After 14 Years, a Quirky Somerville Cocktail Bar Passes the Torch

Sam Treadway at Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Since Backbar opened in 2011, tucked into a weird little former office space attached to the now-defunct Journeyman restaurant, the acclaimed cocktail bar has probably served around 3,000 distinct cocktails, according to cofounder Sam Treadway. That includes about 700 different clarified milk punches—smooth, clear drinks infused with complex flavors (his favorite tasted like trail mix)—and countless cocktails inspired by wide-ranging themes, most notably Star Wars.

Over the past 14 years, the eccentric bar, hidden off a Union Square parking lot, has become known for its geeky and inclusive spirit and its fun-kitschy, tchotchke-filled ambiance, along with its creative, frequently rotating drink specials. Now, it’s under new ownership—the team behind Field & Vine, the adjacent restaurant in the old Journeyman space, bought it early in 2025—and Treadway will depart this week after a year spent helping with the transition. But new ownership won’t necessarily mean a new vibe: Expect Backbar’s brilliant nerdiness to continue.

The Smoke and Sherry cocktail, one of Sam Treadway’s favorites, at Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Still, it’s impossible to imagine Backbar becoming such a nerd-cool neighborhood institution without Treadway, who started as bar manager and became a one-third owner of the business with Journeyman’s Diana Kudayarova and Tse Wei Lim. His route into the professional cocktail realm is circuitous, starting from a college-era summer job at the now-closed Faneuil Hall Cheers. (He was a math major, but not “useful” math that would lead to a job, he says: “chaotic dynamics and weird not-real numbers and shit.”) That gig led to work at a local watering hole in Treadway’s college town in Minnesota, where he came to enjoy “getting to know people, having regulars, and being the host of a chill party every night.” A later formative stint as barback at the original Eastern Standard, working under Jackson Cannon (the restaurant’s opening bar manager and eventual beverage director), got him interested in classic cocktails. As Treadway recalls, “I started to love the recreation of history that you can do [with a drink].”

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Later, Treadway’s education continued on the opening team at Drink, Barbara Lynch’s now-closed, no-menu subterranean cocktail bar that earned accolades for its role in the craft cocktail movement. There, he got to know a lot of industry heavy-hitters, including John Gertsen, Misty Kalkofen, and Scott Marshall, and began to appreciate bartending as an art. “It’s a medium where you get to see right away if someone enjoys it,” he says. “‘I made that with my hands, and I put it in front of you, and you love it.’ That’s cool.”

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Treadway had a bit of a quarter-life crisis, though: As a kid from a family of doctors, he was heading down an unconventional career path. He credits both “a stoner skydiving instructor” and his own mother, a doctor, with helping him realize that making people happy is a valuable goal, whether that’s in medicine or hospitality or something else entirely. “If I take pride in what I do, and I’m spreading smiles,” that’s what matters, says Treadway.

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

And so he continued working in bars, landing in Hawaii for a time. While there, he received an offer to be bar manager at a cocktail bar being built as a sibling and neighbor to Journeyman, an eclectic tasting-menu restaurant in Somerville. The freedom he’d have to shape it was intriguing: Owners Kudayarova and Lim were fans of Drink and Eastern Standard, and he remembers them telling him, “We’d kind of like for this to be a waiting room for our restaurant, but it’d be cool if it had Drink-level drinks.” Treadway planned his return to Massachusetts, but not before negotiating time to hop over to Japan.

“I mainly spent time in Tokyo, going to cocktail bars,” says Treadway, “and I’ve been very influenced by how cool those bars are. My initial thought [for Backbar] was Japanese cocktail bars, Drink—put them together. We were going to take ourselves so seriously, kind of in the Japanese style. Really buttoned up. Vest and tie.”

Sam Treadway hand-carving ice at Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

While the team did put serious skill behind Backbar’s cocktails (and continues to do so), the vibe quickly became more laidback than anticipated. “We realized that the guests who came in here—sure, they cared about drinks and stuff, but they also just lived in the area and were like, ‘This place is cool,’” says Treadway. “We became a neighborhood bar very quickly. Union Square was just the weird square past Inman where no one went, but it’s gotten cooler and cooler, and I hope we were part of that trend.”

