Long Island's Irish pubs and restaurants are facing another muted St. Patrick's Day in 2021

It's a long road that has no turning — so it might be said of the last year for bars and restaurants on Long Island, who fell into a grim place last March 16 when coronavirus lockdown began in New York. It was particularly bad timing for those of an Irish bent: March 17 marks their most epic shindig of their year, St. Patrick's Day, and the week in which it falls can net an outsized portion of their annual income. Money that, in turn, is used to keep the proverbial lights on.

The holiday "sets us up for the coming year," said Lorcan Phelan, co-owner of both The Irish Times in Holbook and the James Joyce in Patchogue. "It was unprecedented." When the event falls on a weekend, Phelan explained, a venue can "literally do a month’s worth of business."

Last March, some St. Patrick’s Day parades went on as scheduled in the days preceding lockdown, although many more were postponed indefinitely, such as the gargantuan parade in New York City that draws millions of onlookers that was canceled for the first time in its 250-plus year history. Even so, on the actual holiday — which fell on Tuesday — bars were ready to go with tons of food, literally, as well as step dancers, musicians and enough Guinness and Jamesons to help people forget about a pandemic.

"I personally cooked 2,000 pounds of corned beef and then it was like, ‘oh, crap …’ To have the holiday taken away from you, now you’re scrambling," Phelan said. Mercifully, takeout orders rolled in on St. Patrick’s Day, enabling them to move the food before it spoiled. But the experience left such a scar that Phelan and his partners were anxious to plan anything that smacks of a celebration this year, given people's ongoing nervousness to dine out and the current rules limiting capacity. Breach those, and the penalties can be steep. "I’m not ordering for the next couple of weeks," Phelan said at the end of February, a time when the road to the holiday would usually be clear.

Regulars calling in takeout orders also helped move 600 pounds of corned beef at Connolly Station in Malverne, where owner Gerry Hughes, a Dublin-born, 40-year veteran of the local bar industry, compared the sudden lockdown on March 16 to other calamities he had weathered, such as when Superstorm Sandy flooded a Rockaway Beach bar he owned at the time.

"It was a shock," said Hughes of the lockdown, which came on just about the worst day of the year — when the food had been cooked and plans firmly in place. "Everybody said, ‘if you could just wait one more day …’ But in pubs, people are on top of each other. When you come to think of it, I’d rather let business go and make it up at a later date than have someone get sick and pass away."

Consistently, around half of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day each year, according to an annual survey from Prosper Insights and Analytics. In 2020, about 27% of people planned to toast Ireland's patron saint in a bar or restaurant, a number that has fallen to 10 percent this year. Even still, the study projected consumers would spend $5.1 billion on the holiday, as 92% of those celebrating planned to make St. Patricks Day-related purchases, including food for dining or cooking at home.

Hughes said Connolly Station, which he has owned since 1996, could easily clear a week’s worth of business in one day on March 17, when the bar and kitchen open at 8 a.m. and the place is thronged. "It’s up there with Thanksgiving eve," Hughes said, one of the other busiest bar nights of the year, one that was also kiboshed in 2020.

Still, he was thankful for small blessings: The support of the local chamber of commerce, a collection that went around for Connolly Station's servers, his outdoor patio — which was busy during the warmer months of 2020 — and more unexpectedly, Connolly Station's high wooden booths, which he almost took out at one point but became built-in partitions when indoor dining reopened. "It’s a tough time to be doing business," he said. "If we can get through the next couple of months, we’ll be on the other side. I feel sorry for any restaurant or bar that just opened last year, and were not yet established. They’re the ones that don’t have people to come out to support them."

On St. Patrick's Day, Connolly Station will have a bagpiper out front but no live music inside; Hughes has his fingers crossed for a warm day. In Holbrook, The Irish Times will have a more muted celebration than in years past, as well as takeout specials with dishes such as potato soup, corned beef and cabbage and cheesecake made with Baileys Irish Cream. The step dancers will be in absentia, though.

"There’s definitely a sense that people want to get back to normal," Phelan said. "I don’t think anyone thought it would last for a year."