Red Pepper and Wan Wang.

There is nothing edgy about under seasoned fries, # 10 cans of Sysco brand cheese whiz, and pre-made frozen crab rangoons on a cheesesteak.

I always try places twice before giving up. I’ll wait and see if they get better.

But everything was under seasoned/bland, and tasted like the lowest quality of prepared Sysco brand foods.

It’s really mediocre.

Sometime in January.

I used to live on Abbott Street. The snow pile in the back of the Rice Funeral Home parking lot was a popular outdoor bathroom.

One especially snowy winter meant there was a massive snow pile in the back that was especially tall and slippery, and people kept sliding down messy parts on the back of it and getting stuck on the fence, covered in well, you know.

There aren’t a lot of public bathrooms available.

Most restaurants won’t have staff and plates/silverware to send plus do set up and break down of an event like that.

Back when I catered I did plenty of small dinners like this. It might just depend on when you are asking for and what your budget is. (Keep in mind weekends in prime wedding/graduation season are already booked!)

If you’re on a budget, you might be better off looking at smaller caterers and food trucks for what you are looking for, not a restaurant. Or if you know people in the business, offering a cash gig to do the setup/cleanup and renting the plates and silverware yourself.

What you want is a catering company, not a restaurant.

Paesano’s closed.

His dad always welcomes everyone with open arms. Just knock three times on the basement door.

I’ve heard rumors of a secret club of alpha males that meets under the MassPike underpass in Grafton. You just have to dodge a little traffic to get to it, champ.

Clearly that’s a view from just below the summit of Blue Hill. On a clear day you can see the Pru just past those hills in the distance.

*Hamilton Street. New league season should probably be starting soon if I remember correctly.

I got caught up in a Cabbage Patch Kid riot when I was 6 or 7.

WPD set up across from where I worked on Hamilton St. There was a family that lived there that had a son in a motorized wheelchair, and daily drop offs from the school bus were hazardous from people ignoring the crosswalk and the bus lights and sign.

From what I saw, they made sure to step out with a block to spare, not last second. So many people speed on that road, forgetting it’s 25 mph in the city, so it might seem it was “last second.”

A few times they caught multiple drivers at the same time because there are two lanes and both would blast on through. They even managed to catch someone passing a stopped school bus with lights flashing and stop sign extended while he went through the crosswalk. That guy went ballistic and was lucky he wasn’t arrested.

I’ve been hit by cars three times in my life (crosswalk violation, doored, wrong way driver). Worcester drivers are a menace.

I used to work on Hamilton St, where they had much needed weekly enforcement stings. One of the officers told us the enforcement stings prompted a wave of complaints (including someone they got three times in a week!), and that’s why they stopped. We had a brief period of time where people slowed down, and then it went back to being dangerous.

They briefly did 10 years ago. A plainclothes officer would see a car coming, start crossing, and any violators would be pulled over.

But then people started complaining about the $250 fine and threatened to sue because it felt like entrapment.

I saw them get three cars with one attempt on Hamilton St!

Truly evil move.

If you’ve worked in a restaurant than you know having food service past 10pm is a way to barely break even during those hours and burn out BOH staff. And you would know that pregame hours in the early afternoon are usually slow as well. Money is made during weekends and dinner service, and having 75 days a year, including ~12 weekends a year with ballpark induced reductions in revenue is tough to recover from.

It you want to succeed in off hours, you need to be a bar, first and foremost. Worcester is nowhere near close enough to being an 18 hour city.

Business owners have repeatedly said parking is an issue, specifically the 2 hour limits on street parking without renewals and stringent parking enforcement. Businesses have said that their staff struggle to find parking, and face a lot of tickets.

The lack of parking in the neighborhood was an issue on weekends before the park, and it’s made far worse by adding in~9000 fans 75 days a year. The city closed a municipal lot on Green Street. That’s something that should have been addressed since the planning phase of the park. Building one garage in the second year of operations is a developer and city failure. Placing the burden on business owners to petition for basic levels of competency from developers and the city is incredibly myopic and condescending.

Scholarship has repeatedly shown that tax payer funded ballparks are a black hole, and not the economic saviors people think they are. Worcester just chose to ignore that and gave away millions of taxpayer funded bonds to the millionaire owners of a AAA team.

The only way out of this is a massive investment in public transport, walkable neighborhoods, and a series of parking options to help with the influx of visitors for games. Also, we need to kill the idea that outside developers have our best interests at heart. Build up and invest the community we have, not the outside investors the Chamber of Commerce has always tried (and failed) to help invest in our city.

