Shagnasty’s Grubbery & Pour House will close permanently in Huntsville, the restaurant announced on Monday.
The steakhouse and pub known as “The Shag” was located at 1117 Jordan Lane off of University Drive.
“We have decided to close the Shag permanently effective Immediately,” the restaurant’s reps said in a Facebook post.
They said the restaurant will hold a liquidation sale Saturday at 10 a.m. where “everything is for sale.” The post also said, “We will entertain selling the entire business as a whole or we will part it out Saturday.”
“We have decided to go in a different direction,” it said. “The bar business takes up to much of our time. It was good run! Proud of what we have done in 7 years and unfortunately our priorities have changed.
“We wish everyone the best and hope the memories we shared live on!”
Opening five years ago, Shagnasty’s quickly filled Huntsville’s “rock bar” void. Organizers brought in notable touring hard-rock bands like Buckcherry and Dirty Honey. The Shag was also the place to catch top local bands, like Hunnivega and 53 Judges. The outdoor stage behind Shagnasty’s was a fun place to see a rock show.
The restaurant was a favorite of service industry professionals and musicians who raved about the steaks. At Shagnasty’s, you can wear a Metallica shirt, faded jeans and sneakers and fit right in.
The restaurant successfully flipped the steak script from fine-dining to comfort food, thanks in part to their “Steak Day,” when they offered a discount on the beef entree. They also grilled ribeye, porterhouse T-bone and sirloin. You could get a side salad, baked potato or loaded potato if you didn’t want fries.
Married couple Louis Grant and Trena Grant owned and operated Shagnasty’s. The name Shagnasty’s is a shortened version of the nickname the Grants had for the O’Shaughnessy Avenue area of Huntsville’s Five Points neighborhood, where Louis lived when he and Trena first met. “We dropped the ‘O’ because we didn’t want it to sound too Irish,” Grant told AL.com.
As a young adult, Louis lived in the Seattle area during the rise of the ‘90s grunge music from there, and he’s remained partial to bands like Alice in Chains ever since. In the Seattle area, he cooked at local Mexican restaurants before joining the Army. After getting out of the service, he got into the construction business.
At Shagnasty’s, Louis mainly oversaw back-of-the-house, while Trena, who previously worked in the legal field, handled front-of-house and bookkeeping. “We control everything, every aspect of it, and it’s a beautiful thing,” Louis told AL.com in 2023. “We’ve been married 14 years and haven’t killed each other, so it seems to be working.”
Before opening Shagnasty’s, the Grants’ loved to have friends over at their house on weekends. “We were always cooking for football games and having parties,” Grant said. “The problem was we got tired of cleaning it all up afterward. Trena was like, ‘You know, we need to own a bar.’”