High Motor Bar & Grille Opens in Pawtucket from the Owners of Lucky Enough
The sports bar is located in the former Doherty's East Avenue Irish Pub and Craft Burgers and Beer location in Pawtucket.
The “Sneaky Fast” Daiquiri at High Motor Bar & Grille. The bar taps are repurposed pistons from motor parts. Photo by Jamie Coelho.
Former fans of Doherty’s East Avenue Irish Pub will be thrilled to know that the space lives on again as a sports bar. The owners of Lucky Enough in Providence, Art Chamberland and Vito Lantz, have renovated and reopened the space as High Motor Bar and Grille.
“Vito and I went back and forth with names, and we came up with High Motor, which is someone in sports that always gave a 100 percent and used their physical ability and mind to get to the goal, like a Dennis Rodman, or a Pete Rose, or Michael Jordan or Bo Jackson,” Chamberland says.
The bar was originally slated to open in January of this year, but they faced unforeseen delays. They finally “used every physical and mental tool at their disposal” to open to the public in time for soccer season at the new Centreville Bank Stadium, home of Rhode Island’s resident soccer team, Rhode Island FC. Its predecessor, Doherty’s East Avenue Irish Pub was a beloved Pawtucket institution. After it closed in 2017, locals were left without its sports bar legacy and dozens of craft beer taps went dry. In 2018, Craft Burgers & Beer opened in its place, but it closed in 2023, leaving the space vacant until Chamberland and Lantz came along to fill in new lines.
The pub is located a quick walk from Rhode Island FC’s Centreville Bank Stadium. “It has a neighborhood sports bar vibe inside with a bunch of TVs and obviously with the soccer stadium right there, it’s a built-in sports crowd,” Chamberland says. They offer parking for before and after the RIFC games if you come by to eat and drink. They will also showcase the NFL Sunday Ticket this fall.
High Motor Bar & Grille.
Chamberland, a self-taught carpenter, spent every day at High Motor doing renovations since they bought the bar, though they hired a general contractor to help, too. He carefully removed trim and details from Doherty’s to work back into the final design, removing sub floor and a wall, and fixing boards on the ceiling and floor to make it more uniform. He also constructed a handsome horseshoe-shaped bar and installed beer taps made from the pistons of car engines to play off of the bar’s “motor” theme.
The owners had purchased a batch of broken down whiskey barrels from Kentucky, which Chamberland incorporated into the twenty-six seat bar top. “I got the staves in and sliced them down to the same width and laid them out in a geometric pattern on the bar and then did an epoxy pour over it,” he says. “Every whiskey stave is unique and different.”
As for the atmosphere, there are plenty of televisions to watch current local professional sports teams as well as some out-of-market teams. Co-owner Vito Lantz is from Chicago, so they are building a Bears fan club. There’s even a nod to Chicago hot dogs on the food menu, topped with tomato, pickle spears, sport peppers, relish, chopped onions, mustard and celery salt on poppy seed buns, and the famous Italian beef (you might recognize it from the viral TV series “The Bear”). The rest of the food menu highlights classic American food like wings, nachos, tenders, burgers, fish and chips and steak tips in a relaxed atmosphere at affordable prices.
The High Motor Hall of Fame.
There is also a separate forty-person side room, coined the “High Motor Hall of Fame,” where they host live music, open mic nights and comedy without disrupting the regular sports bar vibe in the main bar. There’s a rotating disco ball and a wall where you can bring in and display your trophies from home for everything from Little League to Pinewood Derby, or whatever award you want to invent for yourself (Best Worst Karaoke Singer in Rhode Island is mine). You can also book this room as a private party room at no charge with no room fee.
They’ve created a comfortable neighborhood atmosphere where people want to come back, again and again. “We try to be price conscious. We’re not doing this to get rich, we’re doing it because we enjoy it and love it,” Chamberland says. “We genuinely enjoy the bonds we make with our guests and staff. It’s probably the only thing we’re good at.”
342 East Ave., Pawtucket, 401-424-9977, @highmotorgrille and highmotorgrille.com
High Motor is open Mon.-Fri., 4 p.m.-1 a.m and Sat. and Sun., noon-1 a.m. There’s a pre-game tailgate at High Motor on Wed. Aug. 20 at 4 p.m. before the RI FC soccer game.
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