A taste of the Irish
By Stacy Trevenon- stacy@hmbreview.com In the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company kitchen, Executive Chef John Brown is a cook who demands authentic flavors in his dishes. Friendly but with the quick speech attributed to the Irish, Brown, 60, can tell you stories while he's whipping up dinner - without blarney.

He's debunks St. Patrick's Day myths - like corned beef and cabbage. Instead, he insists, bacon and cabbage is the Irish national dish. "St. Patrick's Day is an American invention," he snorted. He's not Irish, but a California native son of a restaurant family who started cooking because "I needed a job." He's been a chef for 42 years, and with the pub for four. On and off for 20 of those years, he lived and cooked in Ireland, and ran the John A. Brown Cooking School in Tipperary. His wife of 20 years, Mary Geraldine Aylward-Brown, hails from Tipperary.

Faith and begorrah, it all rubbed off - as brew pub visitors will find at "A Celtic Rock Weekend." From Friday, March 16 through Sunday, March 18, there will be music with an Irish flair and menus stocked with Irish fare - from Claddagh to Shana Morrison to corned beef.

Brown's Irish dishes pop up on the pub's menu all year, and are available all weekend from noon till closing time. They include Dublin Irish stew, tipsy trifle, and O'Mavericks Irish Red Ale, brewed up specially by brewer Alec Moss for the weekend. "It's a better food than people realize," Brown said. Dublin Irish stew is a concoction with carrots, onions, mashed potatoes and kale. Tipsy trifle is made of whiskey-soaked sponge cake with custard and berries and whipped cream.

And yes, there will be corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots. "People don't know how these things got mixed up," Brown said. "Bacon and cabbage - most Americans don't understand."

He pops back to Ireland two or three times a year for culture and cooking tips.He returns with ideas like raspberry fool, served with whipped cream in champagne glasses with a wheat biscuit. "I learned that from a housewife," he said. Or Irish brown bread. "You'd marry a woman for her brown bread," he said. He's also blending food and literature with his cookbook in progress, "Dinner with Juan Fionn McCool." The names are a nod to his own first name, a hero of

Celtic lore - and hints of the eclectic tapestry of recipes inside. "I'm a world-traveled culinary bum," he said. "Cooking is a labor of love."