Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the long-awaited Sean Ryan Pub finally opened its doors last week on 14th Avenue in Vero’s old downtown.
Unlike other local Irish pubs, Sean Ryan’s occupies a large, bright airy space – the better to host the scores of daughters and sons of Erin who are expected to pack it this Friday to hoist a Guinness (or two) to dreams of a visit to the auld sod.
The latest creation of Roger Lenzi, who owns next-door Avanzare, the pub is owned by Dave and Sheila Schweitzer, who are making their first venture into the restaurant and bar business. It is staffed by a number of familiar faces from other Vero dining establishments.
Headline news: In addition to being 14th Avenue’s new “go to” place to drink, Sean Ryan’s offers a menu of Irish-influenced appetizers and entrées that goes beyond pub food, and makes this a fine (and very reasonably priced) choice for evening dining.
While the table cloths in the dining section are dark gray, the dinners being served are the match of what you would expect to find in a white-table-cloth restaurant.
Look & Feel: Walking into Sean Ryan’s from 14th Avenue, your eye is immediately drawn to the huge, well-spaced island bar in the center with a half-dozen large, flatscreen TVs overhead. Down both sides of the bar are booths for those wanting to drink or dine in a casual setting. Then at the rear, there are tables for those seeking a bit more formal dining.
Even with music playing and a bar that was mostly full, the noise level in Sean Ryan’s was surprisingly much lower than that of most Vero restaurants – a boon for table conversation.
Food: While Sean Ryan offers all of the standard fare you would expect to find in an Irish pub (fish & chips, bangers & mash), it also offers a variety of Lenzi creations that seem likely to make the pub a spot people come to for dinner as well as to drink.
On a visit last week, our party of four sampled four appetizers and four entrees.
The appetizers we tried were the crabby baked oysters ($14), beautiful oysters topped by fresh Carolina blue crab and a dill hollandaise sauce; sausage rolls ($9), bacon and cheddar Irish bangers wrapped in puff pastry with honey and whole grain mustard sauce for dipping; reuben fritters ($12), corned beef and cabbage & swiss fritters with a thousand island dipping sauce; and potato leek soup ($6), a very thick soup topped with cheddar.
For main courses, I had the stuffed cabbage ($10.90), my husband had the pan seared salmon ($20), one of our companions had the corned beef and cabbage dinner ($12.90), and our other dining partner had the mac and cheese with short ribs ($16). The entrées and appetizers all got high marks.
Drink: Sean Ryan claims to offer the largest selection of Irish beers and whiskey in Vero Beach. It also features some Irish cocktails, and a made-in-America drink you’re not likely to find in Dublin insensitively called Irish car bomb (half pint of Guinness, and a shot glass half filled with Irish whiskey and half with Irish Cream liqueur. Drop the shot into the Guinness, and it bubbles up like an explosion).
Service: For a restaurant that had only been open a couple of days and was two-thirds full, service was amazingly smooth, and our server was extremely knowledgeable about the menu items.
Prices: Entrée prices run from the low to high teens, with the highest priced item on the menu Sean Ryan’s steak for $22. How much you spend will depend on how much you drink.
Initial impressions: As the first Irish pub in Vero featuring a full dinner menu, we would venture to predict that Sean Ryan Pub is going to prove a strong and welcome addition to the Vero dining scene.
Just don’t go expecting fine dining.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer is a beachside resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of this newspaper..
