Author: Michael Klein

Since it’s noontime on the first Thursday of the month, eight residents of Wesley Enhanced Living at Pennypack Park are chatting at the long table in the middle of the main dining room at Kelly’s Seafood in Northeast Philadelphia.

Back in the kitchen, twin brothers Brian and Brett Kelly and Brian’s son Tommy are knocking out the lunch orders. Crab cakes sizzle in sauté pans. Snapper soup bubbles in the kettles.

For the Wesley residents, this is the end of a longtime ritual.

Kelly’s Seafood, whose history stretches back 68 years, will close Aug. 31.

“When they leave today, we’ll all be crying,” said server Chris Brown, who has worked at Kelly’s since 1988. The Kelly brothers’ sister, Denise Barreras, nodded.

A few minutes later, their checks paid, the residents rose from the table.

And just as Brown had called it: tears and hugs.

Where will September’s first-Thursday lunch be? They’re not sure.

Kelly’s, one of the last of the Northeast fish houses, has been the setting for countless rituals like theirs, a place where people who came as children later brought their own children.

“People my age are saying they’ve been coming here since they were 10 years old,” said Brian Kelly, 62, who has been reading customers’ recollections since the closing was announced. “They’re talking about christenings, baptisms, graduations. It really makes you realize how many people have come through these doors over the years.”

The Kellys had hoped to make it to 70 years. Instead, the family has reached the point where keeping the restaurant going would require more than they are willing — or able — to give it.

Brian and Brett’s father, Ron, died in July 2023 at age 87. Of his nine grandchildren, only Brian’s son Tommy now works at the restaurant. An illness has sharply limited how much Brian can work, leaving Brett to pull double shifts since October.

The family announced on March 1 that Kelly’s was on the market, hoping to give employees and customers plenty of warning. In late July, with the restaurant still unsold, they decided that they needed to set an end date.

Kelly’s Seafood history

The story began in 1958, when Ron Kelly and his father, William T. Kelly, opened Kelly’s Grille, a luncheonette in a shopping center a few blocks from the current restaurant.

William had worked on a milk wagon. Ron, newly out of military service, wanted to get into the restaurant business, and his father went along with him.

In 1964, they moved Kelly’s to 9362 Old Bustleton Ave., just off Bustleton Avenue and Welsh Road, and Kelly’s Seafood took shape. (It is unrelated to the long-ago Kelly’s on Mole Street in Center City.)

The family and restaurant became difficult to separate.

William lived in the apartment above Kelly’s and cleaned the bathrooms every morning. Ron and Jean Kelly’s four children — Denise, Tim, Brian, and Brett — all grew up working there.

Brian and Brett walked over after school and spent Wednesdays and Thursdays in the basement, which they called “the dungeon,” breading shrimp and other seafood.

“We were about 12 years old,” Brian said. “Today they’d probably shut us down for child labor. Back then it was just part of growing up in the family business.”

Their brother Tim, now 63 and living in Florida, also started young, walking over after school to help. Eventually, all nine of Ron and Jean’s grandchildren worked at Kelly’s in some capacity.

The restaurant itself looks as if it has been accruing memories for nearly seven decades.

The decorating scheme includes a decades-long accumulation of Shore-life artifacts — wood paneling, striped booths, fish prints, shells, ship models, string lights, and enough nautical memorabilia to outfit a small maritime museum.

The accumulation includes people.

Bartender Cathy Sims first came to Kelly’s as a customer, bringing her daughters here after their ring Mass at St. Hubert’s High. After she graduated from bartending school, Barreras hired her in 1997.

She never left.

“I love them,” Sims said. “They’re my best friends. And then I’ve got all my people who have been coming in for 20 years.”

Brown started waiting tables in June 1988 after a former Dunkin’ Donuts coworker told her that Kelly’s was hiring. “I came over, and the rest is history,” she said.

When the Kellys gathered the 25 employees in March to say the restaurant was for sale, they told them they would understand if anyone wanted to find another job.

Nobody left.

“They all said they’d stay through the end,” Brian said.

Preparing for the finale

The family wanted customers to have the same notice.

“A lot of restaurants close and all of a sudden there’s a note on the door, and sometimes even the staff doesn’t know about it,” Brett said.

The Kellys also wanted customers to have time to use their gift certificates. Brian said they have honored certificates dating to the mid-1990s and will reimburse anyone left with one after the closing.

But the March announcement caused confusion. Some customers thought Kelly’s had already closed.

Once the family set Aug. 31 as the final day, business surged again. One recent Wednesday was the busiest Wednesday Kelly’s had seen in three months.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘We’ve got to get the family out there one last time,’” Brett said.

And some are stocking up, especially on snapper soup.

Customers have been calling Brett to ask whether they can buy it by the quart and freeze it. He tried freezing a bucket during the pandemic and found that, aside from some crystallization, it held up well enough.

Now he is dispensing freezer advice along with soup.

One day last week, he thought he had made enough to get through the following day. That night, customers bought 10 quarts and nine pints. The Wesley group took six quarts. “They were lucky because I just made it,” he said.

Moving on

What Kelly’s cannot stockpile is another generation willing to take over the way the previous ones did.

Brett’s children worked here as teenagers, bussing tables, washing dishes, and doing whatever else was needed, but neither wanted the restaurant business.

“All the nieces and nephews worked here one way or another,” Brett said. “They all did their part here. But nobody wants to basically do what Brian and I did — be hands-on with it. So we knew it would probably end with us.”

Tommy works in the kitchen with his father and uncle, but he can’t run it alone. “Managing the business is a different world,” Brett said. “And we don’t have enough family coming in behind him to back him up.”

Brett has watched what the restaurant demanded of his own generation. “I think the best move for him is to go try something else and maybe enjoy life more than we did,” he said. “Now we’re going to enjoy life more.”

Brian’s illness hastened the decision. “I’m used to working all those hours, and I just can’t anymore,” Brian said. “I come in and help my brother when I can, but it’s not the same.”

The restaurant, meanwhile, keeps demanding attention, even now.

A month ago, an oven the Kellys had used for about 30 years died. It was too old to repair.

“I’m thinking, ‘Geez, I’ve got to get a new oven for, like, three months?’” Brett said.

They bought the oven.

The approximately 7,300-square-foot building — including its liquor license, equipment, furnishings, and attached apartment — is listed for $2 million. The Kellys say there are prospective buyers, though no deal has been completed, and they don’t know whether the next owner will operate it as a restaurant.

Nor do Brian and Brett know exactly what they will do after taking a well-earned break. They have kicked around the idea of someday opening something much smaller, perhaps selling Kelly’s staples such as snapper soup and crab cakes, or even operating a food truck.

Brown expects to find another job eventually. First, she plans to take some time off.

“I need to wrap my head around it,” she said.

After 38 years, she isn’t angry with the Kellys for their decision.

“I’m glad for them,” Brown said. “They deserve it. They deserve it.”