Celtic House on Columbia Pike is nearly ready to unveil its new whiskey bar.
Construction on the basement expansion has wrapped up and the owners are now adding finishing touches before the grand opening, expected in the next week or two, General Manager Chris Devenney told ARLnow.
“You only get one chance to open, and we want to do it right and not screw it up,” he said.
The whiskey bar, situated beneath the pub, is linked to the main restaurant via a wooden staircase. Additionally, patrons will be able to use a separate entrance located at the back of the building.
An official opening date hasn’t been set but Devenney anticipates it will be within the next 10 days. Upon opening, the bar’s hours will be 4 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Wednesday through Sunday.
Owners Michael McMahon and Rolando Canales initially planned to open the bar last fall but they decided to time the opening with March Madness and St. Patrick’s Day instead.
“That’s our best month of the year,” McMahon said.
Billy Mulcaire, a D.C.-area carpenter trained in old-world techniques, started working on the complex solid red oak bar last February. He also crafted all the furniture, stairway and vestibule leading into the bar behind the pub, says McMahon.
“He’s a good friend of mine… He [doesn’t] do this stuff anymore,” McMahon said. “It is a great masterpiece.”
Construction on the space, previously a dry cleaning business, began in August, after the county’s historic review board approved plans for a vestibule on the exterior of the pub, which is located in a historic district.
McMahon, who immigrated to the U.S. from County Clare in southwestern Ireland in 1987, co-founded Celtic House with Canales in 2014. When the dry cleaning business closed, Canales suggested to McMahon that they lease or renovate the space.
Although McMahon was initially hesitant, Canales convinced his business partner to embrace the opportunity and launch a whiskey bar that could host private gatherings while expanding the restaurant’s capacity from 90 to nearly 150 patrons.
“So, this room gives us an opportunity that we can tap into that if they want to do a showcase or have a nice happy hour here with 40 or 50 people,” McMahon said.
The food menu downstairs will be the same as the upstairs menu, while the event and catering menus — set to publish on the restaurant’s website this week — will “look a little different,” says Devenney.
Devenney mentioned the new bar will also have a much more extensive selection of Irish whiskeys, which are “difficult to get.”
“So, we have bottles we’ve been collecting for over a year, really since we started construction,” he said.