New Canal District bar 1885 looks to create a new neighborhood haunt

WORCESTER — Here, bars that throw around words like “elevated,” while purporting to offer experiences pulled from other cities, are often greeted with skepticism. Worcester does not need advice on how to drink — nor does not seek it from glitzy interlopers.

But the three owners behind a new Canal District bar have never been outsiders in this city. They have spent most of their lives here, growing up, raising families, running businesses, watching Worcester develop into the kind of place deserving of a cocktail bar, refined and exploratory, set apart from the dives and neighborhood haunts.

Opening this fall at 48-50 Green St., 1885 intends to draw people in with craft-cocktails imbued with fresh, unexpected ingredients, and keep them reveling with duck confit pierogis and octopus tacos.

“We want to bring something different in that Worcester hasn’t seen before without scaring people away,” co-owner Cameron Brigham said. “If some people don’t get out of the city much, a place like this could be intimidating at first, so we want to give them a taste of what we’ve seen outside, bring it here, and share it with them slowly. We want them to ask questions. And we want our staff to answer them and make them feel more comfortable.”

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Of 1885’s three owners, Brigham has the least experience in the restaurant business: Since 2016, he has worked for the Worcester Fire Department, and if you’ve toured a firehouse recently in the city, you might have had him as a guide.

Since bringing on 1885’s bar manager, Braden Pfahl, and head chef Adam Maciejewski, he has been treated to an advanced course on the industry. Both Pfahl and Maciejewski, combined, have spent more than a decade at bars and restaurants in Worcester, Boston and New York.

Before becoming a firefighter, Brigham had a stint behind the bar at the Banner, but studying Pfahl has been as revelatory as seeing inside a smashed atom.

“I was looking at egg whites in a drink and wondering why,” he said. “Now when I go out, I’m not so scared to order a drink with egg whites. Braden knows alcohol inside and out. I pick his brain all the time.”

Brigham’s partners, on the other hand, know their way around a kitchen like he knows his way around a firehouse. Mario Ritacco ran Calabria Ristorante, first on Shrewsbury Street, then in downtown Millbury. And Nick Oliveri, before starting his own construction business in the city, helped his family operate Toscano’s Market, an Italian deli that churned out sandwich after sandwich from what is now One Eleven Chop House.

Asked why he decided to return to the restaurant business for a third act, Ritacco told me hospitality has a deep hold on him. “It’s in me. I can never leave. I love the people,” he said.

Oliveri has grand goals for 1885, including eventually adding a rooftop bar offering sweeping views of the Canal District. Few spots exist to grab a nightcap after a game at Polar Park, he said; 1885 will help fill that void. “We hope to grab some of the crowds from the ballpark,” he said. “It’s hard to find new places to go in the city.”

In Pfahl and Maciejewski, Oliveri believes he has the perfect pair to lead 1885’s beverage and culinary programs. “I know how to put a good team together. I want to put people where they thrive,” he said.

Maciejewski, originally from Dudley, was the executive chef at Chalk Point Kitchen in Manhattan for about seven years prior to moving back to Massachusetts.

“For the food program I want to play off the upscale cocktail lounge, with an emphasis on snacks and shareable plates and with a handful of entrées,” he said.

Joining the pierogis, which harken to his Polish roots, and tacos will be a squash and goat cheese lasagna and a robust seafood plate showcasing smoked mussels.

At the bar, Pfahl has dreamt up a cocktail menu that leans on his sometimes-wild bartending style, as shown at some of his recent cocktail pop-ups.

“I’ll be executing cocktails like I’ve done with my pop-ups, cocktails like I’ve done in my career as a bartender: fun, tasty, well-garnished, exciting-to-drink, super Instagram-able,” he said.

The bar will offer a mix of original cocktails and classics, he said, with a few shareable drinks, as well, presented not in the traditional scorpion bowls but vessels like ceramic seashells. “We’ll have some cool theatrics with those, too, playing with dry ice and different aromas,” he added.

Pfahl told me to expect a tiki drink made using marigold blossom and plum flower with gin, lemon, passionfruit and almond.

Having grown up and fallen in love with bartending in Worcester, Pfahl has always wanted to manage his own bar here, where he has the freedom to introduce new spirits and flavor combinations in an approachable, unpretentious way.

“I know the city doesn’t want that super pretentious place where the bartender thinks they’re better than you,” he said. “They want to go somewhere, have fun and have interesting cocktails that aren’t just cosmos or vodka Red Bulls.”

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Beyond Beer: A jigger of refinement, a dash of reinvention at 1885