Tastebuds: A Retrospective. (January 2020)
The Before. Before Covid, the Collapse of Tastebuds and the Move to Ireland
Welcome to My 41st Newsletter Friends!
Five Years Ago, on December 28th, 2019, I became a published author, thanks to the editor of the Ohio Irish American Newsletter, John O’Brien Jr. You never forget the feeling of seeing a story you wrote in print for the first time! John was a regular at Tastebuds and when he heard my plans to move to Ireland to become a writer, he asked, “Why not start now?” I gave him plenty of reasons, but he ignored them all!
Honestly, I don’t know if I would have ever had the guts to send my work to the New York Times or the Washington Post without his encouragement and I would have never believed, not in a million years, that CNN would publish a story I wrote just one year later about losing my beloved restaurant.
I’d like to share my first published story with you now. Think of it as your Christmas Bonus! Speaking of Christmas, if you know someone who would enjoy my stories, why not gift them a subscription? “It’s the gift that keeps on giving Clark!” My New Year resolution for this year is to post more content and recipes exclusively for paid subscribers, so they will be thankful for your thoughtfulness and so will I!
Enjoy!
OH! Just in case you haven’t already heard, if you download the Substack App, you can listen to my stories rather than read them, which is nice for busy people on the go!
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
By Bridget Kathleen McGinty
I was never one to ask your last name and I’d hardly ever tell you mine. McGinty was a tough name to live up to and an impossible name to escape from. I was the second oldest of six children, sandwiched between a perfect older sister Megan, and an all-American athlete brother Brian, followed by Molly, Erin, and Maggie. Megan and I shared a bedroom and a dresser growing up and it was covered in medals and trophies, mostly from Irish dance, some from sports and academics but all hers.
Had they given awards for best comebacks toward teachers, most creative hairstyles, or most disruptive in class, perhaps I would have had some brass to show off as well. Brian’s dresser was much the same, but strictly sports trophies, plaques, medals, and team pictures. People who knew my siblings and my parents expected great things from me and were often disappointed. Getting in trouble was easier with a name like McGinty, everyone knew someone in my family and would be more than happy to provide a detailed report of my deviant activities from smoking and drinking, to shoplifting and cutting school.
The only real interest I had back then was in busting out on my own. The thing I wanted most as a child was to be eighteen! As I suspected, that’s when my life really began making sense. Living by my own rules, I found my people and I found my passion and it all revolved around food! As happy as I was in the restaurant business, I still heard the call of the wild, to bust out on my own. I had to do it my way and for the last eighteen years, with the help of many family members and friends, I’ve had the privilege to do just that!
Tastebuds Restaurant in Cleveland’s Downtown/Chinatown neighborhood opened on my thirtieth birthday and has been cranking out tastier, healthier, faster lunches Monday through Friday, 11 am until 2 pm ever since. My younger sister, Erin McGinty-Perk, has been with me as a silent partner helping to develop and grow the business since its inception in 2001. In fact, it was Erin who named Tastebuds after a restaurant in Newport Ireland that we nearly crashed into after renting a car and driving for the first time in Ireland in 1997, back when we were young and naïve enough to think almost crashing was hilarious!
As I prepare to ascend to my new career as a writer and pursue my dream of moving to Ireland, I will be stepping back, behind the scenes. Erin will be taking the spotlight and center stage and I have the utmost confidence that Tastebuds will thrive under her leadership! Erin loves providing exceptional service and has made extraordinary hospitality her passion! My passion has not changed except that I wish to write about my experience in the restaurant business and trust me, none of it is dull or boring. It would be impossible to give these stories their proper telling if I didn’t step away. Remembering Tastebuds fondly, and missing Cleveland terribly will give me clarity, help me to write, and will give me that “abiding sense of tragedy” that will sustain me “through temporary periods of joy” that Yeats spoke of!
It is the call of the Wild Atlantic Way that I’ve been hearing, a whisper at first, then louder with each passing year. The first time I heard it, I was twenty-seven years old, smoking a cigarette on a boardwalk in Cobh, Ireland. I was standing near the last port of call of the Titanic, just after viewing the exhibit. I was crying, imagining how the sadness of leaving home, leaving Ireland must have turned toward anticipation and excitement of coming to America and then absolute horror when the Titanic began to sink.
