Matters Of PUB-Lic Interest
BY LLOYD GORMAN
FOXY JOHNNY It’s always good to walk into a pub and be greeted by a familiar and friendly face, and that is exactly what punters will get with Johnny Fox’s in Northbridge, the reincarnated Rosie O’Grady’s. Paul Moloney has been a fixture of the Irish pub trade and multiple venues around Perth – and before that back in his native Dublin – for some time now, but the opening of Johnny Fox’s in early February represents the pinnacle of his career as a publican. He and his business partner want to share his vision of a great local with everyone who walks through the door of the James Street venue. His arrival as a co-owner of Johnny Fox’s with Clint Nolan of Lavish Habits has been a long time in the making. Paul can trace his pedigree back to some of Dublin’s most iconic and famous public houses. “I went into hospitality when I was 15,” Paul told Irish Scene. “From my Junior Cert to Leaving Cert I was always working in pubs at the weekend and I just loved it, the atmosphere, the craic and everything about it. And it runs in the family. My grandmother used to run Mulligans in Poolbeg Street and she lived above the pub for years, and my father was a lounge boy and then a bar man there too. I used to go there a lot and there was a bartender there who knew my grandmother and he always remembered me after the first time I went there. I also had an uncle who 44 | THE IRISH SCENE
Left: A familiar face around the Perth pub scene – Paul Moloney behind the bar at the new Johnny Fox’s. Above: Mulligans in Poolbeg Street, once run by Paul’s grandmother. worked in Davy Byrnes in Grafton Street, so it runs deep in my family’s history.” Paul’s ambitions of becoming an architect were quickly supplanted by his true calling. “I dropped out of college where I was studying architecture to become a bartender full time”. He went on to study the hospitality at DIT in Cathal Brugha and Mountjoy Square which gave him a good grounding in the theory and practicals of the occupation. “When I was working as a bartender it was considered a trade. I was doing my apprenticeship and I was a part of the union. I had a head bartender who was training me so I went into it full on and enjoyed it.”
