Justin Ash brought a touch of the old sod to Olive Branch, Mississippi. He recently opened Ash’s Irish Pub, which, he believes, is the first Irish pub in Olive Branch. “When you walk in, it’s like you get that heart-dropping moment,” he says. “Like a culture shock.”
For his pub, Ash created a “late-19th century, early 20th-century” spot, which he describes as “old world,” with “cobblestone brick, rough-cut timbers, and a walnut wood-looking bar.”
Decor includes wine barrels, street lanterns, stained glass windows, and a train station clock. Ash also features flags dating from as recently as the 2024 American flag to as far back as 762 AD, the earliest he traced his Irish lineage to on his dad’s side.
His grandmother taught him how to cook Irish cuisine when he was a teenager. “And I just remembered.”
His Irish fare includes “shepherd’s pie, fish and chips, bangers and mash, Guinness beef stew, chicken and chips, and poutine.” For now, Ash only serves beer, but he eventually will serve craft cocktails.
Ash also wanted a convivial place, which is what an Irish pub is, he says. When you sit down at the bar, whoever is on your left side and whoever is on your right side are “going to end up being your best friend whether you like it or not. In a traditional Irish bar, it’s disrespectful not to speak to others. If you sit there by yourself quietly, it’s disrespectful. It’s a public house. That’s just the way things work. There’s no such thing as a stranger.”
And, he says, “The biggest thing was to give that feeling of hope and, I guess, belonging. Like my friends did for me when I was in the hospital.”
Ash was in his fourth deployment in the Army when he was injured in 2018 in northern Syria. “We were on a mission and our vehicle struck something in the roadway and it caused our vehicle to flip. And a rifle ripped off the left side of my face. I wound up at Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center] in Washington. I had to relearn how to read, walk, talk.”
His friend Tara McShea, who worked in civil affairs for the Army, often visited Ash, who stayed in the hospital for two-and-a-half years. She took him to Philadelphia to visit her family’s Irish pub, which got him interested in Irish gathering spots. He got a notepad and in about 10 minutes made a checklist of what he wanted his Irish pub to be like.
After he got out of the hospital, Ash, who had been with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office before he left for his last deployment, retired from the Army and moved to Olive Branch. “I walked into an empty apartment in April of 2020 and started my life over.”
Over the next two years, Ash, who began working on his undergraduate degree in criminal justice when he was in the hospital, finished his associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees.
He found the exact location he wanted for his pub about two years ago. Originally, it was “an empty shell of a room.”
Ash used the money from his military and sheriff’s department retirements to open the pub. “I put all cards on the table.”
When you visit Ash’s Irish Pub at 9200 Goodman Road, you’re probably going to see Ash. “I’m the owner. I’m a cook. I’m the bartender. I’m the waiter. I’m everything. … I’m all over the place back there. Cutting potatoes. Cutting carrots. Making stew. And making fish and chips. I might be out here wiping tables. I’m doing everything from 10 a.m. till 1 a.m. every single day.”
He plans to feature Irish music played on “traditional Gaelic instruments,” including violins and guitars, at his pub. Patrons will be able to “sit around the table and play together.”
Already, though, Irish — and everybody else’s — eyes are smiling at Ash’s Irish Pub. “Oh, my God. This past Friday night every seat at the bar was filled and they were singing, ‘No nay never,’ and slapping the top of the bar,” he says. “They were sitting there laughing together. And I said, ‘This is beautiful.’”
