Photos by Linda Campos

Chris Ly and Spencer Mewherter pause amid a busy evening at their new 40-seat Worcester restaurant, Wooden Bar, to describe their excitement for mackerel. It’s not so much the nearly boneless fish itself that has them jazzed, nor particularly the dish they use it in. The mackerel’s more of a symbol for their evolution as chefs and business owners.

Before opening Wooden Bar this summer, Ly and Mewherter ran the popular ramen pop-up Wooden Noodles, mostly roving from packed brewery to packed brewery, churning out steamy bowls of their own fresh noodles. The pair, who met building a tiny house together and bonded over their shared love of umami, sake and fermentation, created a successful pop-up, drawing a large following, but they ultimately felt constrained by the model.

Ly and Mewherter hoped to find a permanent spot where they could innovate as cooks, carpenters, entrepreneurs, mixologists, even sake brewers. With the closing of 3cross Fermentation Coop, the brewery where they first debuted Wooden Noodles in 2018, they stepped in with an idea for a restaurant where they would play around freely with food and fermentation, leaning on local produce and their frenetic cooking style.

“We served a lot of ramen to people over the years,” Mewherter says. “And it’s fun now to work on and develop a balanced menu. We love making noodles, but we’re excited about some of the other things we can add.”

Every week, sometimes every couple of days, Ly and Mewherter draw up new menus with anywhere from six to eight dishes inspired by the list of fresh meat and produce sent to them from their farmer friends. One uncomfortably hot, humid week in July, that meant scrambling to devise a plate of fava beans courtesy of Dismas Family Farm in Oakham; they served the tender beans lightly charred, atop sweet cherry tomatoes and delicate rice puffs. As chefs, they embrace the “spontaneity” of the seasonal ingredients, Ly says. “It’s not like we don’t have constraints,” he says. “We have creative constraints and are constrained by what’s coming in from the farms we use, what’s seasonal.”

They still have handmade noodles—one menu staple has been a bowl of them dressed in ginger sauce and topped with a soy soft-boiled egg and sweet, peppery nasturtiums—and despite vowing not to, they brought their beloved ramen back. Noodles no longer dominate their culinary consciousness, though. Now there are family-size meals like the aforementioned mackerel—cooked whole, scales and all, in a rich broth of dashi, ginger and garlic until its thick white flesh peels effortlessly—and small shareable plates of seared sugar snap peas or pulled pork sliders calling for their fresh baked buns and a slightly sweet and spicy sauce.

Wooden Bar has given Ly and Mewherter the chance to experiment behind the bar, too, with new cocktails created weekly. A recent drink list brought together equal parts funky and traditional, with the kalimotxo, a mix of wine and cola often dubbed the poor man’s sangria, and the dangerously potent clarified ruby milk punch, which combines clarified milk with port, rum and Earl Grey tea. The taps at Wooden Bar flow regularly with beers from Honest Weight Artisan Beer in Orange, whose owners are close friends. And soon, you can expect pours of house-brewed beer or sake.

From there, Ly and Mewherter do not harbor any grander goals, apart from constructing an outdoor patio and building the furniture for it themselves. “We don’t really know what the future is going to be for this business,” Mewherter concedes. “So far, we’ve relied on intuition a lot—intuition and feedback.”

“We hope Worcester is along for the ride with us,” Ly adds.

@woodenbarworcester

This story appeared in the Fall 2022 issue.