Two Friends From Dublin Bet on an Empty Stretch of Miracle Mile
Back in 1989, Coral Gables didn't really have a place where people could just walk in, grab a pint, and talk to whoever happened to be sitting next to them. John Clarke and Martin Lynch noticed that gap and decided to fill it. The two had grown up together in the Killinkere parish in northwest Dublin, Ireland, and made their way to Miami in the late 1980s looking for something new. What they built on Miracle Mile was a small Irish pub with their two names stitched together: JohnMartin's.
Image credit: JohnMartin's
It wasn't an easy launch. Coral Gables had an ordinance on the books since 1926 that banned standalone bars outright. If you wanted to serve liquor, it had to be inside a hotel, or tucked into a restaurant where the bar itself stayed out of sight. Lynch wasn't willing to just accept that. He teamed up with other local business owners and pushed the city commission to repeal the law, and by late 1990, they'd won. The old ordinance came off the books, and JohnMartin's — along with plenty of other restaurants across Coral Gables — could finally run an open bar the way it was meant to be run.
Building It Out, Piece by Piece
Once the law changed, Clarke and Lynch didn't waste time. They knocked down the wall separating their pub from the space next door and expanded into a full restaurant. They brought in wood shipped straight from Ireland, including flooring that had been salvaged from an old church in Dublin. An Irish architect laid out the room so that no matter where you sat, you could see the bar. That kind of attention to detail is easy to overlook until you're standing in a pub where it's missing.
A Neighborhood Fixture for Three Decades
For the next thirty years, JohnMartin's turned into one of those places that just becomes part of a town's identity without anyone really planning it that way. There was live music most weeks. Once a year, the pub threw a St. Patrick's Day street festival that took over Miracle Mile and pulled people in from across the city, not just the neighborhood. Regulars kept coming back, year after year, and the founders kept adjusting the place as tastes changed, all while holding onto what made it feel authentically Irish in the first place.
Image credit: JohnMartin's
The Day the City Made It Official
By 2009, JohnMartin's had been open twenty years, and the city took notice in a way that doesn't happen often. Then-Mayor of Coral Gables Don Slesnick declared September 23, 2009, "JohnMartin's Day." A single day named after a neighborhood pub is not something most bars ever get, and it said a lot about how deeply the place had worked its way into the city's sense of itself.
The Pandemic Ends a 30-Year Run
JohnMartin's closed its doors in April 2020, just weeks after Florida ordered dine-in restaurants shut statewide. It became one of the first local casualties of the pandemic in that part of Coral Gables. Clarke and Lynch tried to hang on with takeout and delivery for a while, but that kind of stopgap was never going to carry a full-service pub with thirty years of history behind it.
There's a detail here that's easy to miss: Clarke and Lynch had already been thinking about not renewing their lease and easing into retirement before any of this happened. The pandemic didn't create that decision, it just moved it up, and it took away the kind of proper send-off they'd been planning for themselves and for the pub.
Someone Else Picks Up the Torch
Months after JohnMartin's shut down, Erick Passo, who owns Black Market Miami, reached out to Emi Guerra of Breakwater Hospitality Group about taking over the space. Guerra had been a customer over the years and brought in his Breakwater partner, Alex Mantecon, to help lead the project. What started as a conversation about reopening a pub turned into something bigger: a full rebuild rather than a simple refresh. Throughout the process, Guerra and Mantecon stayed in touch with Clarke and Lynch, the original owners, to make sure the new version didn't lose what made the old one work.
Keeping the Bones, Rebuilding Everything Around Them
The team made a point of pulling the original 43-foot bar back into the redesigned space. It got refinished, but it went right back in its original spot. The original brass railings came back too, along with salvaged wood used throughout the new build. Portraits of Clarke and Lynch still hang on the wall today, which is a small thing, but it's the kind of small thing that tells longtime regulars this isn't a different bar wearing an old name.
Bigtime Design Studios led the renovation and spent time studying what contemporary Irish pub design actually looks like before drawing anything up. The rebuilt bar got a black-and-white color scheme, a quartz countertop, and dark wainscoting. The space gained a few things it never had before: a 34-seat indoor garden topped with a skylight, a 50-seat dining room under barrel-vaulted ceilings, a small stage for live performances, and a dart room with an exposed brick wall painted in the colors of the Irish flag. Upstairs, what used to be a meeting space is now a private dining room with its own bar, home to the invite-only JohnMartin's Whiskey Society.
A Whiskey List That Keeps Growing
When JohnMartin's reopened on November 18, 2022, the whiskey program launched with roughly 300 labels. It hasn't stopped growing since. The list now runs past 400 Irish whiskeys, paired with the kind of classic Irish and American pub food that's been on the menu in one form or another since 1989.
Thirty-Seven Years In, and Still Adding to the Story
JohnMartin's is marking its 37th anniversary this month with a party on September 17, timed to Half Way to St. Patrick's Day. Wide Awake, a U2 tribute band, is playing live, and there's a drink special running that night: buy a shot of any Irish whiskey, get a free JohnMartin's Lager.
Image credit: JohnMartin's
Emi Guerra, co-founder of Breakwater Hospitality Group, put into words what the whole project was really about. "When we took this on, the goal was for people to not think of it as 'the new JohnMartin's' and just think of it as JohnMartin's. Thirty-seven years in, with regulars who've been coming since the 90s standing next to people who found us last month, I think we're there. Every time I walk in and see that mix, I'm reminded why we took this on in the first place, and it makes me grateful this community gave us the chance to carry it forward."
That mix Guerra is talking about — decades-long regulars next to people who wandered in for the first time last month — is really the whole point. A pub that started because two guys from Dublin wanted somewhere to grab a beer with their neighbors ended up outlasting a citywide law, three decades of business, a pandemic, and a full ownership change, and it's still doing exactly what it set out to do in 1989. JohnMartin's sits at 253 Miracle Mile in Coral Gables, Florida, open for anyone who wants to be part of what happens next.
