The restaurant and Irish pub McCarthy’s and its attached bar and nightclub, Toad, are set to open as soon as Monday pending an inspection by the city of Cambridge, co-owner Tommy McCarthy said Thursday.
“Tell people to look in the window and see if there’s a crowd,” McCarthy said in an interview outside his namesake restaurant. “We probably won’t tell anyone, because when I was going to be busy anyway.”
The pair of Porter Square properties with a pass-through door at 1920 Massachusetts Ave. – the two-story McCarthy’s space – and 1912 Massachusetts Ave. – the tiny Toad – cost around $1 million to refresh, McCarthy said.
Work went on inside even as he spoke, finishing touches being put in place around custom-built dark-wood booths that regulars will recognize from McCarthy properties such was The Burren in Somerville’s Davis Square.
When the $2.9 million purchase of Christopher’s and Toad by McCarthy and partner Louise Costello went through in April, the goal for opening was September. Things have taken longer.
“Oh yeah. We kind of went into a blindsided. There was lots of stuff probably added on over the years, like electrical and plumbing, and everything had to be pulled apart. McCarthy’s upstairs, there was a lot of structural work. It was quite the job,” McCarthy said. “I mean, we didn’t have any holdups – the city never held us up, or our contractor didn’t hold us up – it’s just that it always takes longer when you’re trying to make something look beautiful and old.”
Toad had a brief reopening after the Covid pandemic but has been closed since Sept. 16, 2024; the restaurant formerly known as Christopher’s closed permanently with the arrival of Covid lockdowns in early 2020.
McCarthy and Costello own not just The Burren, but The Bebop in Boston by the Berklee School of Music and The Shaskeen in Manchester, New Hampshire, and all pack in customers with a combination of drink, comfort food, live traditional music and comedy. McCarthy expects the same mix at McCarthy’s.
“We’ll definitely have music every night,” McCarthy said, and “we’re pretty much taking Toad from where it left off.”
Comfort for Burren fans
Musicians and music lovers have expressed concern about what happens to the music scene that has coalesced around The Burren for decades if it is forced to close for construction. There’s a plan for a 500-unit, 25-story building atop a two-story podium of retail that stretches from where The Burren is now to the end of the block at Grove Street. It once seemed possible that The Burren could stay open throughout construction, but developer Copper Mill said that no longer looks feasible.
Copper Mill has said it is working with businesses who want to come back after construction, but the project has been opposed by people who fear event a temporary loss of The Burren.
What McCarthy describes for the new business a half-mile away is a potential home for that music scene, but he’s also not expecting change anytime soon in Davis Square.
“Everything’s kind of talk at the moment. I mean, the whole thing has to be rezoned,” McCarthy said. “I think The Burren is going to stay where it is.”
A pub walk and Central Square
The next mission after the opening is a pub music walk tour in early May, he said. He expects it to go from “The Bebop to The Burren,” with stops in Harvard Square and at the Plough & Stars outside Central Square.
“I might start buying bars in Central Square as well,” McCarthy said, though he didn’t know what or where – “I haven’t looked yet.”
“I’m on a mission,” he said. “I believe that the best music in this city of Boston, in the region, is between Berklee and The Burren, and I own both bars at either end – so I’d like to fill the gap all the way down, so Massachusetts Avenue would become like the Bourbon Street of Massachusetts.”
“It’d be a nice walking tour on a Saturday afternoon to pop off to each bar and have a pint and little walk on to the next place, about a 3.8-mile walk I do all the time,” he said.
A stronger
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Hurry up already, we can’t wait to get a drink, and maybe dinner, after our PSNA meetings!