When Molly McGarry visited her father during a trip to Bellingham in 2005, her and her partner David Rooney were disappointed to learn that Bellingham lacked a true Irish pub. Both were living in San Francisco at the time and working at a popular Irish bar there. They still went out that night, but found little satisfaction with the bars they visited in Bellingham. One bar didn’t serve Guinness; another couldn’t properly pour a pint of it.
The next morning after breakfast downtown, McGarry and Rooney happened to walk by a vacant space at 1319 Commercial Street that was for lease. Intrigued, they inquired about it, then left Bellingham to go back to San Francisco.
Not long after, on St. Patrick’s Day of 2006, Uisce Irish Pub opened its doors in their original location. This original location has since closed and in June 2024, they opened the doors to their new location at 1409 Cornwall Ave in Downtown Bellingham.
Uisce, the Gaelic word for “water,” is pronounced “Ish-Kah.” It’s among the biggest and best Irish pubs between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., and boasts arguably the largest selection of scotch and Irish whiskey in Bellingham. “This is my second home,” says McGarry.
McGarry – a San Francisco transplant who attended High School in Bellingham – met Rooney (originally from Dublin) in New York City in 2002. It was in New York City that McGarry was trained in the bar business, and developed a love for the community that make a good bar succesful. They worked together in New York before taking additional stints working in Irish bars in Seattle and San Francisco
Although there were opportunities to own bars in both the Big Apple and the City by the Bay, the pair finally took up bar ownership in Bellingham, the City of Subdued Excitement. Their new venture was hard work. “We built everything in this place,” McGarry says.
The signature physical feature of Uisce is undoubtedly the bar itself: a long, elegant piece of custom-made African mahogany designed and built by Tom Lutz, a Lummi Island woodworker who’d never carved a bar before. After construction, the bar was delivered to the space swaddled in blankets.
“It’s our baby,” McGarry says of the bar, adding that it was designed to allow customers to stand comfortably with friends while also having enough space to sit and cross their legs.
Rooney is no longer involved in the business, and Molly took over solo operation of Uisce, while raising her daughter, Saoirse. It’s an experience in which she’s learned a lot, especially regarding the essential ability to delegate responsibilities to her employees.
“To be successful, you cannot do everything,” says McGarry, who is still very much a hands-on owner, bartending a couple of days a week. This provides her a way to accurately assess how her business is operating. “You can actually talk to your customers and you can talk to the service people,” she says. “It’s just what a good owner does.”
Uisce is open every day of the year, including Christmas, and while it hosts fun Halloween and New Year’s parties, its biggest day is always St. Patrick’s Day.
On this special day the bar always opens early. McGarry and her family march in the local St. Patrick’s Day parade each year, the group carries the pub’s four large shield-shaped flags (representing the four original provinces of Ireland), along with a replica of the large Uisce Irish Pub banner that hung directly above the bar in the original location on Commercial St.
After the McGarrys return to Uisce, with bagpipers in tow, rounds of Guinness and Jameson continue flowing all day, along with Irish music and dancing.
In addition to whiskey and the usual selection of local microbrews, the pub pours proper pints of Guinness (they’re officially certified, by Guinness, to pour the famous stout), Harp lager and Smithwick’s (pronounced ‘Smiddick’s’) red Irish ale.
Uisce’s cocktail menu features classics like the Old Fashioned and Irish coffee, the latter of which is considered a local favorite, especially in the winter. The family recommendation for a proper drink at Uisce, McGarry says, is a pint of Smithwick’s with a shot of 12-year Redbreast Irish whiskey.
McGarry is immensely proud of Uisce and of all the people who’ve inhabited it over the years, from customers to employees, to the spirits of her Irish ancestors whose photographs surround the bar’s fireplace mantle.
“I’ve created a community,” she says. “What we’ve created here is my little piece of Ireland in Bellingham. It’s hard to even put that into words.”
