Roscommon Pub Will Continue Family Legacy in Massapequa Park

When brothers Frank and Joe Gannon heard that Miller’s Place located at 1029A Park Boulevard was for sale, they immediately jumped at the chance of owning their own bar.

After months of renovating and an inordinate amount of help from friends and family, 1029A Park Boulevard became Roscommon Irish American Pub Restaurant on February 23 of this year.

Why does the name Gannon sound so familiar, you ask? Perhaps because you’ve seen another bar, Gannon’s Station Café, right around the corner on Front Street. And no, the name isn’t just a coincidence.

It was opened by Frank and Joe’s father, Frank Gannon Sr. in 1954.  He sold the place in 1967, and since that time, the bar named after the Gannon family hasn’t been owned by a Gannon.

Frank Sr.’s sons have been asking the current owner Larry Kelly if he was interested in selling Gannon’s Station Café for the past three or four years.

“He just kept telling me maybe next year, maybe next year, maybe next year,” Joe said. “So I gave up asking and then the opportunity came to take over Miller’s Place so we jumped on it right away.”

But it wasn’t easy to get the place the way the brothers  wanted it to look and put it in the right condition.

“We have been here since December 1 everyday putting in crazy hours,” Frank said. “We took one day off the whole time, only Christmas Day. We would get here at nine in the morning and leave here at 10 or 11 at night.”

And Roscommon Irish American Pub Restaurant is the product of two and a half months of hard labor.

“It made it a really cozy, warm, comfortable place to come and hang out,” Cara Magistro, manager, waitress, and bartender said.

Since the name “Gannon’s” was already taken, Roscommon was decided on after much deliberation. Roscommon is the county in Ireland that Joe and Frank’s grandparents came from.

“There was a lot of play with the name,” Frank said. “A lot of people said call it The Real Gannon’s, Gannon’s 2, Gannon’s North, Gannon’s West. But I thought Roscommon was fitting.”

According to Frank, the one thing that is going to set them apart from other bars in the area is definitely the food that they will be serving. They hired Justin Magistro, who is the former executive chef of The Fox Hollow in Woodbury, and former sous chef of Watermill Caterers in Smithtown.

Justin went to school in Florida at the Florida Culinary Institute and graduated in 1997. He started working at a steakhouse in Florida called Shootouts and just kept moving up in the food chain. The owner pulled him out of the place before he sold it and had him train to be the executive chef of a new place he was opening up called Key Grill.

He eventually found himself in New York bouncing back and forth between The Fox Hollow and Watermill Caterers. After moving back to Florida for a while and working there, he decided to come back up to New York where he joined Frank and Joe at Roscommon.

“There is no other food in this area like the food we have here,” Justin said. “It is very different and I think people are going to want to come in and try it and I hope they like it,” Justin said.

The place has already been doing well, and it hasn’t even held it’s grand opening celebration yet. “The first couple of weeks have been very busy, busier than expected which is good,” Cara said. “We’ve had a lot of people, a lot of family and friends, come in to celebrate the opening.”

Now this is an Irish bar, so even though they opened only a few weeks before St. Patrick’s Day, you better believe that they will be celebrating.

“On St. Patrick’s Day we’re going to have deals with a lot of Irish food,” Cara said. “A lot of different Irish drinks that will of course all be green. We’re working on a prix fixe meal right now, maybe a buffet, that hasn’t quite been decided yet, but we’re working on it.”

Joe and Frank’s father never wanted them to follow in his footsteps of owning a bar. He made sure that all of his children went to college to get an education because he knew how difficult it was for him growing up. He wanted them to do better, and he put his children through college to make sure they were.

“He might have first sat there and said “What are you doing?” But I think after the fact he would be proud of us for opening this place up,” Frank said. “Putting the time and effort into it and hopefully being successful the rest of the time.”

The main thing that everyone loves about the bar is the fact that everyone involved with the place is either family, or close to it. From the moment they started renovating and moving into the future, they will be the ones that keep the place going.

“I think it’s great because you can rely on your family and close friends, and relatives,” Joe said.

When asked how long he plans on keeping Roscommon in the family, Frank answered in one word: “Forever.”