Galway man and his partner enjoying a roaring trade in Irish fast food in San Francisco

Larry Griffin, from Cloch Mor – a small village not far from Ros an Mhíl in Galway – moved to the United States 12 years ago and now lives in San Francisco, California.

In the US Larry, who owns a concrete company, met his girlfriend Megan Harty, an American school teacher who also has a strong Irish background as her father is from County Tipperary and her mother is adopted from County Cork.

Together, the couple recently decided to bring the best of the Irish food tradition to San Francisco.

Megan explained: “We basically saw a need for it in the Bay area, we kind of just decided to do it, and go for it.”

After buying a truck from a couple that used it to make pasta, the duo chose the name ‘The Hungry Leprechaun’ as Larry explained: “I wanted to call it the Paddy Wagon originally, but I don’t think a lot of Americans would have gotten the humour as much as the Irish.”

Then, they had an Irish priest bless the truck and asked an Irish designer from overseas – Clare man Ian Malone - to design their logo.

Finally, in November 2023 everything was ready so the couple and their team officially opened The Hungry Leprechaun for the first time, and with a very Irish menu.

Megan said: “We’re very blessed with a great team. We have a wonderful chef, he has a nice diverse background, and he’s very thoughtful about picking his ingredients. We kind of told him what we wanted to do, and he kind of took our menu and helped us really take it to the next level.

Larry added: “We wanted to keep it as Irish fast food as we could so all your local chippers in Ireland are gonna have fish and chips, sausage and chips, curry fries, taco fries, garlic and cheese chips and burgers, chicken sandwich, so we wanted to keep it on that. But every Thursday when we’re out we do a special, so you have your Guinness Irish stew, your Shepherd's pie, bangers and mash and all that. We want to keep it as Irish as we can.”

Megan said: “It’s definitely a lot of work, and we are learning as we go, we are improving week by week, we’ve been very busy, making adjustments and learning.

“It’s a lot of work, but we definitely knew that going in, we shook hands and said that it is going to be one year of a lot of work, but I think we’re both having fun and we’re really enjoying it, it’s something different for us, it’s challenging but in a good way.”

And Hungry Leprechaun immediately became popular in the area as the food truck is also available for private parties, weddings, birthdays and more.

The team got so busy that they even had to cancel their December holidays as they got “super slammed” with Christmas party requests.

Larry said: “We didn’t expect to be this busy, I think on our first day we served over 350 people, and then we were in the Irish cultural centre a few weeks ago, they had a dancing sesh on and we had ran out of food by 8.30 that night, we were there from 10am.

“We sold absolutely everything by 8.30pm and it was absolutely milling rain in the evening, we still had a queue of people still trying to get the food.”

And the couple has no intention to stop as Megan said: “we really look forward to seeing where this takes us and we’re very, very grateful, a huge thank you to all our friends and family and everybody who has come out and supported us on our first few weeks, it really means a lot.”