The Anchor Pub & Grille

Every neighborhood needs a great Pub & Grille

Eddie Huang is a Taiwanese-American multi-hyphenate who has made his cultural mark as an author, chef, restaurateur and director. A former attorney, he later turned to cooking and opened Baohaus, a Taiwanese bun shop in New York City. He is widely known for his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, which was adapted into a popular ABC sitcom in 2015. Huang also hosted the Viceland show Huang’s World, which explored cultural identities through the lens of food. In 2024, he directed, produced and starred in the documentary Vice is Broke.

I was heading up to the North Shore for The Fourth on a 3:59 p.m. Premium Acela departing from Moynihan Hall arriving at Boston South Station.

Before getting on the train, I had a light 1 p.m. business lunch at Borgo which I’d like to claim for my home base, Murray Hill. Sitting on 27th street and Lexington Avenue, some may argue that it’s in proper Kip’s Bay. But whether I dined in Murray Hill or Kip’s Bay, lunch was fantastic consisting of a Chicken Liver Crostini finished with guanciale and agrodolce, some summer lettuces, and a Veal Saltimbocca, which I shared with the homie, M.

The proprietor of Borgo, T, came by our table and dropped some much appreciated knowledge about raising money to open a restaurant, which I’m currently in the process of doing.

Coming into lunch, I only wanted one to three investors at most since the pool of people with money and useful opinions when it comes to operating a small business like a restaurant is few and far between, but M suggested that having a pool of eight to twelve people contributing somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 is the better way to go.

The idea is that with more investors they bring a larger audience and network, but as I’ve learned making films you have to be careful how broad your intended audience is, especially if the thing you hope to create has any sort of identity and specificity. Each audience member brings their wants and needs and expectations that you have to account for and meet once you accept their money. If you burden yourself with too much expectation, the thing you’re creating becomes a Madewell or J. Crew or that disaster of a restaurant, Café Maud on 2nd Avenue.

T slyly and carefully let me know that he enjoyed having a large pool of perceptive self-aware investors, like M, especially when the restaurant is a run away success. It feels good to repay everyone their money and follow through on your promise when everyone is a genius, but that I was onto something with the original number of 3 since runaway success propelled by genius investors is only one of many potential outcomes when opening a restaurant.

You could also invest in a pizzeria that becomes a runaway success before the chef ends up in a knife fight with a Gambino Family member on the street in Carroll Gardens. In that scenario, you want investors who are dumb, deaf, and blind.

It’s just one example, but you have to prepare for these things.

Around 2:45 p.m., M and I departed from Borgo. I headed back to my apartment where I immediately number-two’d, showered, threw a few garments in a bag and took off to Penn Station Moynihan Hall.

I got there right as they announced that it would be on Track 7 and took my seat. A few minutes later an Acela representative presented me with a menu that featured a St. Anselm Charred Bobo Chicken paired with Chalk Hill Estate Chardonnay. I opted solely for a La Colombe Latte in a can, went to the bathroom again, and promptly passed out listening to Thompson Twins Hold Me Now.

When I arrived at South Station, Natashia was waiting for me next to a glass pyramid underneath a Dunkin’ Donuts billboard.

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Ok, I have two ideas. We could go to The Landing in Marblehead, which is a nice waterfront seafood restaurant that probably feels more like a date or the Anchor, which is an institution in Beverly.”

“Which has better food?”

“They both have good food, it’s more about the vibe.”

I pulled up both restaurants on the Places app and immediately understood what my options were.

The Landing was serving Nancy Meyers Culinary Institute of New England romance with a chef driven catch of the day and green apple gazpacho to start. Chef Jasper White’s New England Fusion influence is apparent from the first playful photo of seared scallops with bok choy laid over the top and local fish prepared with street corn and tajín.

In every New England neighborhood, I feel there is a beloved restaurant like The Landing which serves the purpose of a Legal Seafood with the distinct culinary flair of the academic chef in that neighborhood.

I adore these restaurants.

Then I brought up the Anchor Pub & Grille.

The fact that there was an “e” in grill felt promising. I can’t tell you why, but I just had a feeling. I looked up the difference between “grill” and “grille” and discovered that “grill” is the proper word to describe the cooking apparatus, but that “grille” refers to the automotive usage of grille.

In every New England neighborhood, there is also a genre of restaurants like the Anchor Pub & Grille. Natashia’s favorite is Tom English’s Cottage, which advertised this collection of chips as a Valentine’s Dinner one year.

You go, you play pool, you throw darts, you eat the chips they serve you, and you black out.

Needless to say I chose the Anchor.

We pulled up to the patio bar as it was blasting Lil Jon and realized that there was a tiki theme to the bar in that certain columns of the bar had tiki carvings and there was an Island Oasis frozen drink machine.

