ST. PATRICK’S Day takes place around Lent, but just for St. Paddy, the restrictions on fasting from food and alcohol are lifted on this Irish holiday. Marco Polo Plaza Cebu had an extended St. Patrick’s Day celebration earlier this month, offering traditional and modern Irish dishes on top of the regular buffet in Café Marco for five days.

People typically celebrate not just the Irish patron saint, but everything Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. This means a lot of hearty dishes of meat, potatoes and cheese are served. The buffet setup was verdant and cheerful with green décor and four leaf clovers everywhere. Several of the dishes were themselves green, from the asparagus salad, herb cheese balls, and green deviled eggs, to the green velvet cupcakes and other desserts adorned with shamrocks and leprechaun hats. The traditional Irish fare included bacon and cabbage soup; coddled pork with cider; Dublin coddle; roast potatoes with bacon, apple and onion; cheesy Reuben loaf; and some spiked with just a little bit of alcohol, such as beer-battered broccoli with herbed aioli; beer mac and cheese; pork chops in whiskey cream sauce; sticky whiskey-glazed ribs; corned beef and cabbage in dark beer; and whiskey cake.

Beer is always free-flowing wherever St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated around the world. As we visited Café Marco at lunch and most of us still had to return to work, we passed on the beer, but Guinness was available for those who could say, “it’s always five o’clock somewhere!”