Yale Grad, N.Y Restaurateur Revives New Haven’s Iconic Anchor Spa Bar

Karl Franz Williams didn’t drink much as a Yale student in the 1990s, and he had little familiarity with the Anchor Bar, having only visited once or twice.

Now nearly 20 years after graduating from the Ivy League university with a degree in electrical engineering, he’s back in the Elm City, bringing mixology prowess and an entrepreneurial spirit to the latest incarnation of the iconic watering hole.

The Anchor Bar closed suddenly in January 2015, shocking its devotees, who mourned the loss of the 75-year-old landmark. Just one year before, it had been named a “Best Bar in America” by Esquire magazine, which noted its appeal as a “survivor” of the days when cocktail “lounges” were in vogue. In close proximity to the Shubert Theater, the Anchor attracted famous faces in town for performances, and its Mermaid Room was also home to regular events featuring authors and poets.

Word of the closing reached Williams, a New York-based restaurateur who owns and operates the cocktail bars 67 Orange Street and Solomon & Kuff in Harlem. He had vested interest in New Haven, visiting the Yale School of Management regularly to recruit students in his first career roles at Procter & Gamble. Later, he scouted the city for potential new venues, but hadn’t found the perfect opportunity.

But once Williams saw the vacated Anchor space, he, too, was attracted to its rich historical significance.

“All the celebrities used to come here after the Shubert … wow, we’ve got to bring that back,” he says. “This place is sort of worn down in the way that … you can’t create a dive bar. Dive bars happen. To try to intentionally do that comes off very kitsch. … It would have been very inauthentic for me to think I could just make this into a dive bar, and not honoring this whole history.”

Williams signed a lease agreement last summer with Yale University Properties to reopen and revitalize the Anchor Bar, and opened its doors in June 2016, with plans to officially introduce it with a grand opening in the next few weeks.

After graduation in 1997, Williams was employed by Procter & Gamble, moving from engineering into marketing and brand management. His career led him next to Pepsi, and along the way, inspired by the feel and energy of communal spaces like coffeehouses, Williams opened his first business, Society Coffee, in Harlem in June 2005.

At Pepsi, as part of his role in innovation, Williams worked with top mixologists who taught him about craft cocktails. One told him, “Karl, this is something to pay attention to.”

“I got excited about it,” Williams says. “I didn’t have time to get hammered and sleep for three days. Being able to have a drink be a culinary experience to me was eye-opening.”

The revelation led him to open his first bar, 67 Orange Street, in Harlem in December 2008. The name pays homage to the address of Almack’s Dance Hall, one of the first black-owned bars in New York City, he said.

Seven years later, he opened Solomon & Kuff, a Caribbean rum bar. Its name is also loaded with meaning, as a tribute to “the extraordinary life odyssey of the 18th century, native-born enslaved African, Venture Smith,” the bar’s website reads. Smith, who was bought for four gallons of rum, secured his family’s freedom and became a landowner and entrepreneur. Solomon and Kuff were his son’s names.

“One of the things that’s really important to me is to create meaning to every place,” Williams says. “I think a great way to do that is through history. History is a powerful thing that defines our present in so many ways. … We can learn so much by understanding what’s happened before.”

The remodel of the Anchor space intended to preserve its vibe, but with subtle updates. The original booths are still there, rearranged, and the tin ceiling is painted. But there’s new flooring, Carrara marble tiles, dark wood and exposed brick that was unveiled when the walls’ wood paneling came down. One wall features shelves of vintage and antique goods from New Haven’s English Building Market.

The Anchor’s previous owners, the Moore family, elected to take down the bar’s trademark exterior neon signage. Once that was removed, its original facade, reading “Anchor Spa,” was revealed.

During the construction process, the team also removed the bar from the back of the room and unearthed some original Anchor cocktail menus, dating back to 1939 or 1940, Williams says. When Anchor Spa introduces its new menu during its grand opening this fall, those classics, among them a gin rickey, hot toddy, Rob Roy and Planter’s Punch, will join the bar’s cocktail list. Classics will be priced at $10 to $13.

Anchor’s “worldly tipples and libations” ($13), all inspired by port cities throughout the globe, span Shanghai, China (Chivas Regal 12 year, Rhum Clement, green tea, citrus and peach); Baton Rouge (the “Kid Creole” with Blackwell rum, sweet potato juice, demerara and Angostura bitters) Guatemala (Zacapa rum, banana, demerara, coffee and chocolate bitters) and even New Haven, with the distinctive “Yale Beets Harvard”: brown-buttered Plantation rum, Smith &Cross rum, beet syrup, orange acid and molasses.

“All the cocktails have these nuanced layers that take some work, but they make for drinks that are exceptionally unique,” Williams said.

With the grand opening launch, the menu of small plates will expand. The first few months featured items like grilled octopus and fennel, Asian spiced duck breast and cioppino divided into “western” and “eastern” hemispheres, but the new menu will organize the food into “sea,” “land” and “heaven” categories. New options, priced at $9 to $13, will include chili-crusted fish tacos with mango pico de gallo, wings with various sauces like guava barbecue and hoisin sesame, fries with truffle and Parmesan, bison tacos, a fried oyster po’boy and cheeseburger sliders.

Williams is looking forward to showing guests Anchor’s “full program.” “[We’ll] really just showcase what we are, and the authenticity and care that we have for what this space has been, for the people, the souls, the energy that’s here, the history that’s here, that’s what motivates me,” he says. “When I sit here some days, just watching, I think about all the years of conversation and things that happened here. I’m just glad to be part of that now.”

He recognizes that some patrons hold a space in their heart for the original.

“There are some people who are like, ‘It’s the Anchor, it’s different, we want it to be the old Anchor, or we miss the old Anchor. And to those, we say, ‘Hey, just give us a try.’ We are honoring the entire legacy of the Anchor. Not just what it is today, but what it was.”

Anchor Spa, 272 College St., New Haven, is open Sunday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. and Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. 203-821-7065, anchorspa.com.

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