I try to meet my cousin Sheila for lunch once a month. However, we’ve missed since April so today we made up for it by going to O’Doherty’s Irish Pub in downtown Spokane. I love the atmosphere of the place, and the food is excellent. Both of us had corned beef sandwiches on dark rye bread (toasted), with melted Swiss cheese and grilled onions. For sides, we had garden salads and split a platter of onion rings. The onion rings at O’Doherty’s are marvelous – perfectly shaped, with no loss of crispy batter yet somehow not greasy. Lightly salted, they are a tasty treat.

 

Sheila and I sat in a booth, and I noticed row after row of dollar bills stuck on the wall. The ceilings are extraordinarily high at O’Doherty’s, and the dollar bills ran all the way to the top. Sheila told me every Tuesday night the pub has a live Irish band, and customers who imbibe too much Guinness have the option of standing on the bar and belting out a tune for a dollar discount on their brew. The dollars saved are then marked with the name of the singing-patrons and stuck on the wall. I didn’t count them all, but surely there were more than five hundred of them.

 

The walls of O’Doherty’s also contain posters from Irish movies, sporting events, old and new Guinness advertisements and about four big-screen televisions. Before anyone asks, Sheila had a Guinness while I played it safe and ordered a Pepsi.