New Irish pub and grill opens in Morro Bay. Get a look inside Sammy J’s
After nearly a year of having its door, iconic curved windows and more screened off with craft paper, Sammy J’s Irish-American Pub and Restaurant in Morro Bay is finally open to see and enjoy.
Until late September, people passing by 400 Morro Bay Blvd. couldn’t see past the historic black building’s distinctive windows and rounded exterior walls.
Now fully visible are the pub’s deep interior, with its massive, showstopper chandelier and long, handmade wooden bar.
What can’t be seen from outside is what else makes Sammy J’s different: its globe-trotting assortment of fare, beers and other beverages and a decidedly friendly, Irish pub-like ambiance.
Owners John and Brynn Grady believe “in creating a welcoming and friendly environment … where everyone feels like part of the family,” she wrote in a Facebook post in October 2023.
Through the decades, businesses in the mid-century corner building reportedly included a creamery and ice cream shop, a library, paint store, thrift shop and now, the family-owned Sammy J’s.
“The Morro Bay Creamery was likely the first soda shop in Morro Bay,” local author Joe Dunlap told The Tribune in early 2024.
He’d been in the ice cream parlor a few times, he recalled.
“When you entered the front door, there was a counter that ran along the wall to the left, and several booths lined the wall with the individual windows along the west side. All were equipped with remote juke-box selectors,” he said.
Now Brynn is on the hunt for more historical records of the building, especially photos.
“I’ll copy and return them,” she said of the original pictures and histories. “I want to put them on the wall.”
Where did the Sammy J’s name come from?
Simply put, it’s been a difficult, exhausting year for the Fresno-born couple from Clovis. They were battered by tumultuous events and delays that overlapped like shingles.
Before Sammy J’s could open on one of Morro Bay’s main thoroughfares, the couple and their team did extensive remodeling there.
The Gradys had to stage manage much of it from afar because they own and run the successful, award-winning Skyline Club Bar & Grill in Clovis.
Their long-distance loyalties were further split because their family and sports star son Cooper Grady, 18, a recent high-school graduate, still live in the Central Valley.
It took months for the busy couple to get the pub’s permits, which apparently got lost for a while in a shuffle between the city and San Luis Obispo County, John said Saturday.
Then, just in the past few months, the Grady family had the emotional turmoil of the terminal illnesses and deaths of Brynn’s father and John’s grandmother, plus the sudden death of his brother. The latter had moved to Morro Bay to help remodel the place they had leased.
Having Sammy J’s open now, John says, is a tribute to his deep desire to honor his late grandfather.
Toward that end, the pub’s name honors Savario “Sammy” John Imbrogno, John said, because of the profound impacts the successful Central Valley cattle buyer had on him.
Imbrogno was a self-made, up-by-his-bootstraps man who went to work young cleaning chicken coops on the family farm, was a cowboy and then a journeyman plumber before getting into back the cattle business and becoming legendary in it, his grandson said.
Then after his mother died when he was barely a teen and he briefly was living on the street, John’s grandparents took him into their home in Fresno County. There he attended high school and later became a bartender in Clovis before leaving to start his hospitality training as a cook and bartender in such places as Studio 54 in New York, Ireland’s 32 in San Francisco and Ye Olde King’s Head in Santa Monica.
John said Imbrogno lovingly taught his grandson that, no matter how difficult or traumatic your upbringing or background was, you can still persevere, succeed and have a good life.
The opening of Sammy J’s is a testimony to that philosophy, he said — though it almost didn’t happen.
Why did it take so long for Morro Bay pub, cafe to open?
John and Brynn told The Tribune in November 2023 that they’d leased the former creamery building because they loved the history behind it and “we’ve always wanted to have a restaurant in Morro Bay.”
However, as part of John’s desire to demonstrate his devotion to his grandpa, he’d planned to delay that dream.
Instead, he said, he’d open their second eatery in the Fresno restaurant “where my grandfather used to take me when I was a little boy.”
The day before the transaction was to finalize, John took his grandfather to that building, explaining his loving rationale behind the business decision.
“But I thought you wanted a restaurant in Morro Bay?” Imbrogno said.
John explained he wanted to honor Imbrogno and the memories they’d made together in Fresno.
His grandfather smiled and replied, “Why don’t you honor yourself instead and move to Morro Bay?”
The very next day, on May 16, 2023, cancer patient Imbrogno died.
Reeling from the loss, John and Brynn decided that taking the beloved man’s advice was the best way to memorialize him.
“Morro Bay had always been our ‘getaway place,’” Brynn said Saturday.
They visited, talking about how the city by the bay is where they wanted to live eventually.
Then fate intervened.
“We happened to walk around the corner, saw the ‘for lease’ sign on those windows,” she said. “The windows were what got us.”
Now, those huge panes highlight the dramatic chandelier that helps draw people in and tempts them to try something different in Morro Bay — an Irish pub.
“I just wanted something special for that window” she said of the glistening chandelier that now illuminates their tribute to Imbrogno and the Gradys’ new future in the city by the bay.
What’s on the menu at Sammy J’s?
Sammy J’s offerings are grounded by John’s twist on American favorites, occasional dishes from the Emerald Isle and, of course, a bar well stocked with Guinness stout, Bailey’s Irish Cream, Irish coffees, famous Irish whiskies and other beverages.
The bar’s current best sellers are “draft Guinness and a boysenberry-vanilla seltzer from Clovis,” longtime bartender Brynn, said Saturday at the pub.
Sammy J’s also has a quirky machine “that can print a photo or logo on your pint glass,” she added.
Customer favorites from the kitchen have varied over the three months the restaurant has been open, John said, as visitors find the pub, and new local customers realize daily that the mystery eatery and pub is finally open.
One hit is Sammy J’s Sunday all-you-can-eat brunch buffet, originally designed to showcase football games on the pub’s six big TV screens.
For $15, the multi-cuisine meal can include chicken-fried steak, chorizo-and-egg scramble, refried beans, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, French toast and more.
It’s been so popular, John said, they plan to continue the once-a-week buffets long past Super Bowl Sunday.
For now, the Grady’s starter menu highlights shepherd’s pie, sandwiches, a burger, a salad and a reminder to check the specials, which can range from a thick pastrami sandwich on swirled rye to Guinness beef stew.
The latter has proven to be so popular that Brynn says they’ll shift the famous Irish dish from “special” status to being on Sammy J’s new, expanded menu in early 2025.
The bar is a big draw, creating a convivial ambiance where customers sit and share such experiences as the proper techniques for drinking Guinness.
That long bar was built by neighbor Ryan Ratzlaff, who owns the Divers vintage store next door. He was remodeling his new shop while the Gradys were redoing Sammy J’s.
For a time, nobody realized that John and Ryan shared more than adjacent businesses in the same historic building: The two men attended Reedley’s Immanuel High School concurrently, even playing on the same football team.
“He was our quarterback,” John said about the strange coincidence.
For more information
Sammy J’s Irish-American Pub and Restaurant, 400 Morro Bay Blvd., is open Wednesdays through Sundays.
During the current winter season, the pub opens Tuesdays through Fridays at 2 p.m., Saturdays at noon and 10 a.m. Sundays. Closing hours can vary day to day.
Sammy J’s will be open longer during peak season, the couple said.
For more information, visit the pub’s Facebook page and Instagram feed. More social media sites will follow soon, Brynn said.
For other information, call 805-225-1536, or email to SammyJs805@gmail.com.
This story was originally published December 31, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
