A restaurant serving up New England comfort food — roast beef sandwiches, lobster rolls, clam chowder — is expanding in Florida.
Kelly’s Roast Beef has opened a second location in the Sarasota and Bradenton area. The Boston chain already has four other restaurants on Florida’s Gulf Coast, in the Naples, Fort Myers and St. Petersburg areas.
The new fast-food sandwich shop and drive-thru, opening Tuesday, May 6, is in Parrish’s Creekside Commons shopping plaza. Kelly’s opened in December 2022 in the Square at University Town Center , a familiar pit stop for South Florida travelers just off Interstate 75.
Kelly’s Roast Beef menu
Despite the name of the restaurant, there’s more than roast beef sandwiches on the menu. The lineup also features lobster rolls, fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, whole-bellied clams, scallops, clam chowde and, soft-serve ice cream.
Kelly’s Roast Beef history
Company history says it was almost a fluke for the restaurant, which began in 1951 in the Boston area, to popularize the roast beef sandwich s. Founders Frank V. McCarthy and Raymond Carey opened Kelly’s as a hot dog shack on Revere Beach outside Boston…