The Cask and Kettle has opened its third location at the Westfield Golf and Country Club in Grand Bay-Westfield, but co-owner Mike McPartland says that’s not all the Irish pub has in store for the Saint John region in 2023.
This will be the third Cask and Kettle location for McPartland and his partner Shawn Verner, after opening their second on Rothesay’s Clark Road in 2021, and the original at 112 Prince William Street in 2016.
The new location opened in May, quickly picking up the vacant spot after the Grass Roots Grill closed in early 2023. McPartland says it was a very quick decision to move forward with the location after seeing the space.
“It literally came up out of the blue,” McPartland says. “We hadn’t even thought about it…then a friend of mine called and said this place is available and they’re looking for an operator.”
It was such a spur-of-the-moment decision that McPartland brought two managers from the other locations to check it out.
“The other owner was away, he didn’t even see it,” McPartland says. “Shawn and I, we’ve got such a good partnership that he trusts my decisions and I trust his. So he was like: ‘If you think it’s going to work, let’s go!’”
That was on a Friday, and by Sunday the proposal to take on the new space had been submitted. And it’s been full steam ahead ever since.
The location has seating for approximately 85 people inside with another 60 seats between the public and members-only patios.
As with all the other Cask and Kettle locations, McPartland has called on his brother, John, to provide an artistic flair to the space, painting stunning murals on the 18-foot walls. While they don’t tie in as much with the Irish experience as the other locations, they do reflect on the history of the golf club and the Cask and Kettle’s place in it.
“They’re fantastic,” McPartland says of the murals. His artist brother, who researched, planned and executed the new mural designs in the tight timelines before the new location’s opening, pulled a few all-nighters to get the job done.
“He’d be up on the scaffold until two in the morning. One night he pulled out an old carpet and laid it in the middle of the floor…. He slept on the floor while we were doing renovations.”
Bringing over staff from the two other Cask and Kettle locations has helped smooth the transition to the new space, and McPartland says the menu will include almost all of the dishes patrons of the other locations will know and love.
But as if that wasn’t enough, McPartland and Verner are also in the process of opening up their own brewery this month.
“It’s right across from the Zesty Lemon on Somerset St.,” McPartland says. “It’s going to be a production facility…for the three locations and the licensees. And then somewhere down the road, probably in the near future there’ll be a taproom there as well.”
The brewery will produce five beers with names all relating back to the Cask and Kettle’s first location: Mickey Finn’s Pale Ale, Lady Aberdeen’s Irish Red, Slippery Bill Pub Ale, Sweet William’s Honey Wheat, and John Dunn’s IPA.
“The original location of Cask and Kettle Uptown, back in 1890, was owned by a guy named Michael Finn and it was a liquor emporium,” says McPartland. “We’ve actually got pictures of [him] standing outside of the location and it looks exactly like the location now because it’s a heritage building.”
He says that he’s done some brewing with Loyalist City’s Mark McGraw, but that going whole hog into being a standalone brewery, as opposed to a supplier for Cask and Kettle, isn’t really in the cards in the near term as McPartland wants to focus on providing high-quality food and beverages to his customers at the Cask and Kettle.
“We just have really high food quality,” he says, noting that one of his favourite menu items, steak, is cut in-house.
“Whether you’re getting our steaks or our tacos, or burgers and fries, or salads. There are levels to everything and our level is quite high.”
Alex Graham is a reporter with Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
