For St. Pat’s, Dublin With A Side Of Elm City

Shane Carty and Eddie Higgins have a time-tested regimen when it comes to New Haven’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, and it starts with 600 pounds of Silverside-cut corned beef. Beef, specifically, that has traveled from the hindquarters of East Coast cattle through a New York supplier, to The Trinity Bar & Restaurant’s Orange Street kitchen.

From the kitchen, Carty slow-bakes the meat in orange juice, caraway seeds and beer for five hours, slicing the muscular, fragrant cuts after they’ve cooled, and placing them back in the ovens to keep them warm. After that, there are the other food items he has to worry about: chuck for burgers, potatoes for french fries and just-firm tater tots, pounds of chicken and buttermilk to batter it with, loaves upon loaves of rye bread and hard rolls — all for one day.

But for him and Higgins, who bought the 157 Orange St. property from O’Toole’s Pub just over a year ago, there’s no other way they’d want to be celebrating the day, which starts at 9 a.m. and goes through the wee hours of the following morning.

After growing up and trying small business models in Ireland, then in New Haven, the two are exactly where they want to be. In preparation for the parade, they stopped by the WNHH studio to talk about why on ​“Kitchen Sync.”

Their story starts long before the Trinity’s opening in late February 2015, and even before the erection of Anna Liffey’s on 17 Whitney Ave., where the two originally worked with then-owner Ashley Sheridan and current owner Patrick Mansfield.

Instead, it originates in the Irish town of Dundrum, a suburb of Dublin where the two grew up together. 

“I suppose we were very lucky,” said Higgins in the interview. ​“In the early ​‘70s, in our neighborhood, there was probably a group of 14 boys all the same age. We all played football together, palled around together, went to school together, we did everything together. Friendships were formed … we’re like brothers.”

Almost-brothers who also had a flair for business and for food. By the time the boys were all 14 years old, Higgins said, Carty was already an eager entrepreneur; he and Sheridan sold quiches, and then cupcakes, from door to door. While Higgins considered emigrating for his own reasons, the small door-to-door business led Carty to catering college in Ireland, and then to thoughts of cooking abroad.

The two headed to the U.S. in June 1994, in time to see that year’s World Cup play out across 9 U.S. Cities. In the interview, Carty recalled boarding the flight with his 11 butcher-quality knives in his carry-on, so that he would be ready to work as a chef on arrival.

“I’d be tasered if I showed up with them now,” he laughed.

But the first stop he made wasn’t a kitchen. It was a New York pub called McCormick’s, on 26th and 3rd, where he watched Ireland beat Italy 1‑nil on U.S. soil.

For the first time since the flight — where there’d been not only his butchers’ knives, but some cigarette smoke, and a mid-air fistfight — he felt at home, in a place where ​“the pub was the focal point of everything” once again. That’s the spirit Higgins had too, when he emigrated around the same time. 

“As we got older, we went through those changes,” he said. ​“We seen the fall of the Berlin Wall, how Europe changed, the freedom, the movement, the people … I think that was all part of our journey. It was kind of the inspiration. Like, ​‘Well, there’s a whole big world out there. Let’s go to America and see what America is all about.’”

From The Liffey To The Trinity

After the two friends were bitten by what Carty calls ​“the USA bug” in the mid-1990s, they both tried to find work in New England. Carty spent a little over a year in Philadelphia, first working for Higgins’ brother Keith, and then as a line cook an Italian chain restaurant. He felt frustrated by the lack of creativity that the job afforded him, ultimately quitting and moving to New Haven. He went back to Ireland to get married; it didn’t work out. So he headed back, hoping for work on the horizon.

It happened to be fortuitous timing. Sheridan, already in New Haven, called him to ask for help on a new Irish pub, which he was thinking of calling The Liffey, after the river that flows through the center of Dublin. Carty headed to the city, which he calls ​“a shock to the system,” and has been here since. So has Higgins. Together, the trio went to work on the pub.

“Ash [Sheridan] was here for a couple years and he was kind of at a crossroads on whether he’d relocate back to Ireland or relocate back to New Haven,” Higgins said. ​“He decided to … open an Irish bar in downtown New Haven — the birth of Anna Liffey’s. That was ​‘97.”

The trio spent around 10 months building the pub on Whitney Avenue, opening in November of 1997. Carty began working as a cook in January of 1998, finding that New Haveners were thrilled to have new cuisine in town.

“The first couple years it was just chaos,” Carty said. ​“We were packed down there. It was great. We used to have to close the kitchen at five on a Friday because there were so many people in there. We were going for the Irish staples … fish and chips, shepherds’ pie, beef and guinness [stew], corned beef, cabbage … just to start off with something and grow from there. We needed something on paper.

“We did a couple staples at the time, and then the menu progressed. Like I’d go home, and I’d eat in restaurants in Dublin and around Ireland, and I’d have different ideas about stuff, and I‘d try experimenting with all the things and see where they’d go from there.”

For five years, life at Anna Liffey’s was very good. Eventually, and for reasons he didn’t want to get into in the interview, he felt stymied by the operation. So did Higgins, who stuck around a little longer.

The two bounced around New Haven, working different jobs. They agreed they wanted to go into business together, and began scouting out locations. And then in 2015, Damien Cashman and Colin O’Toole made them an offer for their pub on Orange Street.

“We’d been looking around for a while, myself and Eddie, and I’d left the Liffey … We were delighted,” Carty said.

The beginning wasn’t easy. After leaving the lawyer’s office, the two arrived at the pub only to realize that they’d left the keys at home, and that the fire alarms were going off because the phone lines had been cut. Carty remembers trying to assuage firefighters who threatened to break the door in while his wife was on the way with the keys.

Then community member Jason Cusack reminded them that he had booked the space for a fundraiser for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, with an estimated 500 attendees coming 14 days from the sale date. They had two weeks to prepare the space, which ​“looked like a bomb had gone off in there,” Carty remembered. He and Higgins worked round-the-clock shifts to make it happen, Carty putting the finishing touches on the woodwork and mopping the floors just an hour before the first attendees arrived. He put down the mop and went right into the kitchen to get cooking, keeping the first order that came through.

It’s been, both of them said, a very wild ride. But a year and two weeks in to owning the Trinity, they’re very happy they stayed in New Haven. 

“We’ve a lot of good customers, and a lot of good regulars, and a lot of people who’ve supported us over the years. We wouldn’t be here for a year if we hadn’t the support,” Carty said. ​“I think it’s all about bringing people downtown, bringing people to this area. It’ll benefit all the businesses … but it’s a in-win. If everyone comes down to this area, I think it’s great for everybody.”

To listen to a partner episode of WNHH radio’s ​“Kitchen Sync” on Carty and Higgins, click on or download the audio above, or subscribe to our new ​“WNHH Arts Mix” podcast to have the episode delivered directly to your phone or smart device. This episode was produced in concert with ​“Open for Business,” which is supported by Frontier Communications. Frontier is proud to be Connecticut’s hometown provider of TV, Internet and Phone for your home and business. Call 1.888.Frontier or visit frontier.com to learn more.