Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub sits at 112 SW 2nd Avenue, on the second floor of the 1889 Glisan Building in Old Town. Gerard and Lucille McAleese opened it in 1990, and the family has run it ever since, per Wikipedia. It is the rare downtown Portland room that does Irish pub and serious soccer bar at the same time.
The sports setup is not an afterthought. The pub runs two projectors and more than twelve monitors, and its own sports page lists the full slate of soccer, rugby and the big American games, per Kells' sports schedule. Early kickoffs from the English and European leagues are the draw, and the room opens to match them.
The space leans into its age. Dark wood, a long bar, stained glass and the worn-in feel of a room that has hosted thirty-plus years of pints and weddings and World Cup mornings. It runs loud during a televised final and easy on a midweek afternoon.
What to order is pub-first. A pint of Guinness poured properly, fish and chips or shepherd's pie, and a whiskey off a long Irish list to close a night. Pricing sits at $$, fair for a downtown sit-down pub with a full kitchen.
Who it is for: the soccer fan chasing a 7am kickoff, the group that wants Irish food with the game on, and the Old Town visitor after a pub with real history. For the wider field, our ranked guide to the best sports bars in Portland sets Kells against the city's other rooms, and the full Portland guide maps the downtown blocks around it.
Best time to go is a weekend morning for a marquee soccer match, or any night the pub runs live Irish music after the final whistle. It is a short walk from the Skidmore Fountain MAX stop, which keeps it easy to reach from across downtown. For two more rooms with screens, Spirit of 77 covers the Blazers crowd near the Moda Center and Horse Brass Pub holds the English-pub end on Belmont.
The pub also runs the annual Portland Irish Festival, which tells you how deep its roots in the city go. That history is the reason it draws on St. Patrick's Day like nowhere else downtown, and the reason its soccer mornings feel like a standing appointment rather than a promotion. Few Portland rooms carry that kind of built-in calendar.
The history is part of the draw. The McAleese family has run the room for more than three decades, and the building itself dates to 1889, which gives Kells a depth most sports bars cannot fake. Coins pressed into the bar's woodwork, a long-running tradition, raise money for local charities.
For the soccer crowd, Kells is one of downtown's most dependable early-kickoff rooms. It opens to match the European fixtures, pours a proper pint while the game runs, and keeps the volume up for the ones that matter. Rugby internationals and Gaelic football round out the weekend slate for the homesick crowd. That mix of pub and sports bar is rarer than it sounds.
What keeps Kells on the shortlist is the mix. It is a proper Irish pub that also takes the games seriously, with the screens, the kitchen and the history to back all three, which is more than most sports bars manage. For a fan who wants a pint, a plate and a match under one old roof, it is a sure call, and our guide to the best bars for watching the game in Portland and the national sports bars index round out the map.
Sources: Kells Portland (official) · Kells sports schedule · Wikipedia