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The geekery, particularly the copious Star Wars-themed bric-a-brac, seeped in quickly, too. Shortly after opening, one of the bartenders noticed that Backbar rhymed with Admiral Ackbar, as Treadway recalls, the popular Star Wars character of “It’s a trap!” fame. That inspired a night at Eastern Standard, chatting with then-barback Nick Korn, brainstorming Star Wars-themed drink names: Obi Wan Negroni, Dark Sidecar, etc. (Korn and Treadway went on to collaborate on several annual installments of what they called “Space Nerds Cocktail Week,” as well as other themed drink events at Backbar. We have memories, albeit hazy, of a Groundhog Day screening with copious paired cocktails.) More recently, the team has remade a standing-room space to the side of the bar—a former storage room that has been used for baiju and whiskey pop-ups—into a replica of the Millennium Falcon cockpit.

The Millennium Falcon room at Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The ever-changing drinks at Backbar aren’t always inspired by cheeky movie puns, but they always tell a story, with intricately themed menus rotating throughout the year. Currently, the theme is “Home for the Holidays,” with Backbar staffers creating cocktails inspired by what winter means to them, whether snowy maple trees in New Hampshire or warm bowls of Thai soup. A recent music-themed menu, meanwhile, featured cocktails based on everything from Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” (a frozen drink featuring the caraway-flavored Icelandic spirit Brennivín) to Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” (rum, cantaloupe syrup, lemon, gin, baiju).

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

“Each of these drinks has a story,” says Treadway. “I want that to continue, the nerdiness and the storytelling you can do with a cocktail. Yes, I love Star Wars, but I love that we’ve also done, for example, Nerdboibar pop-ups, a whole echelon above my own nerd level: video games, anime, all this cool stuff.”

Beyond the geekery, Treadway is proud that Backbar has a reputation for being welcoming to all. “I love that we go above and beyond to be woke and thoughtful and inclusive,” he says. “We’ve tried to make it cozy, a place where people feel taken care of.” And he’s quick to point out that the Backbar legacy is a team effort. “It has evolved into a better place than I could have hoped for,” he says, “and that is definitely not all me. It’s the different staff who’ve been here, who’ve had different priorities and feelings. Carrying that torch of nerdiness, creativity, inclusivity, and hospitality is pretty awesome.”

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Don’t expect that to change in the post-Treadway era, as the new owners, Andrew Brady and Sara Markey of Field & Vine, know that it already has a winning formula. “We fell in love with Backbar as we’ve been working alongside it,” says Markey. “To take it over and change it seems like not the right move, because it’s such an important part of Somerville, and of the Boston-area cocktail scene. It’s really unique and has a lot of charm, so why would we want to change something that feels so authentic?”

In fact, Brady and Markey didn’t directly set out to take over Backbar. They opened Field & Vine, their Best of Boston farm-to-table restaurant, at the former Journeyman address in 2017; the Journeyman team owned both the restaurant and bar spaces. The two are thoroughly intertwined, down to a shared walk-in, dish pit, and liquor license, so when Brady and Markey later inquired about buying the restaurant space instead of continuing to lease, it only made sense that Backbar would come along too. Treadway, Kudayarova, and Lim had been feeling ready to move on for a while, Treadway says, and they completed the sale to Brady and Markey at the start of 2025. Treadway’s been helping out since then.

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Brady and Markey do hope to send a little more food over to Backbar, they say; the Field & Vine kitchen currently provides the bar with a small snack menu and an occasional special like a burger or fried chicken sandwich, so those offerings might expand over time. (Backbar loyalists might remember heavier food options from the past, like the much-lauded ramen and other snacks like pork belly buns.) Plus, they might promote the dual spaces for more private events. But overall, Backbar will continue to be Backbar. “I’ve been here for the last year to make sure that it continues in the awesome, nerdy way that it’s been,” says Treadway, “and the team is rock solid and should have no problem carrying on.”

Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

As for Treadway, following his final shift on December 23, he’s heading off into the sunset to enjoy dad life (he has a 20-month-old daughter) and work on consulting projects, including his first gig helping the team at Allston’s Henfolks revamp their cocktail program. He hopes to inspire the staff to infuse their stories into the drinks they create, he says. “I don’t know what my consulting life will be,” says Treadway, “but vaguely, I’d like to be the nice version of Jon Taffer [of Bar Rescue]. My evolution is that I thought cocktails were the most important thing in the world, and now I realize hospitality is the most important. Cocktails are the fun extra thing.”

Sara Markey, Sam Treadway, and Andrew Brady at Backbar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

7 Sanborn Ct., Union Square, Somerville, backbarunion.com. Follow Treadway at @treadwaycocktails.