By Marco Shalma

You can’t talk about the foundation of New York without talking about the Irish. Not the postcards. The real story. The one carved through docks, firehouses, precincts, subway tunnels, and cold-water flats where families stacked themselves like playing cards and still found a way to make home feel like home. The Irish arrived in massive numbers in the mid-1800s, fleeing famine and looking for any job a city would offer. What they carried with them wasn’t fancy. It was resourceful, filling, and built for survival.

Soda bread is the perfect example. Born in a country where wheat was low-quality and yeast was expensive, Irish cooks used baking soda to leaven dough quickly. No fuss, no delay, no special equipment. When Irish immigrants settled in neighborhoods like Five Points, Hell’s Kitchen, and Woodlawn, soda bread followed them into tiny apartments and boarding houses. It was one of the few foods that stretched across pay cycles. It filled bellies before dawn, before shifts digging canals or hauling freight. It’s humble, but don’t confuse humble with weak. That bread kept families upright.

Corned beef has its own New York twist. Back in Ireland, beef was too costly for everyday families. But in New York, Irish immigrants lived near Jewish and Eastern European communities on the Lower East Side where kosher butchers sold brisket — cheap, tough, perfect for salting and boiling. Irish cooks adopted it, adapted it, and turned it into the hearty dish we now link to St. Patrick’s Day in America. This wasn’t nostalgia food. It was strategic. Affordable, rich, and reliable. It fed workers who had nothing left after rent and union dues. In New York, corned beef became an Irish badge.

Shepherd’s pie closed the loop. Traditionally made with lamb in Ireland, but often beef in New York due to availability and cost, it was the working-class casserole that kept households steady. Meat, vegetables, gravy, mashed potatoes sealing the top like insulation. In the old Irish tenements, a single tray could feed a crowd — kids, cousins, neighbors who wandered in after long shifts. It’s the kind of meal that makes noise when you scoop into it, which feels appropriate for a community that refused to be quiet.

Irish New Yorkers didn’t just bring food. They brought institutions: the FDNY, the NYPD, major labor unions, and half the city’s early political machinery. Their food became the warm part of that history, tucked inside the grit.

If you want to taste the lineage today, go to The Long Hall Pub & Grocery for soda bread served with the respect it deserves. Visit Paddy Reilly’s or Molly’s Shebeen — places where corned beef isn’t a gimmick. And head to The Dead Rabbit downtown, where the modern Irish kitchen still nods back to its roots while feeding a new generation.

Now you know: Irish food didn’t arrive to impress. It arrived to endure — and ended up shaping the backbone of New York’s working spirit.