Food for the Soul
By Emily Evangelakos

Forks scraped against plates. Laughter and excited voices rang through the air. Drinks were being poured, stomachs were being filled, and Thursday night was passing by with good company. Golden fairy lights twinkled across red velvet curtains in the front window, softening the storm bellowing outside. A brown bike hung over the wooden booths, illuminated by the soft candlelight. Though the Washington Square Tavern was filled to the brim with people chatting and sipping wine, it felt intimate. Everything was within eyeshot — the kitchen, the packed bookshelves in the corner, the bartender pouring a beer on draft, and the owner, Gerry Finnegan, moving around to converse with new customers and old friends.

Finnegan is a man known and loved by many. His presence is met with tight hugs, firm handshakes, and cheerful greetings. Customers who first had a drink at the Tavern’s bar in June of 1999 sit in the same seats almost 24 years later, clinking overflowing glasses with the man they now call a close friend.

Margaret Donohue, a Brookline local, has been one of Finnegan’s regulars since the very beginning. Years later, Donohue and Finnegan have shared many special moments together in and out of the wooden booths.

“I met Gerry 24 years ago going out to dinner when he first opened the restaurant,” she said. “He was very friendly and came over and introduced himself. Since then, we have had so many wonderful times with Gerry. Birthdays, anniversaries — too many to mention.”

Another regular and friend of Finnegan’s, Liam O’Connor, shared what kept him coming to the Tavern after all these years.

“Honestly, it is a combination of everything. Being there feels like you’re with family, like you’re at home. You see people you know, and the atmosphere is so friendly. There’s good food, good wine, good beer, everything you want in a restaurant,” he said. “Plus, they make great Old Fashioneds.”

Finnegan opened the beloved Washington Square Tavern on June 26, 1999. However, his journey started years before, across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I left Ireland after boarding school. I always wanted to come to America, and I won a green card in 1995. At the time, I was living in London, and when I won the Green Card I quit my job and moved to America with 100 bucks.”

Before moving to America, Finnegan studied Chemistry and Biology with the goal of earning a Bachelor of Science to work in pharmaceuticals. He then switched schools and departments, going on to study English and Philosophy. After two and a half years, he decided that what he was doing wasn’t right for him. He dropped out of university and moved to America for a year. When he returned to Ireland, he completed two and a half years of business school and moved to London, where he won the green card and moved to Brookline to be with a friend. From then on, Finnegan has been part of the restaurant industry.

“I worked for my friend Pete’s brother when I first moved here, for two and a half years. I’m still friends with him now, he’s a really nice guy,” Finnegan said. “He moved down to Philadelphia, and that was when the Washington Square Tavern came up for sale. I went up and I said ‘I’d like to buy it’, and they sold it to me. I had a partner, and it took about a year.”

Pete Murphy then worked with Finnegan when the Tavern opened. He would bartend, working winters at the Tavern and summers in Ireland. Today, Finnegan and Murphy remain good friends. Their interactions are filled with sarcasm and they poke fun at one another as they reminisce about the past 28 years together.

“Pete was one of our first employees,” Gerry said. “Only lasted two days there, I think,” Murphy joked.

At this point, the restaurant was very popular. Donohue recalled her early experiences at the Tavern.

“When he first opened, the restaurant was very busy, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes 3 deep at the bar with a long wait for a table.”

The Washington Square Tavern has since remained a popping spot in North Brookline. On Friday and Saturday nights, Finnegan said, they have to stop doing dessert to keep up with the rush.

“We’ve been doing desserts since COVID because people like it. Now, on Friday and Saturday it’s been so busy that when you add dessert, it adds an extra hour to every table. We were getting killed there,” he said. “In that extra hour people are not coming and sitting down, so we had to stop doing dessert and coffee on Fridays because it’s too busy and people are getting angry.”

Though the rush of people has remained steady over the past 24 years, there was a period of time where Finnegan’s business suffered. A betrayal from a long-term employee was painful not only to the business but to his personal life as well.

“We had a long-term employee, a bartender, who we took really, really good care of,” Finnegan said. “He had a heart attack, and we paid him when he was out of work for six months. He then had an injury playing rugby, and was out of work for three months. We did a fundraiser and helped him out with that. He had another injury playing rugby, so we helped him out again. He worked for us and we took care of him for about 15 years.”

After 15 years, the employee walked in one morning with the chef to give their notice and announce that they were going to open their own restaurant together.

