Kitty O'Shea’s Irish Pub

Kitty O'Shea’s Irish Pub
298 Cabot St.
Beverly, MA
978-927-0300

Preface:
As we re-discover in the holiday season, some of the best things come in
small packages. Kitty O'Shea's Irish Pub is a small, unassuming chunk of
the 'ould sod'.

One of the keys to its allure is that it doesnt try too hard. Although
some of the patrons can certainly pitch the blarney, the place isnt
festooned with shamrocks and leprechauns. It carries the look and feel of
a neighborhood pub, a place to shift down, join a gab fest, or ponder the
meaning of it all while staring down a pint of Guinness. Alerted to the
place by a neighbor whose nephew attends nearby Monserrat College of Art,
said neighbor and I drove to Beverly, MA to see if the myth matched the
reality.

The fellow sporting the taupe colored Guinness baseball cap swivels around in his seat at the twinkling twelve-seat L shaped bar crammed with memorabilia, whiskey bottles and eight hefty beer taps. From my perch on one of the banquettes that line the far side of this intimate outpost that looks like it could have been air dropped from Galway onto Cabot Street in Beverly, he’s heard me ask the barkeeper how many years the place has been in business.

Half drained pint of Guinness in his big hand, Frank Quinn takes this as an invitation. He ambles over and squeezes comfortably in a chair at the tiny table. His pre retirement career was as a head lineman for the phone company. These days, he’s the mayor of Kitty O'Shea’s. If Guinness is a restorative beverage, he could well be a daily fixture on his stool for another twenty years. Frank is a teller of tales. He sets out to fill me in on the short sweet history of this hometown pub.

 

“I was the first customer in the door when they opened the place ten years ago,” he says with a disarming smile. “There are three main groups of patrons here. Local workers come in for lunch. Craftsmen, including Irish plasterers, stonemasons are among the regulars between 4 and 6pm. The young crowd, locals and students, make the place look like a Rathskeller after 9pm,” he says.

He surveys the bar and notes fishermen with roots in Donegal and Gloucester and a semi retired RR man sipping at the bar.

Montserrat College, Endicott Junior College, and Salem State are all within minutes of Kitty O’Shea’s. With its unassuming attitude and inexpensive pub food, it’s a natural draw for twenty somethings who thrive on the no cover live music and karaoke nearly every night of the week. And the endless supply of black and tans that flow from those eight hefty beer taps.

Students aren’t the only members of academia who pound down a pint here. Friday afternoons local teachers flock to the bar to unwind after week of lesson plans aimed at tots, teenagers, and collegians. The posters of Synge, Yeats, Wilde, and Beckett and little bookshelves built into the ochre shaded walls distance Kitty's from the chips and Bud bars elsewhere in town.

Frank points to the two plasma TVs. One is dedicated to English Premier League Soccer (DirecTV), which happens to be airing a game as we speak. It’s highly unlikely the oligarchy controlling that console will be viewing ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ anytime soon. The other TV airs sport on this side of the Atlantic, big helpings of Patriots, Red Sox, and Celtics.

The aforementioned, of course, is conducive to hydration with hops and barley. You could float a small barge on the nineteen kegs Frank reckons are sucked dry here each week.

I’ve just about picked clean my first introduction to ‘bangers and mash’ (Irish sausage and whipped potatoes) when Frank tells me about the weekly highlight at Kitty’s.

“Saturday afternoons between 4 and 6 pm is the weekly meeting of the AHA Club,” he says, knowing that I’m about to be the straight man and ask, “What the dickens is that?”

“It initially stood for the ‘Abused Husbands Anonymous’ but welcomes any man who can claim ‘abuse’ (in the loosest of terms, mind you) from a wife, girlfriend, sister, mother, auntie, or any other ambassador of the fair sex."

I’ve just been invited to join the current membership of about fifty male members of the AHA Club.

“At about 5:30, my wife Nina and a few other objects of the AHA Club stroll in for their own pint of Guinness. By 6 pm, they herd us out for the night,” he grins.

The young Irish waitresses hold their own with the AHA’s. Saturday afternoon, an urn labeled “Ashes of Problem Customers” is set alongside the one labeled “Ashes of Ex-Wives.”

Kitty O’Shea's just doesn’t seem like a place where “troubles”, whether political, marital, or civil have a chance to run the table. Ten years ago, Al Wayne of Marblehead and Mike Fahey of Melrose via Galway wanted to open a small authentic Irish pub and felt there was a clientele that would ‘get it.’

If one believes the gospel according to Frank Quinn, they achieved it- in spades…well, shamrocks.

To see the pub menu, click http://www.northshoreonline.com/kittyosheaspub/ 

Comments

[Erin]

You did a lovely job of capturing Kitty's ambiance in the piece. I printed it and gave it to my colleague to read--she is both a fan of Kitty's and your writing!

[John Done]

Great place. I visited often when Tony had it in 1997. Sammy of Shamrock Shiners was always good for the craic.