The Nut House Pub & Grille at 295 S Water St in Kent is a pub with screens over the bar, jumbo wings, craft pizza and a 2:30am close every night. Call (330) 548-9183 to ask what is on before you come, and order food online through Toast if you want it waiting.
Nobody wants to drive somewhere on a Sunday and find the wrong thing on. So the honest version first: this page cannot promise you a specific game, because what is showing depends on the day, the package and who else is in the room. What it can tell you is what the pub is, where it is, when it is open, and which number to call to ask — (330) 548-9183, before you leave the house.
Everything under here is the practical part: where the bar sits, what to eat while your attention is somewhere else, how late the room runs, and how to get a group in without standing up all night.
The bar runs the long wall with screens above it, so the sightline from a stool is straightforward — you do not have to crane, and you do not have to negotiate with somebody's shoulder. Behind you the room opens into tables. Come for something big and it is worth arriving before kickoff rather than after.
What makes a room work on a game day is not the equipment, it is whether the food keeps coming while your attention is somewhere else. That is what a pub and grille is built for. Jumbo wings, traditional and tossed in your sauce or boneless and hand-breaded, are the obvious order and they hold up through a full half. Game Time Nachos exist for exactly this and are named accordingly: grilled chicken, three cheeses, jalapeños.
For a table that wants to keep grazing, the shareables list does the work. Buffalo chicken dip with homemade tortilla chips. Candied bacon and onion dip with four cheeses. Wisconsin cheese curds, fried, with marinara. A Bavarian pretzel with stadium mustard, honey mustard, and spicy aioli. Cod bites with boom boom sauce. A blackened quesadilla with cheddar jack and grilled chicken. None of it needs cutlery, which on a Sunday is the entire point.
If somebody at the table would rather have a whole pizza than a share of everything, the craft pizzas are right there: Hot Honey Pepperoni Pizza, Deluxe Pizza, BBQ Chicken Pizza, or One Topping BYO Pizza. A pizza travels down a long table better than most things and disappears at roughly the same rate as a close fourth quarter.
Kent is a town where the game is rarely the only thing going on. The pub is on South Water Street, a walk from the middle of downtown and the campus side of the river, so it works as a first stop, a last stop, or the whole afternoon.
Then there is the rest of the day to account for. A game rarely arrives on its own in a college town — there is usually something before it and something after it — and the pub's hours absorb both ends. Turn up at eleven for lunch and the afternoon slate, or walk in at nine at night for the late one. Neither is an unusual request at this address, and neither gets you a look.
On a busy game day, ordering ahead is the difference between eating at kickoff and eating at halftime. The Toast storefront linked from this site takes pickup orders online, so a stack of wings and a couple of pizzas can be boxed and ready when you arrive.
If you are staying and you are a group, call (330) 548-9183 first. Tell them how many of you there are and roughly when you are arriving, and ask what is showing — that one call answers the question this page deliberately will not guess at.
Once you are in, order at the bar or from your table.
And if the table wants something sweet and hot to argue about at half-time, Hot Honey Pepperoni Pizza is usually the culprit.
The pub opens at 11am Monday through Friday and at 9am on Saturday and Sunday, and closes at 2:30am every single night. For a Saturday of college football that means the doors are open before the early window starts. For an NFL Sunday it means the same.
The late close is the part people underestimate. A West Coast start that ends near midnight, an extra-innings game, an overtime nobody planned for — the pub is still open, the kitchen has not vanished, and nobody is stacking chairs around you. Weeknights follow the same rule: 11am to 2:30am, all five of them.
One practical note about weekends: the 9am opening means an early kick-off or a morning tournament is not somebody else's problem. The room is unlocked, the kitchen is on, and the coffee-hour version of this pub is considerably calmer than the evening one.
The Nut House Pub & Grille, 295 S Water St, Kent, OH 44240. Phone (330) 548-9183. Mon–Fri 11am–2:30am, Sat–Sun 9am–2:30am.
The Google directions link on this site puts you on South Water Street at the front door. The patio faces the street if the weather is behaving and you would rather sit outside between games. For anything showing this week, Instagram is @thenuthousepub_ — and the phone still beats it.