“I told them that it was awesome, great, and gave them my congratulations,” Finnegan said. “We’ve had bunches of staff move on and open their places all over the country, and it’s great for them. It’s a natural progression.”

However, the bartender and the chef were not opening up a place across the country. They were opening a place next door. They told Finnegan not to worry, that their place wouldn’t be anything like the Tavern and that it had its own concept.

The two were on vacation that week, and in their return came back to announce that there were no hard feelings and that they would continue to work at the Tavern until they opened their lights.

“‘No hard feelings, but no, you can’t work here anymore,’” Finnegan told them. “‘You can’t be here working, telling everyone that you’re opening up next door.’ I then told the chef that he could stay if he wanted to, but that we were looking for a replacement for him.”

The chef decided to stay for a few weeks. There were no hard feelings. Friday night then came around, and Finnegan received a devastating text. ‘I’ve decided that I’m not going to work anymore’ the text read. Finnegan wished him the best of luck, and thankfully had the new chef start a week early.

Before continuing the story, Finnegan and Murphy looked at each other, with understanding in their eyes. Though years had passed and what happened had been expected, the betrayal was the hardest thing that Finnegan experienced in his time owning the restaurant.

“We survived,” Finnegan said. “It was very stressful for a couple of weeks.”

To Finnegan’s dismay, the worst had not come yet. The new restaurant then opened, with the Tavern’s menu. Finnegan said he assumed that it would happen, so that didn’t upset him, but

what bothered him the most was that the bartender asked every single person who worked for the Tavern to quit at the same time and come to work for him.

“I was very hurt by it, and kind of angry. It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever gone through. We’d given so much to this person over the years, and we’d helped him out when he was in trouble,” Finnegan said. “We’d done everything for him and then for him to stab me in the back like that and ask everyone to leave to create a cohesive group of employees for himself, that was really hurtful.”

Finnegan explained that the bartender wanted the Tavern to be without employees when he opened his new place. He wanted the Tavern to be closed and his new restaurant to be open, so he could take their business.

“That’s what his thing was,” Finnegan said. “He said that we were doing so much better than he was and that he wanted it for himself.”

Finnegan has never set foot in the new place. He wishes his former employee the best, but the betrayal outweighed his desire to see the new restaurant.

There was silence for a moment as Finnegan reminisced on the past. He looked around as cars flew past the bench where we sat. Red, white, gray, the cars continued by as he prepared to share what hurt him the most about the scenario. It wasn’t the restaurant, it wasn’t the loss of business, it wasn’t the stories in the newspaper assuming that the two were working together. It was personal, and it hurt his heart.

“See that blue trash can down there?” He pointed to the street corner that was about 30 feet away, maybe less. The can stood unmoving against the deep gray sky. Sprinkles of rain began to coat its cobalt plastic exterior.

“He’s from my hometown. From me to the can, that’s how far his house was from my parents’.” Murphy shook his head.

“The history just amplifies it. It makes it a whole lot worse. I’d never felt so betrayed by somebody before. You want them to move on and open their own place and be successful. What you don’t want, though, is for them to deliberately try to hurt your family.”

Finnegan’s circle runs tight. He holds family and friends close to him, and values the time that they get to spend together. He loves to share his passions of wine and cycling through the Emerald Necklace with those in his life. Though the 5am to midnight days can be long and

difficult, he cherishes the time that he gets to spend with his friends at the restaurant and at his liquor store, Beaver Brook Bottles, in Waltham.

The wine shop sits on Trapelo Road, across from the entrance to an 18-mile bike path. A cartoon beaver poses on a black sign hanging outside above a short table, bench, and chairs. His red truck is parked outside, the trunk full of new wines for Finnegan and his customers. Wine bottles, varying in size, sit lined up in the windows. A TV sits in the window to the right. The store is small and eclectic, a fun place to drink wine and hang out with friends. Finnegan, sitting on the bench with the bottles behind him, expressed his love for the shop.

“I opened this place in 2013. I love this little place, it’s a really weird little wine shop,” Finnegan said.

O’Connor shared a similar sentiment. He has spent time in the cellar, tasting wines with friends, family, and Finnegan’s dogs, Princess Buttercup and Wesley.

“The store is great. It’s a standard liquor store in Waltham, but when you go downstairs there is a beautiful wine room with all kinds of wines,” O’Connor said. “Every Friday he has wine tastings. We have had a lot of fun times in the wine room downstairs. He loves to share with good friends and diners, and knows the best wines. He is very hospitable and friendly.”