A man approached me asking to bum a fag. He noticed my tears and asked in a thick Irish brogue what I was thinking about. I told him I was thinking mostly about the brave young women of Ireland that left unaccompanied, unaware, and unsure of what was waiting for them in America. After a long silence, both of us smoking, contemplating the water, he said “Ah, so you’re a Yank then?”
I nodded the guilty apologetic yes that feels like confession when speaking to a native, and he told me that long ago, one of my ancestors had made a terrible mistake and it was up to me to make things right again. He said I need to be brave and board a big ship and sail back to Ireland for good next time! As he walked away he turned laughing and said, “Just please Miss, if you do... mind the icebergs!” I laughed and didn’t give that conversation another thought until recently.
It’s funny, words like that seem to swirl around the subconscious like pixie dust waiting for you to believe in their magic. When I was nineteen years old a generous and kind restaurateur, John Minillo, whom I worked for at Ninth Street Grill in the Galleria, told me I would own a restaurant someday. That thought was just as absurd to me at 19 years old, as moving to Ireland was at 27!
The birth of my son Ari, five years ago inspired me to get serious about moving to Ireland. Ari spent his first Christmas there, clapping along to live music in the pubs and singing to sheep from the car window as we drove from town to town, castle to abbey. We boarded the Christmas train and visited Santa at The Westport House. We rode the merry-go-round, did our shopping, and drank hot cocoa at the Christmas Market in Galway.
The spell was cast and I returned the following May for The Literary Festival of Food and Wine at the famed Ballymaloe School of Cookery where I met Darina Allen and her generous and welcoming family. Again, and this time in Cork, I found my people, I found my passion, and it all revolved around food, and this time it included writing.
My whole life, I’ve been fighting for my independence, wanting desperately to express myself, and have people bust through my rugged nature to see the beauty inside. Is that not the embodiment of Ireland?
Here I am, being called to Cork, the Rebel City! And for the first time in my life, I see my last name as an asset. I long to hear “Now, which McGinty are you?” to which I will proudly answer, “I am the McGinty that’s bringing her name back to Ireland, hoping to serve her well, hoping she will allow me to call her home, after all these years away”.
The End!
OK…
Time For Your FOUR (journal entries) on FRIDAY!
But Wait, There’s More!
Just one more entry from December, one that really encompasses the assuredness I felt in the future of, well, everything!
THE BEFORE
Journal Entry
December 30th 2019
I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life! This Christmas break has been so magical. Ari is the coolest! We have been staying up till 2 or 3 am, sleeping till 10 or 11, and eating at all kinds of crazy hours, and mostly junk food! But… We have been doing so much! Ari is amazing and he is so strong! We have been moving furniture, cleaning, and painting, and Ari actually paints better than most people I've painted with!
The cleanup was my favorite part tonight. Ari was up on the chair at the three-compartment sink in the restaurant, working the sprayer and making buckets of sudsy water for us to soak the paint brushes and rollers. He kept accidentally spraying things that would splash back at us. He'd giggle out of control and I’d cross my eyes, pretending to be mad! We had suds everywhere. He was in heaven. He took his shirt off, which was soaked and then he put his head under the faucet and started drinking water straight from the tap!
He looked so adorable, like a mini River Phoenix, crewcut, white t-shirt, and all! I was overcome with just the purest emotions of love and happiness, watching him get his hair wet under the faucet and then pretend it was an accident. He was giggling and doing it over and over again, screaming and then giggling some more! Wow!
While we were painting, I drank a bottle of Heineken, which Ari opened for me while telling me that he had a beer like this before with his dad! I offered him a sip, assuming he had made up that story so I would offer him one! He took it, trying to act cool. A split second later he looked horrified. Looking at me with a shocked expression, he wiped his mouth and said that it tasted like throw up, and that he was probably gonna throw up now!
He rushed over to the beverage cooler and helped himself to a Grape Crush! We toasted while admiring the wall we had just finished painting, and deciding where to paint next. Life is so damn good! I’ve got one more month at Tastebuds till retirement. It feels amazing to get the place organized and all spruced up for Erin!
My upstairs tenants moved out of my house in Tremont, clearing the way for me to put my house on the market. My other two remaining tenants are going to hate me, but I can’t be a landlord anymore. I need to simplify my life. I need to move on.
I’ve been falling in love with a house I found for sale on Daft.ie, just between Midleton, Youghal, and the Ballymaloe Cookery School. The nearest primary school that Ari could attend is Clonpriest National School, which offers acting classes and has an annual children’s film festival! Wow!
