Black and emerald all over

This Monday, tip your favorite brew to St. Patrick – perhaps at Molly Bloom’s Irish pub in Tel Aviv.

By BARRY DAVIS
Molly Bloom's (photo credit: Courtesy)
Molly Bloom's
(photo credit: Courtesy)
There has been a subtle but definitely palpable sense recently of an increase in the flow of Guinness, the celebrated Irish stout. In all likelihood, the reason for the upturn in pump traffic is the imminent advent of St. Patrick’s Day.
This Monday, March 17, in Ireland and wherever Irish people congregate around the globe, millions of Irish men, women and children will get out their green and other finery to mark the generally accepted date of death of the Emerald Isle’s patron saint, who is believed to have lived from 385 to 461. St. Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian holiday in the early 17th century and today celebrates Irish heritage and culture in general.
It is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador in eastern Canada and, surprisingly, the British territory of Montserrat, an island tucked away in the Caribbean, some of whose inhabitants have Irish ancestry.
In this part of the world, the day is marked by people of all ages and cultural stripes making their way over to their favorite Celtic-oriented watering hole to knock back a few jars of whatever Irish brew is served at the bar – Guinness, Kilkenny, Murphy’s, you name it, as long as it’s dark, full-bodied and does the trick.
These days, Israel has quite a few Irish pubs, but the pioneering establishment of the Gaelic sector here is Molly Bloom’s, cozily located on the corner of Mendele and Hayarkon streets in Tel Aviv since November 2000.
“We just celebrated our bar mitzva,” says Molly Bloom’s co-owner Ronny Levy, who hails from Sweden and made aliya more than 30 years ago. He is married to an Englishwoman and is a diehard supporter of Manchester United. Levy’s partner in pioneering Gaelic endeavor here is Robert Segal, with a third partner, Avi Rapaport, joining the Molly Bloom’s fray in 2004.
Of course, no Irish pub would be complete without live music. Ehud Nathan, doyen of the Irish music scene in Israel and leader of the Black Velvet band for more than 30 years, helps to imbue the Tel Aviv pub with an air of Emerald Isle authenticity on Mondays, with his polished bouzouki and percussion playing skills, when he joins other like-minded musicians.
There is a regular Friday open-mike jam session there, too, when the culturalmusical spread stretches beyond the strict confines of Celtic music.
Molly Bloom’s has gained a number of siblings over the years, with interconnected establishments Leo Bloom’s and The Back Door doing brisk business in Ramat Hahayal. The chain will embrace a fourth outlet in the near future in the gradually evolving swanky Sarona quarter of Tel Aviv. The new addition will go by the name Molly Bloom’s Sarona.
Televised sporting events are also an important feature of the pub’s entertainment lineup, with soccer, basketball and rugby regularly screened while the patrons sip their stout – much as their British counterparts do back in Blighty. Mind you, there has been the odd glitch on the sporting front. Recently, a bunch of supporters of the Arsenal soccer team asked Levy if he could open the Back Door and air the English Premier League game between Arsenal and Liverpool. Levy duly obliged, but the Arsenal fans were crying into their Guinness by the time the match was over – Liverpool thrashed their team.
“I’ve probably lost a few customers now,” says Levy with a wry smile.
Levy says that the downtown Tel Aviv establishment is something of a cultural oasis.
“It’s a bit of Ireland and England – ‘Anglo-Saxon’ culture in general – in Tel Aviv. When we have the rugby on TV, they all come; and when there’s the [soccer] Champions League games, too.”
It seems that the pub’s fame has spread far and wide over the last 13 years, well beyond our national borders.
“We get people from ‘Anglo-Saxon’ backgrounds who have made aliya coming to the pub, but there are also businessmen who come to Israel for three or four months, and Molly Bloom’s is their home here. There’s a guy here from abroad right now who was sent here by his company – I think from Germany. He’s staying at the Dan Hotel [across the street from the pub] for $9,000 a month, but he sits in the pub four or five times a week. That’s where he meets people. These people come from abroad, who get stuck in their hotels, but they want to get out and meet people. We get quite a few like them. That’s nice. You also get the locals,” says Levy.
For the latter, the pub is not just a place to get a good pint of Irish, or Israeli, brew. It also has to do with the cultural vibe that Molly Bloom’s exudes.
