Tigin Irish Pub & Restaurant has closed, according to a March 25 announcement on the restaurant’s Facebook page from owners Libby Baer and Kieran McGill.
The post read, in part: “We closed our doors, due to the COVID-19 shutdown on March 19, 2020. We thought this closure would be relatively short term temporary; initially a few weeks, then a few months. Now it’s been a full year. We think downtown St.Louis will bounce back from the pandemic eventually and when it does we would love to continue to be a part of it. However, for now, we’ve made the decision to close the pub indefinitely.”
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In the post, the owners said they couldn’t settle on a single good-bye photo, and hoped that customers would share their photos in the comment section, thereby providing a mutual trip down memory lane. Customers responded (especially on Baer’s personal page), in tissue-grabbing fashion. “Some days you wonder why you do what you do,” Baer reflects. “When you see dozens of supportive photos like this, you remember.”
Tigin is part of of a larger restaurant group, Fadó Pubs, LLC. The current roster includes eight Fadó Irish Pubs, a fine dining spinoff, Fadó Pub & Kitchen, and two Tigin locations, the flagship, in Stamford, Connecticut, and an airport pub at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Baer, who still does marketing for the parent company, says that the company applied for PPP stimulus money as a whole and doled it out to the pubs with the best chances to survive. “Downtown [St. Louis] has its ebbs and flows,” she said. “We had good years, we survived the arrival of Ballpark Village, and then came the loss of the Rams.” Baer said that the downtown area was hit especially hard by Covid and that recovery will be especially slow.
The St. Louis outpost, situated inside the downtown Hampton Inn, at 333 Washington, served both Irish and Irish-influenced pub food. Shepherd’s pie, corned beef, and potato dumplings shared menu space with harp-battered chicken tenders, sliders with Guinness mayo, and a worthy kale and barley salad. Breakfast, including an Irish Breakfast with eggs, Irish sausages, rashers, black and white pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes, and Guinness cheddar bread, was served all day. Tigin featured a selection of whiskies (not all of them Irish), and a devotee claimed that the St. Louis pub had “absolutely the best pour of Guinness in St. Louis.”
The owners, in Irish proverbial may the road rise up to meet you fashion, ended the Facebook post with a silver lining: “As a family, we experienced a lot, and COVID has taught us you never know what the future brings. So, we’re waiting for downtown to bounce back and, when it does, we will look at our options again.”
