Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner

Dive bar does not do this place justice, we stopped by on a Friday after noon shortly after they opened and stayed for only a few minutes.
The most important thing I can say is that there were no lights, literally none, so whatever your reaction to that statement is probably indicative to how you will feel about the place as a whole.
I do not doubt however that it is a cool venue for live music or if I was a worcester resident in my angsty teen years this place would be far more my scene.

This place is a local gen. Great shows, great staff and the food is pretty basic and good. it’s really the all around atmosphere you go for.
The décor rules.

Not a diner! Having burgers and chili does not make you a diner. Thought we were walking to our deaths down a dark alley into a very dark bar. We asked for menus and were looked at jokingly and told that they had no menus. Please rename Ralph’s Bar

One star because no stars isn’t an option, went and the bartender removed our drinks before we could get our money from the atm downstairs. No reason to ever go back. Awful establishment, no posted notice about cash only and completely unfriendly staff. (Side note: perfectly willing to go get cash downstairs but drinks poured down sink before opportunity given). Bartender was completely rude and cost $ 6 each to get upstairs to find this out.

The burger is not bad. Like the music. Bartender is nice. Flies around the bar. Remember cash only!!! It’s a great place to get wasted.

Chill and amazing! I will come back here to rock my little ass off!

I’ve come here several times to see my brothers band play. It’s a chill bar with a chill crowd. There’s a small bar with a pool table downstairs & another bar upstairs with a stage & plenty of room to watch bands. Also a small diner area downstairs to the left. Lots of weird, off kilter decorations throughout the bar but I dig it.
It’s free to walk in but usually costs like $ 7 or so if you wanna go upstairs for the bands.
Lots of parking but the spots fill up fast! Be careful if you have to park towards the street though, the driveway is really shitty. Lots of potholes & there’s no lighting whatsoever, so be careful you don’t trip walking to or from your car. Especially if you’ve had a few.

At first glance one may be inclined to dismiss this place as a hole in the wall that caters to the local artistic community. You would be right, but it serves amazing burgers (both meat and veggie) in a down to earth environment.
To sum it up — amazing burgers, good beer and nice people!

This is one of the strangest and most interesting places I’ve come across, really made for the amateur anthropologist. A tombstone sits right in front of the building (is that really Ralph?), an unexplained electric «G» buzzes from the side of the building, and the outdoor tables can only be scrap metal from Red Foxx’s junkyard. It’s called a diner but there’s really not much for dinner except burgers. The joint in the movie Road House was more glamorous than this; the late Eagle’s Drift in SF was comparatively posh. When you go inside the diner part, there’s usually a movie on, though I was a little disappointed they stopped playing VHS tapes and started using Netflix (you can get that anywhere). Bartenders are friendly but they are not going to be super nice to you unless you have something to say. The arcade games are a huge plus — glad to have a place to play Ms Pac-​Man and pinball. The jukebox is stacked, but the music from the upstairs live bands has already ridden the expressway to your skull. This is all kinds of wonderful.

Went in for a burger and it was some hipster beard competition night. You’ll find the burgers are pretty much all they have, but they’re pretty tasty. My beer was also frozen and the ceiling was leaking. Again, worth putting up with if you like a good beefy fresh made cheeseburger. They also have veggie burgers.

Not a diner or a restaurant… a rock club that serves 2 things: burgers & chile (and veggie burgers) Largest white russian I ever seen.

I honestly thought the burger was a little overpriced, sorry. It was good, but for $ 8 I’ve had better even though it was enormous. That being said, $ 2 gansetts and the excellent atmosphere make this one of my favorite Worcester bars.

Great dive bar/​rock club dive. When in full-​swing (usually Thursday-​Saturday nights), Ralph’s offers 3 full bars. The spacious patio area is a great place to hang out. On Sunday nights they project movies drive-​in-​style on the wall outside. Live music most nights of the week, along with entertainment in the form of spoken-​word/​poetry on Mondays and Wednesdays that is not to be missed. Plenty of off-​street parking. The menu is limited, but a cup of chili or one of Ralph’s famous cheeseburgers is sure to hit the spot. Cash only, but there’s an ATM on site.

I’ve tried this place a few times and never had a positive experience. Sometimes you can’t expect much in Worcester but this place smelled bad, was full of ugly people, and the staff was unfriendly, at best. I enjoy Nick’s and Vincent’s, where did this place go so wrong?!