I’ve been organizing my journals, and partially written stories, essays, and movie ideas and I see that I will have plenty to work on and finish when I officially retire. This all feels so right and everything is going to plan! Yep! Never been happier!
Journal Entry
January 17th 2020
So it’s looking like I’ll have $300,000 after selling my house to move to Ireland! I’ve got to focus on that and how absolutely lucky I am to have bought a multi-family house on Professor Avenue in Tremont when I was 23 years old! For the last couple of days, I’ve let myself be supremely bothered by the taxes I will have to pay if I get my asking price, mainly the capital gains tax, which will be well over $100,000.
I choose now to focus on only the profit I’m going to make and the fact that this house afforded me everything; the opportunity to put myself through culinary school, to open my own restaurant, to never have to extend my restaurant’s opening hours (11:30-2:30!), to live a fabulous lifestyle that included living in Tremont back when it was full of cool artists and crack heads, restaurants and galleries! A lifestyle that included leasing (frivolously throwing away money) 4 Porsches, 2 luxury apartments (1 next-floor to Kevin Love!), and spoiling my nieces and nephews with outings in limos and overnights at the restaurant at Christmas.
I never missed a show or a talk or a pricey conference. I took vacations every year, sometimes more than one and many overseas. That house made me strong and responsible and taught me many hard lessons while I was still very young. I have waded through fieces and toilet paper in my flooded basement. I have tracked miserable, horrific smells to dead birds in dryer vents. I have caught and released more than a few squirrels in the attic and woodchucks and racoons in the yard. I have cried when contractors start work and never finish. I have cried when invoices from plumbers and electricians far exceed the estimates. I have continually been baffled by the items tenants consider flushable. I have had to evict my share of assholes and I’ve been threatened, cheated, and completely screwed over. I have also gotten to know so many great people. So many tenants have come and gone. My first tenants were paying $200-$500 per month and my last were paying $950-$1500!
All this to say…
Or, I guess this is to convince myself…
I am doing the right thing FOR ME. Sure, it’s financial suicide. Sure, I’m losing my footing on the land. Sure it makes no sense to sell my house.
But…
Here are my reasons…
I’m DONE! Tremont has become so overcrowded, and frankly, it’s not my kinda crowd! Let’s just say millennials do not make the best tenants, or neighbors or anything really! The house needs so many repairs and upgrades and I just can’t keep sinking money into it. Also, we’ve reached a terrible place in America where every honest, hardworking plumber, carpenter, and electrician is either dead, retired, or addicted to drugs and there is no one coming to take their place. I was so lucky to have had Freddie Wendel and Lazlo Szabados, men who could still proudly take off their shirts at 70 years old and sweat and toil and chain smoke while performing the toughest tasks and the most excellent craftsmanship.
For me now, it’s better to rent. Taxes are insane, lawncare is a bitch and I’ve got this gypsy heart and soul. Two years is about all I can take in one place! I would rather have $300,000. worth of travel and experiences with the best little travel buddy on Earth, Ari, then own a $300,000. headache and heartache. I promised Ari he’d see the Eiffel Tower when he was five and I’m already a little late. I want him to have a magical childhood and that kind of money can buy a lot of magic.
Like Steve Popovich said, “Spend it! Spend it all. Money’s no good when you're old. You’re smart, you're willing to work hard, you can always make more money, but you can’t get back time.”
I like the thought of shaking things up a bit, getting nervous about finances, and getting hungry again. My herbalist, Ed Corsi said, “In the end, either the hospital or the nursing home gets everything you’ve ever worked for, so try and beat ‘em to it!”
Just sell your house, Bridget. It will be grand not worrying about rental property or having to come back to Cleveland to deal with it when your living in Ireland!
Journal Entry
Saturday January 25th, 2020
Life is moving so fast, seriously! I’m booking a trip to Ireland during March, including St. Patrick’s Day because a friend will be there who can make key introductions for me in Cork. It is a heartbreak that Ari won’t be with me, but a God save that Erin and Rick can watch Ari. I cannot imagine seven days without my beautiful boy.
February 21st Ari’s name will be changed to Ari Asher McGinty and I still have so much anxiety over it. I don’t know how Ari will feel about it 30 years from now. Will he thank me? Will he resent me? Hmmm…I guess he can change it back to his father’s name if he wants to, but would he want his children to bear that stigma?
