BAR REVIEW: Shenanigans, the Irish Pub That Has Found Its Place in Bangkok

Our last little adventure in search of great authentic pubs took us to The Watch Tower, in Lewisham, South London, and this month I found myself at Shenanigans Irish Sports Bar and Restaurant in Surawong, Bangkok.

Surawong Road itself is one of those stretches of the city that seems to hold two different worlds at once. By day it is all tailor shops, gem dealers and the low hum of Bangkok traffic, but by night the road wakes up into a proper night out district, with bars, restaurants and late night eateries spilling their light and noise onto the pavement. It sits close enough to the Patpong night market and the bustle of Silom to pull in a mixed crowd of expats, tourists and Thai locals who have finished work and fancy a cold pint before heading home.

Shenanigans has carved out its own little corner of that world, and it does not take long to see why it has become something of an institution among the regulars. It is the typical Irish pub that you’ll find outside of Ireland.

The Irish pub theme has managed to successfully be transported to many different corners of the world. Throughout much of Asia, Europe, and in many cities in the US, you’ll find an Irish Pub, always selling draught Guinness and much of the time, pretty good pub food.

It’s a curious thing, really, how the Irish pub has become one of the most successfully exported concepts in the entire hospitality world. You can walk into a version of it in Singapore, Shanghai, Dubai or Chicago and know almost instinctively what to expect before you have even pushed open the door. The formula rarely changes much: a well kept pint of stout, a wall of whiskey optics, a bit of Gaelic football or hurling on in the background, and a warmth to the service that manages to feel personal even when the pub itself is thousands of miles from Galway or Cork. Shenanigans fits neatly into that tradition, and it wears the identity with more sincerity than some of the more obviously franchised versions of the concept.

The booze here is good, and the food and waitress service is excellent. The decor is the standard green walls and dark wood that is typical of Irish pubs, and the bar and outside terrace has plenty of seating and tv’s everywhere you want them showing a variety of live sports. They have live music most nights, and the place really buzzes with a vibe that fits this part of the city perfectly.

The terrace in particular deserves a mention. Bangkok evenings can be muggy, but a handful of electric fans and a steady breeze off the street make the outdoor seating a genuinely pleasant spot to while away a few hours, especially once the sun has gone down and the neon signs along Surawong start to flicker on. Inside, the pub keeps a cosier, more traditional feel, with the kind of low lighting and worn wooden furniture that makes you forget for a moment that you are not actually in Dublin or Belfast. The television screens are positioned well enough that you can follow a match from almost any seat in the house, whether it is Premier League football, rugby or one of the American sports that draw in the expat crowd on weekend afternoons.

On the occasion that we visited, one of our group was a Thai lady who began speaking to a waitress who clearly never understood her because she replied in English, stating, “Sorry no Thai, I’m from Yangon”. We went on to discover that nearly all the staff were also Burmese. Apparently, this is quite common in the pub and much of the hospitality industry in Bangkok, as they receive a lower amount of salary than their Thai counterparts. Although I don’t necessarily agree with this policy, everyone should be paid equally in my book, it is a normal and acceptable practice in this part of town.

It’s a small thing, but one that says a good deal about how the hospitality trade in a city like Bangkok actually works behind the scenes. Migrant labour from Myanmar has become a significant part of the workforce across bars, restaurants and hotels throughout Thailand, and the pub trade is no exception.

For the staff themselves, the wages on offer, even at a lower rate than their Thai colleagues might earn, can still represent a big improvement over what is available at home, and many send a good portion of what they earn back to family. It does not make the pay gap any easier to justify, but it does help explain why the practice persists and why it is so widespread across the industry.

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Our waitress for the evening was excellent; the food was ordered and delivered easily, and the Guinness and Chang beers kept flowing. She ended up with a nice-sized and well-deserved tip at the end of the evening. To which she gave an Irish-style double thumbs up.

It is that kind of small, cheerful gesture that tends to stick in the memory long after the meal itself has been forgotten. Good service in a pub is not really about efficiency, although Shenanigans certainly had that in spades; it is about the warmth behind it, and our waitress had plenty of that on offer. She kept the drinks coming without ever being asked twice, checked in on the table at exactly the right moments, and never once let the pace of a busy evening rush drop the standard of care.

Three out of the four of us plumped for the good sized beer battered cod, hand cut chips and garden peas, lots of salt and malt vinegar went over mine, not exactly what my doctor recommends to me, but it was delicious. Our Thai friend had a local dish that I’d never heard of before, but it looked good, and she smiled all the way throughout the meal. I doubt it would go down very well in Dublin, but the fish and chips certainly would.

Fish and chips is one of those dishes that separates the pretenders from the genuine article when it comes to Irish and British style pubs abroad. Get the batter wrong, or serve up soggy chips, and the whole illusion falls apart rather quickly. Shenanigans clearly takes the dish seriously.

The cod arrived properly flaky under a batter with a good crunch to it, the chips were thick cut and well seasoned, and the peas had that comforting, slightly sweet flavour that ties the whole plate together. It is not a complicated dish to get right on paper, but plenty of pubs manage to get it wrong all the same, and it was reassuring to see a kitchen this far from the British Isles nail it so convincingly.

A solo singer playing the guitar was the entertainment for the evening, and she was bubbly and full of fun, providing an excellent touch to an equally excellent evening. Her set moved easily between old classic rock singalongs and a few more contemporary numbers, and she had a knack for reading the room, picking up the tempo whenever a table looked like it needed a bit of encouragement and dialling it back during the quieter stretches of the evening.

By the time she wrapped up her final song, a fair few tables around the pub, ours included, were singing along under their breath, which is about as good a sign as any that the live music at Shenanigans is doing exactly what it is meant to do.

What struck me most about the evening, looking back on it now, is how faithfully Shenanigans manages to recreate the feeling of a proper pub night out despite being on the other side of the world from where the concept originated.

The Guinness poured well, the food was honest and generous, the staff worked hard and clearly took pride in what they were doing, and the music gave the whole evening a lift it might otherwise have lacked. For anyone spending an evening in this part of Bangkok and looking for a bit of that familiar pub warmth, Shenanigans is well worth seeking out.

Sláinte - as they say over there in the Emerald Isle...