“Yes, I’d say they are all looking for something else, something they know from their country of origin,” says Levy, “something that they feel familiar with.
It’s like if you get to China for the first time and you’re there on your first night and you’ll go to eat at McDonald’s because it’s something you know from home; you know what you’re going to get. A lot of businesspeople come here for two or three days. They don’t come here to look for local ethnic things, not even a felafel.
And you get diplomats, too.”
The “Celtic locale” element, says Levy, has waned somewhat over the years at Molly Bloom’s.
“We have relaxed a little bit on the music side. We used to have only Irish music, but around 10 p.m. or so, when Israelis come in, we play other kinds of music,” he explains.
That, says the pub co-proprietor, is not exactly a revolutionary concept.
“If you go a pub in Dublin today, you won’t hear Irish music there. You’ll hear middle-of-the-road stuff,” he says.
That, according to Levy, also applies to the sticks.
“The village pubs might play Irish music if they have a group of tourists coming in, but only then.”
Levy might be a mite guilty of hyperbole on that score, and although the pub scene in Ireland and in Britain is not quite as robust as in years gone by, there is still plenty of live traditional musical fare to be had in watering holes on the western side of the Irish Sea. But Levy, Segal and Rapaport know what their patrons like, and they deliver liquids, solid edibles and aural entertainment to suit the palates and musical tastes of as wide a customer hinterland as possible.
Anyway, surely people go to Molly Bloom’s – as opposed to any of the dozens of other bars and pubs dotted around the Tel Aviv environs – because they want a micro-Irish experience, music included.
“Well, it is the most traditional Irish pub in Israel in the sense that we keep a lot of Irish traditions there, but we’ve relaxed with the music a bit,” notes Levy, adding that he keeps to the foreign side of the sonic tracks. “We draw the line at Israeli music. We don’t play any Israeli music there, except for a song that Ehud [Nathan] plays with [rocker] Izhar Ashdot. Ehud is touring with Izhar right now, and the song is on the radio, so we play that at the pub, but only that one.”
Levy says that Molly Bloom’s is now a brand name and that – in addition to opening a fourth branch in the chain – he and his partners in pint pulling are considering starting up a franchise. If that materializes, there will be Molly Bloom’s outlets in cities and towns all over the country.
Levy, Segal and Rapaport certainly seem to have hit on a recipe for success.
“We haven’t changed much of the menu, or the alcohol, we served over the last 13 years,” says Levy. “You know, the Irish say, if it ain’t bad, why change it. Anyway, Robert [Segal] doesn’t like change.”
Part of that thinking comes from the empirical state of the sector. “There is still no drinking culture, as such, in Israel,” states Levy. “We have managers who come along and say, ‘Try this beer, everybody wants it’ or ‘This beer is in.’ But, from experience, I can tell you that is not good business. In Britain, people don’t look at the drinks menu. They say can I have a Scotch, they don’t ask which one. Here they want you to have every single brand. There are pubs in Israel that have 20 or 30 taps [of draft beer] but that doesn’t mean people are drinking more. People won’t drink more than their pint. Generally, Israelis drink one pint.”
Things are a bit different at Molly Bloom’s. “Guinness drinkers are more dedicated,” says Levy with a smile.
“They are more loyal and also drink more. I’d say the average Guinness drinker has three pints.”
Levy recalls one Israeli-born customer remarking on the relative paucity of beer taps at the pub. “Robert told me that the guy said, ‘That’s all the beer you have,’ and Robert just asked him, ‘How many pints of beer did you plan on drinking today?’ That shut him up.”
They will certainly been packing ’em away on Monday. Last year, St. Paddy’s Day at Molly Bloom’s was almost like being at a soccer match. The pub has a capacity of around 180 but there must have been six or seven times that number. Mendele Street was closed to traffic, and Levy and his colleagues also had a bar set up outside, to cope with the enormous quantity of pints being consumed.
If you are going to make you way over to Molly Bloom’s on Monday, be advised that the Guinness – and other brews – will start flowing at 3 p.m., and will keep on flowing until the wee hours, or until the booze runs out…
For more information about Molly Bloom’s: www.molly-blooms.com/