Editor’s Note: My parents met at the Harp and Fiddle. That’s fun! As you were.

A quick internet search will quickly tell the story of how Mullaney’s Harp and Fiddle was started: three Irish people were patronizing a German bar––figures––when they decided that the Irish community needed an authentic Irish pub to go and relax. Along with the good intentions of Sean Patrick Murphy and husband-and-wife team Anne and Brian Mullaney, it was also seen as a good way to earn a decent dollar. After all, they were going to start a pub for Irish people. Irish people and pubs/bars go together very well–– at least in my family. They decided to convert a small little building in the Strip District into the Irish pub they were going to call Mullaney’s Harp and Fiddle.

So why is the Harp and Fiddle so successful? It is a very small pub, has only one waiter or waitress working it a night, a very tight aisle that often leads to people-based collisions, and the bathroom is basically impossible to reach. Finding the bathroom takes both a lot of reading and, once discerned, climbing a whole flight of stairs. Just based on that which I listed there, it seems like it would be a terrible bar/pub experience. However, every time my family goes there, it is the best couple hours of my day. I think what makes the place so special is the authentic people who can be found there. There has not been one time where I have gone there that I haven’t seen an aunt or an uncle, a family friend, or one of my dad’s friends from when he was growing up.

So seeing and knowing all those people just gives one a warm sense of security. Pair that with the live Irish music that is being played, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish game being broadcasted on the two little TVs in the two adjacent corners of the bar, or the Irish step dancing that occasionally takes over. The atmosphere draws the people into the pub and the people really make the pub. When I’m at the Harp and Fiddle, I have a feeling of belonging and a proud feeling for my heritage.