I remembered this machine from my dad’s steakhouse that the distributor gave you when you bought the syrup. I kind of hated the machine cause it always left the ice chippy, but after not seeing one in probably a decade I was nostalgic. My favorite drink to make with the Island Oasis was the Miami Vice which is a Piña Colada swirled with a Strawberry Daiquiri topped with as much rum that will fit in the cup.

This was all happening around the time Lil Jon was invented in the early-aughts.

The guy next to me was having an enormous lobster roll dripping with butter and the woman next to Natashia had beautiful haddock with bread crumbs. In between bites, she introduced herself.

“I’m Linda, but after 12 I’m Penelope.”

Since Natashia was in good hands, I walked inside past the pool table to the men’s bathroom where the door to the only stall was cracked open to the left of the entrance. Walking in, I couldn’t help but see and hear an adolescent male fighting his way through a contentious bowel movement.

“Ughhhh.”

I said a few Hail Marys for the kid and took the only open urinal. After a few seconds the guy next to me started a conversation with his dick in his hand.

“I don’t think it’s gonna work!”

“Be patient. You have to believe in yourself.”

About seven seconds later, it worked.

“Ahhhh, there it goes. Thank god!”

“You shouldn’t let the next man believe in your dick more than you do.” I told him.

“You’re right! You’re right! Gotta believe!”

I went back to the bar and Natashia had ordered a diet coke so I ordered an Arnold Palmer and she audibly laughed.

“What?”

“Oh nothing.”

A few minutes later I understood what she was laughing at when my “Arnold Palmer” showed up purplish-brown with some combination of horrid iced tea and whatever juice the bartender had on the gun. It was terrible, but also incredible because as a lover of culture and perspective I had discovered a new variant of “Arnold Palmer” I never could have imagined.

Needless to say I was excited for the meal and looked at the specials. Today there were 75-cent wings.

“We’ll have six wings,” I told the bartender.

“What flavor? I got buffalo or barbecue.”

I thought about asking for Rochester wings where you combine buffalo and barbecue, but Natashia saw the wheels turning and shook her head. This was not the place.

“Buffalo,” she said.

“What else?”

“I’ll have the fried whole clam bellies with fries,” said Natashia.

I thought about getting twin lobster tails for $37.99 since it was such a great value, but the Seafood Pie caught my eye.

“What’s in the seafood pie?” I asked.

“What? Shoot. I don’t know. Seafood,” said the Bartender.

It was a good enough description for me.

“I’ll have the seafood pie.”

“You want the wings first?”

“We’ll just take it as it comes.”

“I can get the wings out first.”

“Ok, we’ll take the wings first.”

The wings came a few minutes later buried in buffalo sauce without blue cheese, ranch, or celery, but they were incredible.

I’m telling you, this place is a gem if all they do is serve you these wings with a chippy Piña Colada or a Mudslide that looks like this.

Or a coconut margarita that looks like this.

Because the quality of life and buffalo wings in America has gone downhill.

I feel our biggest problem as a country is that we have settled for sub par wings from corporations like Wingstop, Domino’s, and Buffalo Wild Wings that destroyed the fabric of our country displacing local eateries that used to make our wings.

Gone are the local pizza shops or delis that do it right with big fat juicy wings drenched in proprietary buffalo sauce with obscene amounts of butter and flour to make a roux. Everyone will tell you that it’s easy to make buffalo wings and that all you have to do is combine Frank’s RedHot with butter, but it is a lie.

A great buffalo wing sauce benefits from flour and perhaps even a squeeze of lemon or additional white vinegar when no one is watching.

At the Anchor, the wings are sufficiently vinegary, aggressively peppery, texturally unctuous from the flour, and juicy when you sink your teeth into them.

It is the best wing I have had in decades.

The last three times I was this impressed by a wing are in chronological order the half-price Mad Mex wings in Pittsburgh circa 2000, Henny Wings at Dallas BBQ in 2005, and American Deli Wings in Inglewood around 2016.

The fried whole bellied clams arrived next and they were a disappointment. Dredged solely in flour with no egg and insufficient milk, they were sandy and dead on impact with no crunch, but I dragged them through buffalo sauce then mixed them with the excellent tartar sauce that accompanied the clams and it became edible.

Finally, my seafood pie arrived with loads of haddock, shrimp, and scallop in a light cream topped with bread crumbs. I took a bite of scallop, which was perfectly cooked, and delightfully under seasoned. I say that because I like the opportunity to season seafood myself and that’s exactly what I did next hitting it with salt, lemon, and a bit of Tabasco that really brought the dish home.

It was an elegant buffalo seafood casserole that paired perfectly with the brownish purplish “Arnold Palmer”.

About 20 minutes later, we asked for the check and the total was $58.48.