warrant. I think the bar is a great place to start- there are over 40 beers on tap at Finnigan’s, with a nice mix of traditional Irish/ English beers and selections from some of the microbreweries around Winston-Salem. You WILL find something that you like here if you try enough beers, because the selection here is just that good.

The beer is most certainly the star at Finnigan’s, but the food there is surprisingly good. Most folks don’t expect this place to pull in such a large restaurant crowd upon first glance, but Finnigan’s doubles as a full-on Irish restaurant and has a separate dining room in addition to the bar. I’m not going to publish the full menu on here, but they do a nice job of the more traditional meals- my selection for the NLD was their massive fish and chips plate, which featured some North Atlantic Cod deep-fried in beer batter and served with a large heaping of fries/ chips (and I know that we Americans already have massive portions, but even by our standards the portions at Finnigan’s are big. I’m probably not eating anything else for the rest of the day!).

Finnigan’s usually does a nice job of creating a good match-day experience for the folks that come specifically to watch football. Obviously, it helps when the matches on TV are the more important ones (there were about 20-30 of us packed into the dining room for the FA Cup final, and they had a big ole’ projector screen set up for us to watch the match). You all would think that the NLD would draw in some more folks than usual, but this wasn’t the case today- I ran into one other Spur while I was there, and the two of us spoke on the team in volumes as the match progressed. Again, it’s probably a foreign
concept for there to be a bar with only 2 supporters watching the NLD, but again, this is America, and the rise of football is only in its infancy. At least I can say with certainty that Finnegan’s was Lilywhite on NLD day!

Being an Irish pub, the best time to come see Finnigan’s is absolutely the Saturday of St. Patrick’s Day weekend. It’s the highlight of the year for Finnigan’s Wake, and they pull out all the stops. They set up a huge tent in the street directly in front of the main bar and go nuts. How about a day-long all-you-can-eat, open-bar buffet for £16.50? It’s brilliant. And that’s before we get to the live music, dancing, and prize giveaways that take place during the day too!



Otherwise, they usually pull in their large crowds during night on the weekends, and they usually keep live sports on all the time. But unlike a lot of bars in America, the focus at Finnigan’s isn’t so much on giving you a venue to watch games with friends (and get away with serving bland food because the food isn’t the central attraction… looking at you, Buffalo Wild Wings) as it is giving you great food, great beer, and a solid pub experience first and foremost, with the option to make your visit sports-or-social centred if you like. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the way it should be. And that’s why I frequent Finnigan’s and call it my favourite pub in my hometown!

If you like, you can also check out the full set of photos that Finnigan’s Wake has posted on their Facebook page. It should give you all a good sense of how America does pub life.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/FinnigansWake/photos_albums

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