Photos by Giant Giants

Monica Gonzalez, co-owner of 3 Kings Restaurant, knew nothing about baseball before this spring. Now, it might be her new favorite sport.

On a crisp, overcast mid-April Sunday, Gonzalez, her husband, Gil Colon, and step-daughter, Gilmary, sold thick empanadas, savory pinchos and melt-in-yourmouth chicharrón from the Taste of Worcester stand at Polar Park, home of the Triple-A Worcester Red Sox. Two years after starting their business out of a small food truck, and a few months after opening their brick-and-mortar shop, the family found its business on solid footing and on the precipice of a breakout summer.

“When you first open your restaurant you just sell to your people,” says Gonzalez, who moved to the United States from Puerto Rico six years ago. “People knowing more about us and trying our food is big for us.”

A Polar Park staple since the 2022 season (the park opened to fans in 2021 under some lingering Covid restrictions), the Taste of Worcester program provides local restaurants with access to the kitchen and seating of a mini-restaurant located just past the outfield fence on Summit Street—but still within Polar Park limits. Participants get the space for a homestand, up to six games. Some Taste of Worcester purveyors return for other events throughout the season or another spin through Taste of Worcester later in the season or the next.

To date, the majority of 3 Kings Restaurant’s patrons stem from the Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic communities, Gonzalez and Colon’s home countries. Their Cambridge Street restaurant opened in late November and serves lunch and dinner Wednesday through Sunday. Taste of Worcester offered them exposure to a new and—with the park’s 9,508-person capacity—larger market.

The WooSox build excitement for Taste of Worcester participants by promoting them and their menus on social media. A video played on the park’s jumbotron points fans in their direction, setting the foundation for a successful experience.

One customer went to 3 Kings three times during a game. A handful visited twice. Many customers told Gonzalez they plan on eating at the flagship restaurant in the coming weeks.

“To bring in new people,” Gonzalez says. “We’re more than grateful.”

Far from traditional ballpark fare (though that’s still readily available throughout Polar Park), Taste of Worcester showcases the city’s cultural diversity through a culinary lens. There’s a parallel to baseball, an international sport reflected in the rosters of the WooSox and their opponents. Restaurants do not pay a fee to take part in the Taste of Worcester. They take home 90% of profits for games scheduled Monday through Thursday and 80% for Friday to Sunday games.

A week before the WooSox announced their move from Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the fall of 2018, team president Dr. Charles Steinberg and staffers scheduled a fan planning meeting with a group of 25 Central Mass baseball fans. That meeting turned into a series, 21 sessions in all. Of the 877 ideas Steinberg jotted down in a baby blue Caliber spiral bound notebook, Taste of Worcester represented the pillars of the community’s desires.

“People want to buy local, eat local, take pride in local and have a ballpark that reflects local,” Steinberg says, retrieving the notebook from a shelf in his office. “It gives you a flavor of the city.”

In addition to Taste of Worcester, Polar Park’s regular concession stands include plenty of local flavor: hot dogs from George’s Coney Island, Table Talk Pies, Mexican cuisine from Nacho Nacho Man, sweets from Creative Cakes Cafe and pizza from Wonder Bar. The park also sells its namesake sponsor’s Polar beverages as well as drinks from Wormtown Brewery.

Many WooSox front office staffers, including Steinberg, frequented Creative Cakes Cafe’s former Worcester Public Market stall. When wife-husband owner tandem Colleen and Dan Nadeau decided to move on and focus a wholesale business out of their commercial kitchen in Monson, the WooSox offered them a coveted full-season spot on the first base concourse for this season.

Creative Cakes Cafe serves hot and cold coffees and pastries every game, a place to continue face-to-face customer interaction.

“This is our happy place and the fans are happy to be here,” Colleen Nadeau says while fulfilling orders from a steady stream of customers an hour before first pitch. “There’s a definite energy here, and we’re so glad to be a part of it.”

Russo’s Italian Restaurant batted leadoff in the Taste of Worcester’s inaugural lineup. Owner Ed Russo’s restaurant already catered a handful of suite level menu items the previous season, and that existing relationship led the WooSox to reach out with the opportunity. Russo, and the Water Street establishment’s employees, loved it. A handful of staffers requested this year’s assignment. A line cook and two servers who prepare, plate and serve a classic menu of meatball and sausage, pepper and onion subs and, “of course” in Russo’s words, cannolis.

Russo doesn’t have a quantifiable method for tracking Taste of Worcester’s impact on his restaurant, but the steady flow of repeat customers both at his restaurant and on Taste of Worcester days lead him to believe it benefits his 8-year-old business.

