Happy St Patrick’s Day, London! It’s time to fill your face with that deliciously savoury and increasingly trendy black booze otherwise known as Guinness.
Whether you like your stout mixed into cakes, in burgers or (rather old fashioned but) in a glass, here are five of the best ways to incorporate Guinness into your daily routine today.
Five places to find Guinness and revelry in London this St Patrick’s Day
Have some stout in a burger
Burger joint Patty&Bun is celebrating St Patrick’s Day with a new burger. It features Irish quality-assured beef, and Cashel blue cheese from the Emerald Isle, as well as stout-infused onions for those who like their meat served with a dash of booze. It arrives with bacon mayo inside one of P&B’s famous brioche buns.
Celebrate with oysters – the perfect Guinness pairing?
The Pig’s Ear pub in Chelsea is serving Irish oysters with shots of Guinness this evening. The pair apparently go well together. There’ll also be Guinness cakes with sour cream frosting and a live Irish folk band, with “plenty of dancing encouraged into the night.” Sounds like a Tuesday hangover.
Read more: Whisk(e)y Business: The Irish Whiskey renaissance
How about bottomless Guinness?
Market Place food markets are offering bottomless Guinness this St Patrick’s Day. Compared to other drinks they’re fairly easy to put away, given Guinness is flat: but don’t let us encourage you into binge drinking. For £35 you get 90 minutes of refills as well as a £10 food voucher to use on any of the food stalls in the venues across Vauxhall, Peckham and Harrow. Remember: it doesn’t count if you chuck it back up again.
Guinness and cake is the ultimate combo
The Hummingbird Bakery with stores in Notting Hill, Soho, Victoria, South Kensington and further afield has some special St. Patrick’s Day cakes. Try the classic rich Guinness cake or the cupcakes if you’re on the move. They each have a dark chocolate sponge, and a decent splosh of Guinness for a “deep, malty richness”, with cream cheese frosting on top.
Get an Irish coffee completely free at Grind
The Grind coffee shops and cafes across town are giving away free Irish coffees all day – just go in and declare “Kiss me, I’m Irish”. If you can bear the cringe of saying that to a cashier, you deserve twenty Irish coffees. They’re part of a limited edition series from Baileys and Grind and if you can’t bear to say that declaration of love out loud, the good news is the drink is permanently on menus from today.
Read more: Baileys and Grind launch St. Patrick’s Day giveaway