Six weeks after rushing to open, a downtown Ellsworth restaurant is serving Jamaican fusion dishes with bold spices and aromatic herbs.
Acadia 876 Bar and Grill opened Jan. 24 at 191 Main St., the decades-long site of Mexican cuisine restaurants, the last of which was abruptly shuttered last summer.
The new restaurant, which is named after Jamaica’s islandwide area code, is owned by a pair of local business partners, Jason Fowler and Clive Tyrell, both of whom are from Jamaica.
The duo, who are working together for the first time, both have experience in the food industry: Fowler is a trained chef with a history of working in five-star hotels and Tyrell is a cook and sells Jamaican groceries through a mobile delivery service.
Fowler, 31, is the co-owner of Bar Harbor Pat’s Pizza, where he started a Jamaican flare special last year. The pair first met after a delivery run at the pizza restaurant, concocting plans for a joint fish fry that quickly grew into larger dreams of opening an eatery with American-Jamaican cuisine.
Fowler and Tyrell, 49, cooked the fish fry at Pat’s Pizza in September of last year. By October 2025, the pair had found the site of their future restaurant. They signed the lease in November.
“It happened quickly,” Tyrell said. “A lot of people thought maybe we’re crazy.”
But regardless of the quick-turnaround, the partners say they’ve already received substantial local support.
Because of the rush in opening, some modifications remain in the works. They still have to prepare the patio for springtime customers and expect to make some “beautification” changes, including painting the building’s exterior and adding additional new furniture to the interior, Fowler said.
Fowler and Tyrell are excited to bring more Jamaican-inspired dishes to Ellsworth, although they were not the first to do so. Taste Jamaica, which opened for takeout in 2016, was the city’s first Jamaican restaurant.
Fowler highlighted that much of the menu is classic American dishes with fresh and flavorful seasoning made in-house.
Fowler said Jamaican fusion food is becoming more popular, and he hopes their new restaurant will help spread the “wave” of interest in Jamaican cuisine.
“I want to help to be part of that progress,” Fowler said, referring to Jamaican-fusion cuisine. “There’s so much flavorful food in Jamaica in terms of dishes and a lot of great chefs who are helping to push the culture forward.”
The restaurant offers flatbread pizzas, sandwiches, chicken buckets, pastas and dinner entrees ranging from oxtail to jerk grilled lobster. Several of their dishes — like the chicken tacos, broccoli alfredo, philly steak and ribeye — feature a fiery jerk sauce.
The restaurant is open seven days a week for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One wing of the restaurant holds a bar adorned with flags from countries around the world and a license plate reading “good vibes only.” A placard celebrating the grill’s customer of the month is prominently displayed next to the cashier’s box.