Charles Barber is taking Aftermath Bar & Kitchen, his popular North Phoenix neighborhood restaurant, to a new neighborhood in Chandler. The second location at Arizona Avenue and Buffalo Street will be closer to home and therefore more conducive to getting various family members (namely, his wife Chandler Barber and sister D’Dee Robertson) involved. It kills me that his wife’s name is Chandler, but maybe I’m too easily amused.
Barber says he had been looking for restaurant space in the area when he learned from a broker that Truland Burgers & Greens was closing any minute. He jumped quickly and had a lease on the turnkey space locked up within days. Truland, which opened in January 2020 and never recovered from the pandemic, had poured $1.2 million into building out the space, so there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel here. It already looks great. After a few minor touch-ups — re-laminating the tables, redoing the bar top and changing the color scheme, Barber plans to have the second edition of Aftermath open by the last week in October.
Barber says the space, which overlooks Dr. A.J. Chandler Park in that little hotbed of bar and restaurant activity around the San Marcos resort, is remarkably like the original Aftermath, but it’s a little bigger, sporting garage doors and a bar that opens to the outside. I’d say it definitely looks more polished.
He likes the fact that the new Aftermath (just like the original) will use many of the local products — Noble Bread, Benny Blanco Tortillas, Sonoran Pasta and Frites Street Fries, for example — sold at the weekend farmer’s market across the street. He hopes that customers who buy local will take note. Although Aftermath 2.0’s menu will offer popular dishes from the original Aftermath menu, 20-30 percent of it will be new, to appeal to a new and different demographic. Naturally, there will be cocktails (Barber’s forte from his days at Zinc Bistro), but he says the emphasis here will be on the food first.
Although Barber can’t disclose the talented team he’s building just yet (some of them are still employed elsewhere), he promises it will be stellar, featuring a handful of big players. Naturally, his executive chef and partner Will Bedene (former sous chef at Zinc for six years and opening sous at Aftermath) will be overseeing all things culinary. Barber and crew will surely make downtown Chandler an even more alluring hangout.
