The owners of Pazza on Porter, a two-year-old Italian restaurant in East Boston, are about to open a speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar in the adjoining space at 103 Porter St. When Raffaele Scalzi (also cofounder of the Boston Pizza Festival and co-owner of Casa Mia in Marblehead) and Mivan Spencer (also owner of Café Dello Sport in Boston’s North End) noticed that the space next door was vacant and available, they decided it made good sense to transform it into a bar and to call it (fittingly) Next Door.
“Then we came up with the idea of making it a speakeasy with a hidden entrance,” says Scalzi. Like with any speakeasy, there will be a secretive, exclusive-feeling element to Next Door. Customers will be required to find a nine-foot-tall secret door — which Scalzi describes as “beautiful” — behind which a host will be stationed.
