Gallagher’s Headed Back to the Eagle House
Amid the rise and fall and relocation of Old Town restaurants, one spot is returning to how it used to be. Gallagher’s Irish Restaurant and Pub is headed back to its digs in the Eagle House (139 Second St., Eureka) in early 2025. As Jessica Silva reported in the forthcoming issue of My Humboldt Life, Mark Hill, who bought the restaurant in 2023 from Kelly Erbin, will be returning to the pub’s Irish roots, as well, letting go of the pizza menu and focusing on Irish fare.
Hill says he’s felt good about the business and the customers it’s drawn in the current Fourth Street spot. But there’s no denying the space most recently occupied by Tavern 1888, which closed in August, is the winner for foot traffic and atmosphere. Once he heard about the availability, Hill tells the Journal he contacted the owners of the Inn at 2nd & C and the former Tavern 1888.
“We’re going to go back to an Irish pub,” says Hill over the phone. “I want somebody to feel like they can bring a date there without breaking the bank.”
Current staffers, including some longtime Gallagher’s kitchen staff, will be moving over to the Eagle House location and making the fish and chips that has earned it a following.
The pizza, a leftover from Erbin’s Shenanigans restaurant in the Fourth Street spot, will be phased out and the Irish menu will expand. “My daughter and I went to Dublin a couple months ago and thought we need to check out some things for investigative purposes,” says Hill. Among the new items will be boxty potato dumplings with corned beef and a parsley cream sauce, as well as colcannon (mash with cabbage) and some vegetarian options.
Hill says the Eagle House kitchen will need another hood to accommodate a second fryer. He’s hopeful all the construction needed will go quickly enough to allow a February opening, and that he’ll be able to make the move with only a few days of operation lost to moving from Fourth Street.
Hot Pot Spot
Among the teeming suggestions for food-related resolutions for 2025, consider committing to more communal eating. Sharing a meal from a common bowl or platter, and tipping our faces into the steam together, is a balm to our beleaguered bodies and minds. We’re going to need it.
Enter Ginger (1835 Fourth St., Eureka), which has meandered between pan-Asian and Korean-inspired dishes on its menu, and which may have found its footing with the installation of several hot pot-ready tables with built-in burners.
In the gloom of January rain, the spicy broth is a cheek-pinking relief, though not as intensely hot as its volcanic appearance — crowded with dried red chiles and vermillion oil — suggests. The garlic cloves will cook down to salty little gems, so don’t lose them at the bottom. The $30 minimum is easily met (if not necessarily finished) for two with a few vegetables, proteins and a pile of fresh noodles as a finale once all the other ingredients have added to the broth’s flavor.
The protein options alone are legion: marinated spicy beef, pork belly, Spam, shrimp, cuttlefish balls and a trio of bean curds among them. Rosy curls of lamb shoulder frozen and sliced paper thin ($14.95) are a favorite, along with soft tofu ($5.95) and bundles of white enoki mushrooms ($6.95). A pile of Napa cabbage or bok choy ($4.95) rounds out the meal and adds a little sweetness to the pot.
Once all the table is crowded with ingredients and the pot of broth comes to a boil, your true selves emerge. Is one of you unspoken wielder of the tongs, adding portions to the pot and divvying them up for the rest of you? Is yours a cooperative collective? Is one of you a side sauce alchemist? Heaven forbid, is there a mushroom hog among you? Who’s going to ask for the bowls or the eggs you were considering? You’ll need steady hydration, patience (nothing retains heat like soft tofu) and time to linger. All excellent resolutions anyway.
Share your tips about What’s Good with Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her), arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in Through Mark Larson’s Lens 2025.
