The history of Gene McCarthy's began, actually
before Gene, a Polish woman ran the bar
called Julius. It closed in 1963, so Gene and his brother Joe who is known
as the "boss" in the neighborhood opened
it back up. They ran it for quite a few
years into the 2000s when they sold it.
I think a good fish fry is first and
foremost is the fish. We use a
14-ounce piece of haddock - fresh haddock -
and this is a beer-battered example.
We do it several different ways.
To me the ideal fish fry is a big, huge piece of
fish as you can see. Normally it would
be haddock or cod and it also would have
all the homemade sides, and usually
there's the three homemade sides which
would be potato salad, macaroni salad and
coleslaw, and then it's usually served on
a bed of fries. Fish frys are served on
Fridays. It's mainly a thing to do at Lent
with Roman Catholics, because
during Lent you're not allowed to
eat meat on Fridays, so that's how it
came a pretty popular thing in the
Buffalo area.
Beer-battered is a very popular fish fry because I think first
of all we make our own beer here. The
beer we use in our beer batter is Irish
Red Ale for the majority - it's a nice malty
beer, so it adds that nice little added
flavor. We have also experimented with
our oatmeal stout and the
key, I think, is to stay with the malty and
maltier beers. Gene McCarthy's, or Old
First Ward Brewing, is obviously in the
Old First Ward. The Old First Ward is an
old blue collar neighborhood, mostly
Irish. There were grain shovelers for all the
grain silos you can see right from
the front window of the bar.
There's some really beautiful buildings
here, we feel that the bar is just a very
historic place and so we feel really
privileged to be part of that
re-awakening of the Old First Ward.