This is a fun place to hang with your friends and enjoy a few drinks. People are nice and the drinks are good (& reasonably priced) :) i didn’t try the burgers, but i want too next time!

I did not enjoy myself here. I came here for a concert and spent all my time upstairs. It smelled awful, like body odor throughout the entire facility. I asked the bartender for a white wine and he said he didn’t have any, so i got a vodka with sprite. It was horribly strong and the soda was flat. It was horrifyingly filthy there. When i walked in there was a movie playing outdoors with dining set up. That seemed very cool but after seeing how dirty it is in here, i would never eat a thing here. To add insult to injury, at the end of the night i saw bottles of wine behind the bar. I guess its ok for a concert venue but i wont be back.

Ths is one of my favorite places to go. I have yet to have a burger that can beat a Ralph’s burger. The atmosphere is different but that’s what makes it so interesting and fun.
Depending on what night of the week you visit, there’s always something different going on. On Mondays, there is usually a poetry slam and Thursdays usually hosts a metal band lineup. The staff is always friendly and entertaining.

4.5 stars…
Definitely not what you’d expect at all and that’s part of why I love it. The Chadwich Square Diner (aka Ralph’s) is a landmarked diner built in 1928 by the Worcester Lunch Car Company. If you’re unaware the diner was invented in New England and the Worcester Lunch Car Company was essentially the company creating the diners in the 1920s-​1950s, this is one of the oldest surviving diners.
The diner is no longer a true diner but a dive bar that operates from 4pm-​2am, the only food they have are hotdogs, hamburgers, and chili. The hamburgers looked amazing (they’re cooking them on a cast iron grate and using fresh meat). The diner is connected to a proper building with a second bar and a second floor which houses bands for a small cover charge. The back bar has a photo booth (which looks old school but is pumping out crappy digital prints for $ 4), a pool table ($ 1), pinball machine (50cents), and a couple video games. It’s a dusty, grimy, dive lined with taxidemied animals, old signs, art, and antiques. The juke box is full of old and new rock while the TV in the front diner is always playing old school VHS tapes of mostly B movies. Service is hit or miss and the $ 5 pints aren’t anything special but $ 2.50 for a pint of Narragansett or $ 3.50 for select bottles are always a great deal.
I also love the front area by the parking lot which has plenty of tables if you want to drink/​smoke outside. If I still lived in Worcester this would definitely be one of my regular spots.

The place is awful, but my review is skewed. I tried to get into this place at 3 in the afternoon on a Sunday and they chased me out of the parking lot.
Let me explain. The place is supposedly a well known DIVE BAR. This must be the modern wussy definition of DIVE bar because I have never been ran out of place like this.
The place was completely dead and I had a bottle of beer left over from a BYOB restaurant that I was coming from. I had literally a sip of beer left in the bottle and was about to throw it out in a trash can outside of the place. I threw the bottle out and attempted to walk into the place and a bartender and two other employees came rushing out of the place and started screaming at me and my friend. They basically chased us and our business right out of the place. I also had 5 friends that had gone in a couple of minutes before me and they all left too. So the place lost at least a 100 – 150 dollars of sales for absolutely nothing.
The funny part is that after we parked the car, and my buddy and I got out and saw a bunch of trash in the parking lot. We picked it all up and through it out in a dumpster across the parking lot. Then we get thrown out of the place.
The staff needs to grow up and take incoming business more seriously.
I hang out in Worcester all of the time with a lot of friends that make good money and now I will never even try this place or recommend it.
The place is supposedly a DIVE BAR and I read other reviews about how they are so hospitable to the «classless, grungy, and drunk people piss on cars in the parking lot,» and their throwing a pile business out in the early afternoon on a Sunday because someone through a beer bottle out in the trash before they entered the place.
It really doesn’t make any sense. «A DIVE BAR!!!» BS
Thanks

Want to sing karaōke next to a taxidermy moose?
You can do that at Ralph’s.
Or maybe you’d rather throw some money in the juke box and hear your favorite tune? Yep, you can do that, too.
But nothing beats live music from a real band (your friends trying to sing Bön Jovi karaōke doesn’t count), right? Well, good thing they also have great bands playing at Ralph’s.
Hungry? Wonderful, because their burgers are awesome. Get one. They even have a veggie burger that is delicious (so I’m told).
How about a $ 2 tallboy can of Narragansett? In college, I would often make wagers with friends, where the winner would be owed a few ‘gansetts. Maybe that’s why they tasted so incredible… Victory always tastes delicious.
Dammit. I miss Ralph’s.