The Christopher’s Restaurant & Bar and attached Toad nightclub in Cambridge’s Porter Square are set to change hands after a sale fell through in the fall. The new buyers will likely be exciting to many: Tommy McCarthy and Louise Costello, owners of The Burren in Somerville’s Davis Square. (Update on June 14, 2024: The sale went through June 12, 2024, longtime owner Charles Christopher said.)
Among the changes expected: Christopher’s will become McCarthy’s.
In large part, though, the Irish bar, restaurant and nightclub – its back room hosts music, comedy and even plays – has a similar feel and a menu filled with comfort food. The music at The Burren and Toad overlaps in genre as well. While Christopher’s opened in 1981, The Burren has been open a more than respectable 28 years.
“It feels right,” said Charles Christopher, who co-owns Christopher’s, Toad and the Cambridge Common restaurant and Lizard Lounge club combo closer to Harvard Square with wife Holly Heslop.“I’m very pleased that these folks could come in. I’ve always liked their joint.”
McCarthy said the restaurant and music formula will be familiar from The Burren. “It’s what we’ve been doing for years,” he said. “It’s what we know.”
The deal is pending approvals by the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission and Cambridge building officials on “a few odds and ends,” Christopher said by phone Friday. McCarthy agreed, putting approvals at roughly three weeks out, followed by May construction inside the restaurant that will provide ample time for an opening in September – avoiding summer-month doldrums and because McCarthy and Costello plan to travel before the new business starts.
The $2.9 million purchase by McCarthy and Costello matches the roughly $3 million all-cash deal reported for another buyer in August, when a closing-night party was set for Sept. 16 at Toad. Its 62-person capacity meant the bar had to let in customers in shifts. (Unlike Toad, the two-story Christopher’s – which needs 65 or 70 employees to run – never reopened after the Covid pandemic.) Christopher and Heslop expected that deal to close the next day, but the cash never came, Christopher said.
That meant starting over. McCarthy and Costello had expressed interest last year, but their offer had come in a week after that of the buyer whose deal never developed, Christopher said.
In that first deal, Christopher and Heslop didn’t know what plans the buyer had for the restaurant, but Toad was to keep hosting music, since all three bidders considered for the property said keeping it a bar and music club was the goal.
McCarthy plans to disassemble the central bar at Christopher’s, which wraps around a stairwell, and reassemble it with the stairs along the wall shared with Toad, making for a larger open space. Similarly, the front of Christopher‘s along Massachusetts Avenue will be reworked to put in larger windows – and get more color – with the entrance moved to the angled corner wall, similar to the corner entrance at another Irish bar in Cambridge, the Plough & Stars near Central Square.
The pass-through door between Christopher’s and Toad will stay, McCarthy said – in fact, customers are intended to enter at the McCarthy’s door at Massachusetts Avenue and Porter Road and pass through to get to Toad, just as customers at The Burren pass through to get to the back room. “We’re not changing Toad,” he said.
Christopher’s is at 1920 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, and Toad is attached at 1912 Massachusetts Ave. The Burren is at 247 Elm St., Somerville. The businesses are about a half-mile apart. McCarthy said he expects that to help with staffing, as people are always “popping in to look for work” at The Burren, and the proximity provides flexibility.
“Our main concern would be the kitchen, but we seem to have that covered,” McCarthy said. The Burren chef doesn’t think staffing McCarthy’s “will be a problem.”
A London-based real estate owner, operator and developer called Scape North America plans a four-story building – originally intended to be residential but now with retail on the ground floor and lab and office spaces on upper stories – at Elm and Grove streets in Somerville. Construction has been delayed, but is expected to stretch as far up Elm Street as The Burren, the one business expected to be able to stay open throughout construction. McCarthy said Friday that the plan to keep The Burren open, whenever construction might happen, hasn’t changed.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.