The ballpark has 75 home games a year. There’s about 24 weeks to the season, and maybe half of those weekends have home games Friday-Saturday.

That is 12 weekends a year where a ballpark adjacent business is going to see a significant decrease in business due to the ballpark on weekends, which is when restaurants make the most money.

Trying to “attract” a percentage of the ~9000 fans who attend a 3+ hour baseball game isn’t feasible. Most people go out for a drink or two before the game. Most aren’t going to add in 1.5 hours to sit down for a meal before or after the game. Weeknight games start at 6:35pm. Realistically, who is getting out of work early to go eat before the game, and who is going to go out to eat at 10pm after the game? Not many. Study after study shows that fans spend most of their money and time inside the ballpark, and the perception of crowds on game day drive away other customers.

Across the board businesses in the Canal District (not just restaurants) have said sales are down on game days because customers stay away on game days because of traffic, congestion, a lack of parking, 2 hour meters, and an absolute lack of public transport.

Have you ever worked in the restaurant industry? Restaurants stay open for the hours that people show up. Adding hours means adding employees, adding product, and additional costs. You just can’t decide a few weeks a year to have odd hours and add in temp workers. That’s not how the industry works. Off hours are off hours for a reason, and you will lose money trying to attract customers in during off hours.

It is. https://www.masslive.com/dining/2022/10/ri-restaurant-blackstone-to-open-in-worcester-from-breakfast-to-late-night.html?outputType=amp

Public market businesses have been quoted on the record talking about downturns in business during games. Especially on weekends.

Ballparks are a black hole for local businesses. While they might drive pre and post game crowds to neighboring places, it’s in the most inconvenient times when it’s a night game. 5-7pm and 11pm-close aren’t the best times for restaurants. It’s good for bars.

6-9 pm is the prime dining time for most customers, and many will stay away on game day due to the crowds and perception of lack of parking, inconvenience, etc.

If you are a restaurant staying open later to catch a ballpark crowd that has already been eating and drinking inside, you are gambling. People might go home. They might be full and only want to drink at a bar, not a restaurant.

And if your dining room is empty 6-9pm because of the public’s reluctance to dine during games, then you are losing money. It costs money to open your doors, and it costs a lot more to staff up for 12+ hours a day. That requires a lot more employees than you might afford for a gamble.

Jerry Remy’s restaurant opened up right across from the right field corner at Fenway. Prime spot, but they couldn’t make a living off of being slammed 81 home games a year, then much smaller crowds the rest of the time. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2015/03/04/closure-jerry-remy-restaurant-preceded-years-financial-struggle/d84dQz01W7Xwmh9GqpWnoL/story.html

I think Hangover/Broth’s issues had more to do with the chaos from ownership. Whatever gains they made in their first few years were erased when the chef had to buy it and restart permitting after federal charges against the manager and owner. That’s a tough hole to dig out of twice.

I never had a good experience there. Service and food quality were highly variable. They just were not good at details and it showed everywhere. My first time visiting there, they had tequila misspelled four unique ways throughout the menus and chalkboards. That was the highlight of the night.

The restaurants that closed in the Canal District probably didn’t close just because of the ballpark. Food cost and rent have gone up. Add in the uncertainty of projected revenue caused by a reduction of customers during 70+ home games, and these businesses made the decision to close.

Also, let’s not ignore the fact that the places that closed had similar menus and atmospheres- they were competing against each other and the new Mercantile downtown (a corporate chain that has deeper pockets).

Long term, if this park is going to pay for itself in 30 years (and be the first in US history to do so), the city needs all the current businesses need to succeed as well as the new developments, plus residents to patronize the district.

If businesses are closing around Polar Park, who is going to fill all the new retail space in the new developments that will be built in the next 2-3 years? With inflation and interest rates going up, it’s going to be harder to fill those storefronts and apartments and hotels. We haven’t even come close to filling all of the storefronts in City Square, never mind the new developments around the ballpark.

And in the meantime, we lose locally owned businesses that hired locally and put money back into the community. Instead we are going to be stuck with generic corporate chains without local ties, and another 28 years of ballooning payments on the ballpark bond. And we all have to pay more in rent and food because of the gentrification caused by greedy developers.

Any elected official who keeps telling you this will all work out well doesn’t care about us and our every day lives. They just see the glory of a new ballpark and new development, and ignore the displacement of actual Worcester residents, who they actually need to patronize the district to pay the tax bill they should have handed to Larry Lucchino.