Why am I so sympathetic to a man who almost killed us, who has done nothing to help us or support us? I guess because he gave me a son. He bullishly and stubbornly talked me into it when my fears and selfishness battled against it.
February 21st a new chapter will begin. There will be no more illusions about Ari’s father’s role in his life. He abandoned him. I gave him so many chances to be a part of Ari’s life, but just like with me, he is absent, never there when you need him, and when he does call, it feels like he is just gathering information from Ari to use against me.
Fuck! Why am I crying now? Does a boy need a father? Bridget! Ari does have a father but he is not here. Maybe things will be different in the future, but changing his name to yours is vital to your current situation. And GODDAMMIT, YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB ALL ON YOUR OWN RAISING ARI! He is kind and sweet, compassionate, funny, inventive, intelligent, and a great storyteller!
I’m thinking I need to have him baptized now in preparation for Ireland and because it’s important to me. I don’t know what is involved. Of course, I’d want Erin and Rick to be his God Parents and it would be great if Father Mark could do it. I’ve known him for so long and I love his homilies!
Journal Entry
January 27th, 2020
Melancholy has just swept over me so unexpectedly. Ari and I had a wonderful dinner, angel hair pasta with meatballs, marinara, and broccoli for him, and sauteed shitake mushrooms, shallots, and spinach with a garlic cream sauce for me. We listened to Van Morrison while eating and drinking orange juice for him, and Klinker Brick Zin for me. We sang along and Ari broke into dance a couple of times. I made a little video of him dancing to “Somebody Like You,” and I was feeling happy and sentimental.
But then I started to daydream about the last person I met that mildly intrigued me. I thought about how lonely I am, but how cruel it would be to reach out when I am planning on moving to Ireland. I began to think how cruel it would be to inflict myself on anybody ever again, with the way things ended with Ari’s dad, both of us so crazy jealous, so violent toward each other.
Ok, let’s get back to the source of this melancholy I am feeling. I arranged for Ari’s baptism today, which in itself is a profound betrayal of his father. Father Mark’s assistant called a while later to fill out the necessary paperwork. “Father’s name?” was one of the questions and I replied “Unknown,” after carefully considering the delicate situation. So, this is what has me down. Ari’s father is being slowly erased from our lives, a heartbreak made just the slightest bit easier by the fact that he has not called Ari in months, not even on his birthday.
Journal Entry
January 31st 2020
I can finally see glimpses of my desk. I have been sorting through 3 boxes that Erin loaded up out of my, well, I guess it is now her office in the restaurant. There had to be 50 pounds or more of thank you cards and letters from donations we gave, parties we threw, or volunteering we did. All just memories now. I saved a few but really, it’s time to purge. Amazing what accumulates in 19 years of running a restaurant.
I’m revisiting my favorite book on Audible, Hemingway’s, A Movable Feast. It is a good companion when I am frustrated and cannot seem to write. I just booked my trip to Ireland. It is an opportunity I cannot pass up, a chance to meet a lot of culinary professionals, cheese makers, fishmongers, and farmers, but the thought of being away from Ari for seven days is already making me sick. I keep reminding myself that it is for our future and I promised to take him to Disney in Florida when I get back, which seems fair!
I’ve got to keep writing and keep this momentum going after being published in the Ohio Irish American News, but I just cannot find the time. The transfer of power at the restaurant into Erin’s hands is taking up a lot of my time and energy. Putting the house up for sale has been time-consuming as well.
And Finally…
Happy New Year 2020!
I rang in New Year 2020 at a very swanky party thrown by the coolest neighbors one could ever hope for! Sometimes when I look at pictures and videos I took that evening I wonder if the hosts knew that this would be the last celebration of its kind for a long long time.
The host made a speech/toast just before midnight, which ended with some great advice. He suggested you take the first letter of your name and think of a word starting with that same letter for your New Year’s resolution. He chose Kindness, which was kind of cheating because I’ve never known him not to be!
I couldn’t think of anything starting with B till the next day. I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that my favorite DJ from back in the day, hanging at The 9 of Clubs (if ya know, you know!) tagged all of us fans with the song, Breakout, by Swing Out Sister! I thought, ‘Breakout, YES, that’s IT!’
I’d say that was one New Year’s resolution I kept!
Thank You for Being Here With Me My Friends!
Cheers!
Bridget