The Best Irish Pub in Each State

Founded in 1946, Callaghan’s is known today for its live music program and for what Southern Living hailed as “the near-mythical L.A. (Lower Alabama) Burger, featuring a house-ground patty made with Conecuh sausage.”

This popular dive bar used to offer free food to drinkers, but the practice didn’t survive COVID for reasons both economic and health-related.

The oldest Irish pub in Phoenix, Dubliner was also the first bar to introduce Guinness to the area.

The entire interior of this pub was constructed in Dublin and shipped to Little Rock.

Opened in 1936, Bergin’s claims to have introduced Los Angeles to Irish coffee.

When the owners installed their pub in 1875 a quarter century ago, they imported artisans to install Irish woodwork and stained glass.

The pub occupies one of the town’s oldest buildings, dating from the early 18th century. All the furnishings are imported from Ireland.

The McCoy family named their pub, opened in 2002, after their mothers and grandmothers, Catherine McCoy and Gerry Rooney-Hudecheck.

The Pensacola location, in the city’s 1927-vintage firehouse, is said to have more than $1 million worth of dollar bills hanging from the walls and ceilings.

This pub dates from 1995, but it’s in a building completed in 1890 — and according to some sources, it’s haunted.

Back in the 1860s, when it was the Royal Hotel, the premises scored one of Oahu’s first retail spirits licenses. After many owners and identities, it became an Irish pub in 1987.

This pub, open since 1966, has had three owners — all of them named Michael.

In the Shinnick family since 1938, this location opened as a pub decades before that. It is believed that the ornate wooden back bar was once exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

John and Ann McGinley opened the Golden Ace in 1934, making it one of the oldest pubs in America that remains family-owned.

Dublin Bay claims to sell more Guinness than any other outlet in the state.

The building occupied by Baileys has housed a tavern since 1903. It originally had two doors, one for drinkers, the other for teetotalers.

The pub occupies a 170-year-old building that was originally opened as a saloon with a grocery store and dry goods shop attached.

McCool’s is a serious sports pub, showing all U.S. major league games, plus international soccer, rugby, and more.

Leary’s claims to be geographically closer to Ireland than any other pub in America.

There are no TVs here, which, say the owners, “has helped create an atmosphere for lively conversation; a place to gather and enjoy each others’ company.”

Husband-and-wife owners Tommy McCarthy and Louise Costello are traditional musicians, and have made The Burren famous for its Celtic music.

Uncharacteristically for an Irish Pub, this one has a menu based on regional products, including a large selection of plant-based choices.

The owners of this pub just outside St. Paul declare that they are “proud to be a family-owned, non-chain Irish pub with a 95% handcrafted interior.”

Fenian’s boasts an unusually long list of Irish whiskeys — blended, single male, single grain, and single pot still.

McGurk’s opened in 1978 as a one-room pub but has blossomed into a 20,000-square-foot institution, complete with garden.

This pub’s namesake was a brigadier general in the Union Army during the Civil War and later the Acting Governor of Montana Territory — before falling out of a boat and drowning in the Missouri River at the age of 44.

Barrett’s offers something you aren’t likely to find in Ireland: sand volleyball games (outdoors) four days a week.

Because this is Vegas, McMullan’s has a gaming bar with 15 video gambling machines you don’t have to leave your stool for.

This pub offers a menu of Irish and American dishes as many pubs do — but on Tuesdays, breaks with tradition by serving a selection of Thai dishes as well.

The founders of this pub note that they took inspiration from Sir Arthur Guinness’s preservation of the famed St. Stephen’s Green in the heart of Dublin.

With two locations in town, O’Niell’s is known not only for its richly accoutered Irish-themed interior but also for its attractive patios, covered over in winter.

McSorley’s, founded in 1854, serves only two kinds of beer: McSorley’s house ale, dark or light.

After this pub suffered a major fire in 2009, the owners had the interior rebuilt in Ireland and shipped over. There are other branches in Vermont, Nevada, and Maine.

Proprietor Wayne Whitty named his pub after a character in an Irish folk tale, one Ebeneezer Frog, who hid his gold from larcenous Leprechauns.

The outdoor patio offers eaters and drinkers views of downtown Cleveland and Lake Erie.

Kilkenny’s owners describe it as not just a restaurant, but a museum, jam-packed with Irish antiques, bric-a-brac, historic photographs, and more.

Owner Thomas Christopher O’Leary had a featured role for six years in the long-running Irish TV soap opera “Fair City” and now hosts a weekly literary society meeting to discuss Irish novels.

How “olde” is this place? It opened in 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, and the taps haven’t stopped flowing since.

McBride’s occupies what used to be the nine-car garage for the Monahan, Drabble & Sherman Funeral Home.

After Hurricane Hugo swept through Charleston in 1989, owner Tommy Condon traveled to Ireland to collect antique mirrors and Irish memorabilia to upgrade the interior.

Proprietor Sean Dempsey’s father, Bill, is the official bagpiper for the state of South Dakota — and Sean himself is a member of the U.S. Pizza Team.

Co-owner Sean McNamara (with his wife, Paula) is an Irish tenor who performs at the pub regularly with Nosey Flynn, Music City’s leading Irish musical group.

The pub’s opulent furnishings are repurposed from the private Old Capitol Club in Houston’s Rice Hotel (which closed in 1977), once the preserve of the city’s power brokers.

Flanagan’s is named in honor of Father Edward J. Flanagan, founder of the Boys Town orphanage near Omaha, who took in pub owner John Kenworthy’s grandfather when he was a wayward young man.

This pub, installed inside the Inn at Long Trail in Rutland County ski country, was the first place in Vermont to serve Guinness on draft.

When O’Toole’s opened in 1966, it got Virginia’s first by-the-drink liquor license in modern times.

Many Irish pubs feature live music, but this one hosts performances — from jazz to funk to traditional Irish — every night but Wednesday and Sunday.

The food specialty here, as the pub’s name suggests, is a selection of Irish pasties — empanada-like Celtic hand pies — with a variety of fillings.

Guinness gave its Perfect Pint award to its namesake pub, known as “a talking bar,” according to a bartender.

The pub sponsors a limerick contest every St. Patrick’s Day. This year’s winner could choose between a golf bag or a dart board, both Bushmill’s-branded.