WARWICK — Forty-five-year-old Jim Kilroy is a jack of all trades, with experience in carpentry, baking, cooking, ceramics, flower arranging and more. Now, he is using his eclectic skill set to open the Barn Owl restaurant – in a town that is starving for an eatery.
The restaurant, on Winchester Road across from Town Hall, will open for business Saturday at 6 a.m. after 14 months of renovations. With the exception of Copper Angel Pizzeria and Bakery at 24 Athol Road, which is open Thursdays, Barn Owl will be Warwick’s only restaurant.
Kilroy said he first stumbled across the building in the late 1990s, when it was a general store, and wanted to purchase it with the intention of turning it into a ceramics studio. However, his venture didn’t come to fruition, and he temporarily moved out of town.
In 2004, the general store closed after more than 100 years in business. The back half of the building, which had been a motorcycle shop in the 1950s and a post office in the 1960s, was also vacant.
When Kilroy returned to Warwick, the building was up for sale, and he jumped at the opportunity, this time with an entirely new vision — Barn Owl.
“Somewhere in the ’90s, I picked up bread baking as something I was interested in,” Kilroy explained. Instead of building kilns, he began building brick ovens, and attended summer classes at the Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vt.
“I’ve always enjoyed cooking for people,” he said.
Kilroy first started thinking about opening a restaurant in 2012, specifically named Barn Owl because of his love for owls. He said he even had a pet owl as a child.
“I always knew if I had a restaurant, it would be called Barn Owl,” he said.
With help from his father, Larry Kilroy, the younger Kilroy purchased the vacant general store and an adjacent house in June 2015, with the agreement that Larry Kilroy would act as landlord and Jim Kilroy as business proprietor. Renewing the century-old building would not be a simple project.
“It was packed from floor to ceiling with junk (when we bought it),” Jim Kilroy said. “All the stuff that wasn’t complete junk we gave to the Orange Survival Center.”
Once cleaned out, the Kilroys worked together to remodel the building themselves, with Larry Kilroy having worked as a contractor in Warwick since the 1970s.
“He and I did it all together,” Jim Kilroy said. Even Jim’s mother, Andrea Kilroy, contributed her design expertise.
Jim Kilroy made the restaurant’s wooden countertop, bench and tables himself, and handcrafted the vases that are a fixture on each table. He even disassembled a kiln and turned it into a brick oven.
“Part of the aesthetic is everything is handmade,” he said. “It’s been 12-, 14-hour days for the past 14 months, and often Saturday and Sunday, too … But in the end, it’s great, because you have full ownership of it. You know every little piece of it.”
After months of passion and elbow grease, the restaurant is set to open, serving up wood fired bagels, croissants, Danish pastries, various breads and Dean’s Beans coffee in the mornings, and wood fired pizza and salad in the evening.
“It’s similar to an Italian eatery,” Kilroy said, particularly in the sense of its hours. The restaurant will be open from 6 a.m. to noon and from 5 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. It will be closed Monday.
Kilroy intends to use locally sourced ingredients as much as possible, and will purchase meat from Warwick’s Hettie Bell Farm.
Kilroy is also applying for a beer and wine license.
In addition to a bar with rotating stools, tables and a patio, customers can also enjoy their coffee and read a newspaper in a lounge area with two couches. Kilroy said community residents are excited to have a consistent gathering place where they can congregate and chat over coffee.
“People in town have been wanting to see this place get fixed up for years,” Kilroy said. “I usually get four or five people a day that stop in and want to know if I’m open yet.”
“Everybody in town is really excited about it,” Warwick resident Susan Paquet agreed. Paquet will display some of her photography at the Barn Owl, and will help out around the restaurant until Kilroy hires a small staff of regular employees.
During the Warwick Old Home Days last month, Kilroy temporarily opened the restaurant to the public and gave away coffee and pastries, giving many residents a sneak peak.
“It’ll be like having a little slice of Europe right here in Warwick,” Paquet said.