Quick: Think of some of the beloved regional food items found in the Greater Boston area and elsewhere in New England.
There’s clam chowder, of course, and lobster rolls, oysters, calamari and so many other seafood dishes. You have bar pizza on the South Shore, three-way roast beef sandwiches on the North Shore, New London-style pizza west of Boston and American chop suey, yankee pot roast and Boston cream pie at places around the area.
Another legendary local item you’ll see here and there throughout New England, the best of which can be found in the densely populated cities just north of Boston, is steak tips.
While they are sometimes mistakenly considered to be the same thing as tri-tips, which you’ll find all over the country, there are differences between the two, too many to get into here. The bottom line is, steak tips are a kind of bookend to South Shore-style bar pizza, and you’ll find both in old-school dive bars and neighborhood joints, but the best tips are mostly north of the city rather than south — and many consider the very best to be those at the NewBridge Cafe, a legendary watering hole in Chelsea that locals have been going to since the mid-1970s.
The NewBridge Cafe is not a particularly easy place to find. It’s tucked away in a working-class neighborhood near the Everett and Revere lines. This area is basically the heart of steak tip country, with places such as Line Steak and Brew, Stewart’s Pub and 8/10 Bar & Grille close by, all serving outstanding tips. Floramo’s — which had once been in Chelsea and was considered by many to be the equal of NewBridge — moved to two locations in Malden and Wakefield.
NewBridge is often seen as the one and only place to go for tips.
To say that they don’t make them like the NewBridge Cafe anymore would be an understatement. It is your classic local hangout, with frosted windows, a dusty old parking lot with patchwork pavement across the street and a couple of “food & spirits” signs out front that light up at night.
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Upon first glance, the place seems to check all the boxes that say “dive bar” (tin ceiling, wooden beams, wood-paneled walls, lots of characters straight out of central casting), but it really isn’t a true dive. While it indeed has a bar area with a handful of chairs, the rest of the space is dedicated to dining areas, including ones separate from the bar that are family friendly. The multiple spaces include high tops, low tops, booths and long tables for bigger groups, and the walls are adorned with all kinds of memorabilia (mostly dedicated to local sports teams), while limited light comes from those frosted windows.
A lot of the decades-old neighborhood joints found in and around Boston can really be considered Italian-American bars, where you’ll find such staples as chicken and eggplant parm, pasta dishes, garlic bread and the like, and NewBridge indeed has all of these and more, but front and center are the tips — and not just steak tips, by the way. The turkey tips, pork tips, and lamb tips here are all outstanding, thanks in part to the sweet and tangy BBQ marinade whose recipe is a well-kept secret.
But it’s the flame-grilled steak tips that bring so many people in, with the cuts of meat being right in that sweet spot where they aren’t too tough or too tender, and the char on the outside from the high heat and the juiciness of the inside making for the kind of tips that very few places get right.
PHOTOS: All kinds of steak tips at Chelsea's NewBridge Cafe
By the way, even if you tend to order steak tips (or beef in general) well done or medium well, it is best to order these either medium or medium rare because otherwise you’ll lose much of the great flavor and texture that the NewBridge tips are known for.
It may seem a sin to some to order anything other than steak (or turkey, pork or lamb) tips at the NewBridge Cafe, but a few other items on the menu are well worth trying, and they are all dishes that can be shared among the table. The steak fries are extraordinary, and they are so huge that they are basically strips of full potatoes. The meatball plate comes with a rich red sauce that would make a lot of traditional Italian restaurants jealous.
Ordering an antipasto is also a must, and it comes with their famous salad dressing (whose recipe is also secret), and the large antipasto is a mountain of food that is perfect for large groups.
The Italian sausage and the country-style ribs round out the flame-grilled meat options, with a terrific combo plate option being the steak tips and sausage.
Drinks at NewBridge include the type of beers and wines typically found at local bars, along with the usual spirits and mixed drinks, and if you want dessert, well, you won’t find any here, but because the food portions are so large, you probably won’t be thinking of dessert anyways.
If you like steak tips, the NewBridge Cafe is a must, and while it is old-school through and through, it did modernize in one respect over the past few years, as it is no longer cash-only and does accept credit cards now. But this remains the quintessential local watering hole, and one with food so good that you might not really be thinking about drinks quite as much as you’d expect at a place that has the look of a dive bar even if it isn’t really such a place.
NewBridge Cafe, 650 Washington Avenue, Chelsea, MA, 02150. newbridgecafe.com