“You make a couple bucks but it’s not about the money,” Russo says. “It’s really about the marketing of it all. It’s a great program to get businesses in the city involved.”

And many have. The growing list of Taste of Worcester purveyors from the city and surrounding communities that have appeared at the park includes The Caribbean Press, El Sombrero Taqueria, Unique Café, Chashu Ramen, The Taco Spot, Woo Juice, Namaste Woo, Wormtown Kitchen, Pho Sure, Berry’s Sweet Confections, One Love Cafe, Wan Wang, Atrevete A Probar, Nancy Chang, Ziggy Bombs and Mezcal—even the dearly departed Nuestra, District Wood Fired Kitchen, Lock50 and Glazy Susan, all recently closed.

The WooSox reach out directly to restaurants they think would fit well at the park, identifying businesses through both organic research and the organization’s burgeoning community connections.

3 Kings Restaurant was referred to the WooSox through the Wepas Advisory Committee, a group of Latino community leaders, to help schedule programming for the team’s “Los Wepas de Worcester” games as part of Minor League Baseball’s “Copa de la Diversión” (Fun Cup), which honors local Hispanic and Latino communities.

“There’s this beautiful fabric of immigrant care for other immigrant cultures that goes back 125 years to the arrival of a lot of immigrants in Worcester,” says Steinberg. “The idea that the Jewish delis on Water Street were patronized extensively by non-Jewish families after church on Sunday is an illustration of a Worcester nuance not necessarily shared by other cities. The idea that we wanted to reach out to the Vietnamese community, the Armenian community, all of these heritages, became very clear.”

Emmanuel Larbi, co-owner of Accra Girls Restaurant and ãkra eatery & juice bar on Grafton Street, connected with the team through its Ghanaian and West African Heritage night. His businesses participated in the early part of the 2022 season and again this season for Ghanaian and West African Heritage night. Larbi said the experience helped point customers from their former stand in the public market and attract new business. They served things like plantain chips with mango salsa, jollof rice bowls and wraps.

“Anytime you get to show who you are to a diverse crowd that perhaps doesn’t know your cuisine it’s a great opportunity,” Larbi says. “It shows what collaboration can do in the community. Profit can be looked at in different ways, like awareness. Did we engage the customer, make new friends and gain new customers? Yes.”

In El Sombrero Taqueria’s case, Taste of Worcester served as a true business incubator. Lio Carmona, general manager and co-owner of the restaurant located on the second floor at the Solomon Pond Mall in Marlborough, said his restaurant saw an immediate bump in sales after participating in the Taste of Worcester last spring. They arrived at Polar Park just a few months after the restaurant opened, serving regular menu items like street tacos, quesadillas, nachos, tres leches cake and sombrero fries, their take on California fries.

“We found it really interesting because we were just getting our name out there and it made an impact because they told us we made some of the best sales,” Carmona says. “It was a total success.”

So much so, they’re returning to Taste of Worcester and plan on opening a new restaurant adjacent to the park in nearby Kelley Square this summer. Carmona anticipates fans will recognize the business from Taste of Worcester. Opening a second location is a major success story for Carmona, who previously oversaw a restaurant that closed. He went back to school and is studying hospitality management at Quinsigamond Community College, where Carmona learned the business practices he’s taken to El Sombrero Taqueria.

Gonzalez, the co-owner of 3 Kings Restaurant, is from Puerto Rico. Colon, her husband, hails from the Dominican Republic. Though both countries produce some of baseball’s top talent, Gonzalez never followed the sport. With the impact it’s looking to have on her business, she’s now all-in. And they sold out every day.

Rene Gibree, a Polar Park security guard, tries most Taste of Worcester fare. He deemed the idea “wicked cool. “It gives you a variety outside of traditional ballpark fare,” says Gibree, moments from a positive review of 3 Kings Restaurant’s chicken empanada and chicharrón.

Peter L’Esperance tried the stand for the first time at the suggestion of his wife in the second inning, excited for the Puerto Rican fare.

“The double-edged sword of this park is that it has caused gentrification and pushed some people out,” L’Esperance says. “But at the same time, supporting local businesses and getting them in here is a good thing.”

The WooSox fans who frequent Taste of Worcester, many of them season ticket holders, had just one question throughout 3 Kings Restaurant’s stay.

“Are you guys going to be here tomorrow?”

No. There’s no game. But they could check out 118 Cambridge Street later in the week and hope to return to Taste of Worcester later this season on “Los Wepas de Worcester'' nights.

“It’s a really cool experience,” Gonzalez says. “The people really like it.”

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