St. Matthews Tavern opened this past weekend for church services and will open this weekend as a bar.

The bar is located at 1300 N Mills Ave [GMap] in the former Paradise bar space.

The bar features a tavern style theme mixed with church pews. The church pews will get their use as they bar will be hosting St. Dorothy Catholic Community (Website) who will be celebrating Mass there every Sunday at 11am and will be having a midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

Owner Matt Fassl told Bungalower that it was important to open to god first. The bar will still be open on Sundays just after mass.

The official opening will be this Sunday (after mass) but you can also grab a drink on Saturday as part of the Twelve Nights of Christmas Pub Crawl.

Fassl said he plans to continue working on building out the space to eventually add in the Orlando Beer Garden concept and fix up the exterior but he wants to open the bar area first.

St. Matthew’s Tavern will be open Monday through Friday 4:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. and Saturday and Sunday 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.

Here’s a look inside St. Matthew’s Tavern: