O'Bryan's Irish Pub. Ashland, Ohio

1065 Claremont Avenue

Guinness Tag: $7.00 | Overall Rating: 4.95

Ashland, Ohio is a small town with about 20 thousand citizens and every year it hosts a huge hot air balloon festival. It's also the home to an Irish Pub called O'Bryan's. The Pub is a mixed bag of grapes; you're going to find some unique assets and you're certainly going to find a few blemishes. Let's focus on the nice things first.

O'Bryan's bones lay underneath the Surrey Inn Hotel, that way if you get a little too wobbly on the black stuff then you can just walk to a bed, which is quite convenient. You're going to find plenty of parking when you pull in and there's a dollar store across the street. The curb appeal isn't a jaw dropper, but I've seen worse. The front door feels a bit like you're walking into somebody's motel room, so it's definitely "unique" if you want to put it nicely. When you walk through the door, you'll see a couple of very spacious dining rooms with a few Irish flags and a large mural of The Temple Bar on one of the walls. The dining rooms have many TVs for gamedays, and I should point out that if you are coming to O'Bryan's for spectating then I advise you to sit in the dining room rather than the bar as the bar itself has just 2 small TVs in inconvenient places.

There are gambling machines for the dreamers, clean toiletries for the light beer drinkers, and air conditioning for those eating hot wings. The furniture throughout the place is bland with that "old banquet hall" feel to them and the craftsmanship behind the bar is nothing to write home about. The place is clean, although it feels dirty. Let's get into some of the blemishes now.

One huge stinker is that the Guinness is served in the gimmicky 16oz pint glass and the pour is average at best. For $7.00 in a small town like this, it's safe to say that those drinking Guinness are getting ripped off. O'Bryan's may be getting away with selling their Guinness in a miniature pint glass to their innocent regulars who may not know better, but I will certainly call you out on it. If you dropped the price of that Guinness to $6.00 then it wouldn't be as insulting.

The whiskey selection is very disappointing but the draft beer choices are above average. They have a large selection of food which is nice, however, I typically get a little thrown off when you see incredibly elaborate food groups coming out of an Irish Pub's kitchen. For example, there's one Pub in New Jersey called Schileen's and they sell roast beef, pizza, chicken parm-sammies, and more ethnic foods that you wouldn't necessarily expect out of an Irish Pub, especially if it's not a "proper" one. Would you order Fettuccini Alfredo at a Mexican Cantina? Probably not. Well, O'Bryan's has Fettuccini Alfredo and I'll just leave it at that. I did try their Reuben for lunch and I was unfortunately turned off after my first bite. The beef was thick and chewy and the bread was very crisp.

If you have ever read any of my previous articles about my many other Pub visits, then you'll know that I am by no means out here with the intentions to make anyone look bad. People who run Irish Pubs are some of the hardest working people in America. With that being said, that doesn't mean I'm not going to hold you to the same standard as everyone else. If you label yourself as an Irish Pub, then you are putting yourself in the same category as The Dead Rabbit in NYC whether you like it or not. If you are doing a terrible job then I will notably call you out on it. For one, maybe it'll help you realize something that your staff is too scared to address. For two, I don't want my fellow Craic Addicts to waste their time and money on something that's not worthy.

Anyways... O'Bryan's surely gets the job done if you're looking for a quick fix. The people there are actually really great and the locals seem quite engaging. It's not the most authentic Irish Pub you'll come across and there's certainly a lot more Craic out in the wild. Will I go back? Unfortunately, no, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't stop inside if you're in the area. Good luck down the road, O'Bryan's! I wish you the best and for whatever it's worth, I did enjoy myself during my visit.

Slainte.