New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Archie Moore’s rises again in East Rock
When I walked into Archie Moore’s Bar & Restaurant last Thursday afternoon, owner Bob Fuchs, who was busy washing the taken-down blinds in the middle of the main room, called out: “Pick up a rag!”
“I got here at 5 o’clock this morning,” he said as construction workers and staffers bustled around him. “I’ve had 12 cups of coffee!”
Fuchs has seized this time of scaled-back hours and capacities amid the pandemic to install a new kitchen and floors and otherwise upgrade this historic enterprise, now more than 100 years old.
Fuchs has also put up a big, new, heated tent in the parking lot. He hopes to reopen by Monday, if not a day earlier.
His regulars in the East Rock section of New Haven, including me, are happy to see this happening. Archie’s, nestled in at 188
Willow St., has long been a friendly neighborhood bar and eatery, the go-to place when you want to have a beer or something stronger, watch a ballgame on TV or hunker down with your buddies.
COVID-19 has not stopped this; it just necessitated some adjustments. Plexiglas barriers have been installed to separate groups at the bar and people seated at the tables. Fuchs has had to rely on a steady takeout business. On May 20 he was allowed to reopen outdoor service at tables on the sidewalk and inside a pop-up tent.
Archie’s also has been able to offer service indoors at 75 percent capacity, recently reduced by Gov. Ned Lamont to 50 percent as the state returned to the more limited Phase 2 because of rising COVID-19 positivity rates.
Fuchs doesn’t mind the 50 percent rule because his square footage isn’t very big, anyway. But he’s upset that under the return to Phase 2, Lamont also ordered restaurants to close at 9:30 p.m.
“I was home watching ‘Jeopardy,’ relaxing in my chair, when I got word about Lamont’s announcement, with the 9:30 closing,” Fuchs
said. “My gripe is: why do we have to close at 9:30? I really think the governor should rethink this. He should make the closing at 11, especially on weekends. He’s cutting off our legs at 9:30. The other restaurant people I’ve talked to about this are crushed.”
Fuchs otherwise was feeling chipper as he took me on a tour of the reconstructed Archie’s. First he reminded me of its history. “The first Archie Moore’s opened across the street in 1898. It moved over here in 1919. This had been a grocery store.”
He showed me the reconstructed bar, a sturdy, wooden fixture. “Parts of this are 122 years old. We had to move the entire bar when we ripped out the floor. We put in an epoxy floor. It should last another 122 years.”
Next he proudly showed me the remodeled kitchen. “This is all new equipment, floors, electric, drains. You name it, it’s new. For these guys to do this in 21 days, it’s epic.”
Fuchs said the frenzied reconstruction reminded him of January and February of 1982, after he bought the place. The reopening was in March of that year.
“I feel like this is day one, back in 1982 when I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor. When I heard that John Belushi had died I was washing the pine walls. It’s these little things in life you remember 40 years later.”
Fuchs added, “Last week I asked myself: ‘Why am I doing all this? I’m 70 years old.’ But it needed to be done. This is a good time to do it.”
Fuchs introduced me to his recently-hired young staffers: general manager
Patrick O’Brien and bar master Amy Atmore. “They have their fingers on what their generation wants to drink. They’re bringing in ghost tequila, with peppers.” (Atmore said: “It’s spicy but smooth. It doesn’t hit you
too hard.”)
Although Archie’s was closed last week, it was reassuring to see one of the TV sets was on (switched to CNN and the endless updating of the presidential election results) and the sound system
was humming. I heard “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and other old hits.
The vintage Coca-Cola ads still cover the walls, along with a few artifacts from Hull’s brewery. “I’ve been a Coca-Cola collector
since I was about 17,” Fuchs said. “My second wife hated it beyond belief. So I brought it here.”
When we moved outside he showed me the new tent, big enough to accommodate up to 25 customers. “I’ll have blowers that
will bring in heat. It’s an outdoor furnace. It’s like a big hair dryer. Hopefully this will get us through the winter. But we’ll have to see what happens when it’s 20 degrees.”
Fuchs said his business and the other Archie Moore’s restaurants in Fairfield, Milford and Wallingford all benefited tremendously from the federal government’s Payroll Protection Plan earlier this year. The New Haven Archie’s received about $150,000. Asked whether he needs another round of such aid, Fuchs replied: “Without a doubt!”
Like other restaurant owners, Fuchs is deeply concerned about the rising COVID rates in this country and abroad as we head into the winter months. “England just locked down again,” he noted. “Are we that far away from doing that? If there’s a lockdown here, we would have to go back to just takeout and there’s no way we could pay everybody.”
Fuchs said he’s just taking things one day at a time. “This has been a challenging seven months. But as my dad used to say: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”