How “Queens Irish Guys” Gambled During Covid and Built Their Dream Pub in Midtown

During a busy weekday lunch service, Terence Tubridy sat in a booth at his beloved bar and restaurant and reflected on what it means to own a piece of Park Avenue history.

“We’re Queens Irish guys, third generation, fourth generation immigrants. For us to have a restaurant on Park Avenue ... We built this place to be here for generations and we plan to be. Our children are going to be working here,” he told Straus News.

The Broad Channel native grew up in the restaurant business as his father, Daniel, opened Pier 92 in Rockaway Beach in 1978. Upon graduation from Xavier High School, he went on to attend the University of Mount Saint Vincent, and worked at some iconic Manhattan bars that are no longer in business, such as McFadden’s in Midtown.

After 9/11, Tubridy and his young friends pooled resources to open their own places. Today their list of successful Manhattan bars now includes Metro 53, Saloon and Libation. But once the group hit their late 20s, they felt the need to search for a more sophisticated venue and that spurred them to take over a failed bar at Park Ave. and 39th St. and transform it into the thriving hot spot it is today.

It was a coming of age moment for him and his partners. “We needed to start getting a little bit more serious. We were like, ‘We can’t be out ‘til 4 in the morning.’ So we started looking at taverns because now me and my friends want to sit at the bar. We don’t want to go crazy,” recalled the prolific entrepreneur, who now owns In Good Company Hospitality, which operates 18 venues–12 in Manhattan, five in Queens, and one in Orlando, FL.

“During the week here, it’s business and suits and they’re great,” he said. But on weekends and on the slower nights, we service this whole community. We’ve become that neighborhood staple,” said Tubridy, who also serves on the board of the New York City Hospitality Alliance.

He jokes that the place is so warm and congenial that many of his single friends have found find lasting love there. “My friends call this place ‘The Husband Factory,’” he said, laughing. “It’s countless how many friends of mine actually met at Park Avenue Tavern.”

Tell us about your prior experience in the Manhattan bar business.

We worked all the East Side saloons, and I’m going to drop names, Dapper Dog, Last Second Saloon. My brother and I opened McFadden’s as bartenders. I was the first barback there. So when I was a freshman in college, I was barbacking or bartending or deejaying at McFadden’s. And from there we learned the business.

You then opened your own bar, Metro 53, with your brother, cousins and friends.

After 9/11, everybody started to rethink their whole lives. We were like, “Why don’t we just open up our own place?” So we did, we opened up Metro 53, which was extremely successful. And from there we opened up a bar on the Upper East Side called Saloon on East 83rd and York Ave. which, at the time, had one of the only cabaret licenses. Then we opened Libation on the Lower East Side in 2007. At the time, I was 26 years old.

What was here before Park Avenue Tavern?

This was actually Bogart’s, they used to do promoted parties here, and we were able to convince them to sell it to us. We figured this was a great location, even though many of the places that were here, failed. We basically tore out the whole place. We wanted to make it look as classic as possible and sophisticated, targeting 26-year-olds and up.

Who did you open it with?

My brother, my college roommate Jeff Brosi, and friends from the neighborhood. We have two firemen, Steve Malley and Eugene Brennan, we’re partners with. When you’re opening these places, you need a lot of people for it to be successful. But at this point, Jeff and I are controlling In Good Company Hospitality and we run day-to-day operations. We created the hospitality group in 2008. Under that group are places like Refinery Rooftop, Parker & Quinn and Winnie’s Jazz Club. We just redid Rare Rooftop on 37th and Lex and it’s called Vintage Green. And then we have a place called O’Toole’s Way, an Irish Pub, in Hudson Yards, right underneath the High Line. We opened the Rockaway Hotel too. [The brothers also run their father’s former Rockaway Beach restaurant, Pier 92, which is now called Bungalow Bar.]

During COVID, you re-signed PAT’s lease.

We had about two and a half years left. In March of 2020, obviously we were shut down, but in April, we called the landlord and we’re like, “We’re looking to stay. But it only makes sense for us to stay if we have a long road ahead.” And he’s like, “You guys want to stay?!” We reopened in May of 2020. Literally the neighborhood, they were crying when we reopened, and saying, “Thank God you’re here.”

What are the pros and cons to operating in this neighborhood?

The pro is that we’re on 39th Street, because 39th Street and up, it’s all business. We’re two blocks away from Grand Central. So we get a great tourism business, great commuter business and great corporate business. And then everything down is Kips Bay, it’s Park Avenue South. So they’re all looking for that neighborhood restaurant. The con is we were never allowed outdoor dining because of some rule with the Grand Central Partnership. And the sidewalk here is huge. So COVID helped us get outdoor dining.

Tell us about Hurricane Sandy.

Bungalow Bar in Rockaway was completely destroyed. A lot of the people that worked in all of our places are from Rockaway. If you remember, the power went out downtown. The power on the Upper East Side and on the Upper West Side was totally fine. It was like nothing happened. From 40th Street down, there was no power, so we were closed for about a week. So all the people that worked here started dropping off necessary things to help our neighbors. On Twitter, celebrities were like, “Raise money for the American Red Cross.” We didn’t see the American Red Cross during Sandy. And we’re like, “Why are they getting all the money? Let’s raise our own money and we could give it directly to the people who need it.” We raised $150,000 within about five weeks and got that money out within two or three months to people who needed to pay their mortgage or their kids’ tuition.

Do you have any funny customer stories?

There’s only one plaque over there for a regular of ours Mark, a beautiful guy who passed away. He worked upstairs and would come in for lunch. Actually his daughter still comes in to have lunch here. This guy asks, “I’m here all the time, how do I get a plaque like this?” And the bartender tells him, “You gotta die.”