Sharing is a value of Finnegan’s. He takes pride and joy in sharing with those around him, especially wine. Every night at the restaurant, he shares with diners sitting at the oak tables and wooden barstools. When he is at the shop, especially during the pandemic, he opens his favorite bottles and enjoys the company.

When gatherings could not be more than just a close-knit group, two or three friends of Finnegan’s would gather around the TV in the wine shop to sip wine or crack open a beer and watch movies. In a time that was isolating and scary to many, times with those closest to you helped get through even the darkest of days. The days were hard, but when shared with others, the burden was a bit easier to carry.

For Finnegan, sharing is more than just splitting the wine inside the bottle. It is about the experience together and the joy that comes along with sipping together.

“I love the ability to sit down with someone and have it be a shared experience. You have conversations. It’s really fun, there’s all these different tastes and emotions that you get when you drink something really nice,” Finnegan explained. “It’s very sensual and very intellectual at the same time. I love the whole idea of sharing, and there’s so much to learn all the time.”

His favorite is a Burgundy. Behind him, half, single, and double bottles of burgundy wine stand tall, ready to be drunk. Soon, Finnegan and his friends will open a bottle and savor the deep, earthy, floral tastes of the Burgundy wine.

On top of knowing his wines and close friends, Finnegan has many connections in the wine industry. Donohue recalled a trip that Finnegan helped her plan to Napa with her family.

“He tended himself to arrange an incredible trip to Napa 3 years ago,” Donohue said. “He arranged such exclusive private tours for us that even the hotel concierge couldn’t believe it. He has tremendous relationships with the vineyard owners.”

Finnegan has the ability to make connections wherever he goes. “Gerry knows everybody!” Jake Kaplan, a friend of Finnegan’s, said.

His charismatic and open persona attracts all people. He has a happy, warm energy that draws people in. Customers continue to come back to the authentic Irish pub, to the wooden booths and dimly lit room, because their time there is time well spent.

O’Connor shared an example of a returning customer. “My best client, a Fortune 500 CEO, is a guy who loves good wine and good company. We were supposed to go to a fancier restaurant downtown, but he asked if we could go back to the Tavern for a second night instead because he had such a great time and dinner there.”

That night, the restaurant was able to get a whole pig in the kitchen. They created ten dishes with the meat, including a delicious charcuterie board, according to O’Connor.

“The meat with a great bottle of wine, doesn’t get much better than that.” O’Connor said. He expressed how much he liked having the Tavern in the neighborhood, because it is a high level of food and wine that you would find at the most expensive restaurants. “It is a very unique Irish pub.”

Finnegan’s kindness, unique personality, and ability to connect with others brought a miracle into his life. Though he experienced a betrayal from a friend, he also experienced true care from another.

“The Tavern saved Wesley’s life,” Finnegan said.

One of Finnegan’s bulldogs, Wesley, was born with a malformed liver. He loves the puppy, and would do anything for him. When Wesley’s health started to decline, Finnegan did all he could to

try and save his life. He visited the vet over and over again, and awaited the calls of a world renowned vet to perform a surgery. He never got a call back, and his “beautiful” dog’s life was dwindling more and more as Christmas approached. He stopped running for toys, he would throw up every time he ate, and one day collapsed. His blood was filling with Ammonia. As Finnegan told the story, his lips became downturned and his eyes were filled with sadness. He loved the dog, and the near loss was hard on him. His lips quickly upturned and the light that always sparkles in eyes returned as he continued the story to explain how the Tavern was able to save his puppy.

“I’m at the tavern, and I’m chatting with some of the customers. One of them was my friend. He is incredibly smart, went to med school at 16,” Finnegan said. “Anyways, we’re chatting away and I’m very visibly distraught by the fact that my puppy is gonna die. What happened next taught me to always be nice to people, because connections are important.”

Turns out, my friend saved the life of the Dean of Tufts Veterinary school when he had an aortic dissection. The two became very close friends, so he was not shy to call him up for a favor.

“The next morning, I got a call from the office. They said that they would see Wesley that week. Two years later, he’s still alive. My puppy is now happy and healthy, thanks to the Tavern.”

Finnegan’s life has been far from mundane. He has experienced many hardships, but also many joys. He is a happy man, and though the restaurant life can get tough he loves what he does and those around him. He represents the importance of being kind and welcoming to others, and how relationships are so fulfilling.

“Through everything, I’ve learned that friends and family make your life worth living,” he said. “Remember that.”