Last Updated on March 16, 2018, 8:17 AM | Published: March 16, 2018
Sean Cummings is going to open Sean’s Irish Restaurant, a new Irish-themed establishment around the end of March and his long-time customers are acting like kids the night before Christmas.
Every time he posts something new about it on Facebook a flood of customers who like his current Bacon restaurant, but remember his former place, Sean’s Irish Pub, fill up the comments section asking when he will open.
Opening soon
The new place will be in the building that Sophabella’s was in for 16 years at 7628 N. May Ave.
He won’t open in time for this St. Patrick’s Day but says by this time next year, that Irish saint’s feast day will be “something to see,” at the new place.
Finally, Oklahoma City will have much more than the usual OKC staple of cheap, green beer.
“It has been my goal all along to open an Irish restaurant again,” Cummings told Free Press.
“This will be the best Irish pub anyone’s ever been to,” he said. “It’s going to be fun doing this.”
The new Sean’s will serve lunch and dinner and include brunch on the weekends.
And, of course, you’ll be able to get a full line of alcohol, too.
“People can either drink or not drink, we don’t really care,” said Sean.
The old Sean’s was more of a drinking place that served some food. The new Sean’s adds a much more extensive menu.
“We’re going to have fresh seafood and fresh mussels. We want this to be the best Irish food being served anywhere,” Cummings said.
Repairs, remodeling
It’s a long process getting the place shaped up the way he wants it and to get all of the permits in place for food and liquor.
Restaurants are hard on any building and this one was no exception.
Sean is working hard to revive the well-used building to launch the space into it’s next phase.
We’ve been visiting the site regularly, each time finding workers repairing something else on the building and property.
The first time Sean himself had just cleaned out the grease trap. There’s no job too small or unpleasant for this experienced owner.
The next time a worker and Sean were painting. The time after that the parking lot was being repaired and striped.
The kitchen has been completely emptied of the old equipment to make room for the the specific equipment he is bringing in.
Since ten
Sean started washing dishes in a Kansas City restaurant when he was only ten years old.
“They had to stack a couple of milk crates just to get me up to where I could get to the dishes,” he told us.
“One thing about doing dishes, you quickly see what menu items people didn’t touch and which ones you never saw. It was a good lesson in what people like and don’t like.”
He ran his own popular restaurants in Kansas City until his ex-wife moved with his boys to Oklahoma City.
He moved to Oklahoma City soon after so he could be in his son’s lives as they were growing up.
It was a hard set of circumstances for him, but Oklahoma City’s gain.
Two restaurants
Constantly striving to provide something new and great has been the passion of he and wife, Cathy since they arrived.
They started gaining fans when they ran Boca Boca. After that Sean started the original Sean’s Irish Pub in The Village.
As Sean’s was taking off, Cathy started Vito’s in the Lakeside Shopping Center near North May Avenue and Grand Boulevard.
Both places were a big hit with locals and even out-of-towners.
Sean eventually moved the pub into the slot next door to Vito’s, which allowed them the advantage of a shared kitchen.
But, a verbal scrape with his landlord resulted in Sean not being able to use the Sean’s Irish Pub name on that property any more.
He then changed the name to Land and Sea, then recently to Bacon where he has been developing a full line of popular recipes.
His brunch offerings recently developed for Bacon will give him a running start with brunch at the new place.
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
