United Nations of Beer

The Candahar

by Emily Urquhart
(Beer Delegate, NL, Canada)

Emily Urquhart reviews The Candahar
Beer and Art, part one

Artists have always enjoyed a good relationship with beer. Centuries of creative minds have come together in local watering holes: barking existentialist bravado over pints of stout; extolling the virtues of abstraction over lager; and slinging draft to cover studio rent.

One Canadian artist had the great idea of bringing the beer and the bar to artists and their patrons, and created a portable Irish pub. The Candahar, by artist Theo Sims, is an installation work that mimics the traditional alehouse, right down to the brogue-tongued bartender. (Surely he should be Australian? Ed.)

The structure and contents can be broken down and shipped long distances and then re-assembled on arrival. The bartender stays in one piece of course, and is not required to fly in the plane's storage hold.

The Belfast-style pub may have sat in the humidified space of The Rooms, a provincial gallery in St. John's, but once inside you were teleported immediately across the Atlantic. Named after a street in Belfast, the pub has four walls, booth seating, a stylish mahogany bar and there's even a horse-race in progress on the telly.

The working taps pour local Storm Irish Red, but the dark red ale could be mistaken for a Smithwicks if you squint and sip slowly. (Both are hop-light and flavour rich.)

Shortly after the first few pours are dolled out on opening night, an over-zealous patron smashes a pint on the floor. A disaster in any other art installation, but the unmistakable crunch of glass underfoot further authenticates this work of fine art.

Another enthusiastic patron claims that she got "real loaded in this place in Montreal." This delegate also had a sense of drinking deja-vu when stepping in to The Candahar. The hostelry uncannily recreates the ubiquitous locals I'd frequented during the Irish period of my beer research: a summer spent working and drinking my way through the country of my ancestors.

What this pub doesn't have is any of the usual Leprechaun and shamrock decor found in Irish-themed pubs outside the Emerald Isle. In comparison, it stacks up heftily against O'Brien's in Kyiv, Ukraine where I blearily reported on St. Patrick's Day in 2004. Unlike that Soviet drink-up, there are no fuzzy Guinness beer hats in sight.

So what exactly is an authentic Irish pub? I'd recommend that you visit this alehouse and ponder this question over a frothy pint, but sadly the place has gone packing... apparently to Cambridge, Ontario. Close to where I'm from. Something tells me that I'll cross paths with The Candahar again.