Descend the stairs from Aliceanna Street into the basement shop of Fells Point’s El Suprimo Records and you’ll quickly feel like you’ve entered not so much a record store as an archive, which indeed you have. As many as 7,000 records fill the tiny space, which is 10-by-12 feet at most.

The center is a maze of stacks reaching toward the ceiling, itself decorated by discs like a vinyl version of the tin ceilings that still top many bars in the neighborhood. Bins fill both sides of the shop, divided into genres, with radios and speakers and other sonic paraphernalia jigsawed in between more records. So many records.

In the back, owner Jack Moore spins tunes on a turntable all but hidden by more stacks—John Coltrane, The Talking Heads, P.J. Harvey, Philippe Besombes, Henry Mancini, Chet Baker, Lalo Schifrin, Max Roach. One could go on.

“I’ve always loved music,” says Moore, “ever since I was, like, crawling on my hands and knees, just fascinated by it.”

Moore, 59, a Baltimore native and University of Maryland alum—where he did college radio—is a jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. He’s run the shop for nearly a quarter century—23 years this month—has his own record label, plays in bands, is writing a book, and does DJing gigs across town, notably at the Greyhound Tavern, Idle Hour, and Ottobar.

Recently, he’s been taking his setup across the street to The Wren, the year-old pub run by chef Will Mester, his wife, Millie Powell, and barkeep Adam Estes. That’s because Mester, a vinyl collector who sources records for both himself and the turntable under his bar, asked Moore to come over on Monday nights, when the acclaimed restaurant is otherwise closed, to play music for whomever happened by for a pint.

So Moore makes the yards-long trek once a month to DJ what he calls the Fells Point Troglodyte Ornithological Society Listening Party, where he’ll set up his turntable on the long wooden bar by the front door, or, on winter nights, near the fireplace in the backroom, usually used for darts.

Since this past August, the listening party has drawn neighbors and hospitality-industry folk to pull up a chair and listen to Moore’s playlist, which is mostly folk, acoustic folk, folk pysch (which Moore describes as “electrified European folk music”), and—as the party’s name promises—the occasional bird songs. The bird songs are on LPs, says Moore, and the society’s jokey name is drawn from the pub itself, troglodyte being a reference to the scientific name of wrens, which belong to the troglodytinae family, so named for being “cave dwellers.”

“I do bring records with bird songs, and once or twice during the night, I will mix in a little bird song melody before I play the next song,” says Moore.

“It’s a fun thing to do, to use the bar when it’s closed,” says Estes one night as he expertly pulls a Guinness from the taps at The Wren. “You get a lot of locals in here for it,” he continues, swinging aside a curtain at the corner of the bar—revealing the house turntable and a stack of vinyl underneath.

Back at El Suprimo, Moore points to the 45-disc sleeve he’d made for the Society that he displays to advertise the listening parties. It showcases a Michelangelo-inspired songbird on the front, a list of the tunes he’s prone to spinning—John Fahey, Tawny Owl, Nymphs & Satyrs—on the back.

His shop is a listening party all itself, minus the beer and whiskey. He has, he says, 14,000 more records at home, as well as a self-built record cleaner at the shop. It’s an ultrasonic 40-kilowat water-bath machine that he fashioned with the help of a shish-kabob skewer and a rotisserie motor.

“A big part of the business is restoring,” he says, playing a rare Coltrane LP that he recently fixed.

His nights at The Wren are not about the restoration of records, necessarily, but of the restoration of community, of listening, of attention. And, yes, of a few pints and a few birds.

Most nights of the week, through the leaf-green door at 1712 Aliceanna Street, Will Mester will be in the back corner, a white apron tied around his waist, drifting between the two induction cooktops of his ad-hoc kitchen, the smell of melting butter in the air, as he quietly cooks up a storm under the lamplight of The Wren.

It’s not exactly where you might expect to find him. Over the last 15 years, Mester has emerged as a star of the Baltimore food scene, his career evolving from culinary-school drop-out to cook at revered restaurants like Woodberry Kitchen to owner of the nationally lauded Le Comptoir du Vin in Station North—along the way mastering his own singular style: a simple yet sophisticated ode to European country cooking.

And yet despite his success, he’s grown increasingly estranged from the fast-paced, fad-crazed fuss of the hospitality industry, and it’s clear that here, in this dimly lit bar—chatting with patrons over pints of Guinness, grabbing fresh eggs from the wicker basket for the day’s omelet, handing plates over the pass to his wife, Millie Powell, a seasoned maître d’ who runs the front-of-house—he is, by all measures, in his element.

“It was the right place at the right time,” says Mester on a Monday off at the end of March, after a weekend of whipping up homemade terrine, smoked haddock, and a nettle soup for early spring.

And that right time was the weekend after Thanksgiving in 2023, when veteran bartender Adam Estes introduced him to this rowhome building, back when it was still the hole-in-the-wall Scotch bar, Birds of a Feather, known for strong pours and an eclectic crowd over its 40-odd years. The owner was ready to sell and, by the following spring, Mester bought the place with Powell and Comptoir co-owner Rosemary Liss, who assists with business operations at The Wren.

For them, it was a no-brainer—this circa-1890 stalwart being one of the last of old Fells Point, as longtime spaces have been gutted for modern tastes, like The Wharf Rat, or outright closed, like Bertha’s Mussels.

Here, details from the past remain, like the tin ceiling, oak bar, terracotta tiles, and back-lounge fireplace, alongside fresh coats of paint, a new draft beer system, and a shiny backsplash behind Mester’s prep station.

The Wren is warm, intimate, and in many ways, out of time—no QR codes, no Spotify soundtracks, no reservations or even table service—which is what makes it so transportive. The night slows. The record player crackles. With a Rob Roy in hand on one of the 20 wooden barstools, just two blocks from the Baltimore harbor, you could very well be in a pub off the English Channel or, more specifically, the Irish Sea.

TWO BLOCKS FROM THE BALTIMORE HARBOR, YOU COULD VERY WELL BE IN A PUB OFF THE IRISH SEA.

Powell is a Dublin native, who met Mester there through Liss one summer, on an open-water swim no less. Undoubtedly their partnership, and years of travel for Mester, informed the strong desire to open a pub—the kind of place in Ireland that serves not just as a drinking den but also a vital third space outside of work and home for the local community.

“They are one of the only public spaces left where anything deep or interesting happens,” says Mester. “You need a place that’s democratic, that everyone can go to, that everyone can afford to go to, with some degree of frequency, where people aren’t going to hold your hand and walk you through what the concept is. You go just for a very basic need, to connect with people.”

And it might sound sacrilege, but food isn’t even necessary, he adds. That said, if you visit, we highly recommend having something to eat.

Despite the humble approach, Mester is a meticulous chef, imbuing intention into every detail and ingredient. On the eve of April, a thick slice of black pudding (aka blood sausage, imported from Ireland) came out extra crispy with a sage-fried egg and smokey-sweet “brown sauce,” made of winter fruit and warming spices—imagine the best scrapple you’ve ever had.

Tender pork cheeks also swam in a nourishing broth with bright turnips, sweet sauteed chard, and salty slivers of bacon. And a savory pot of lentils was saddled with sausage from Ostrowski’s, just up Ann Street. Even the basics are blissful, like a gorgeous green salad, swirled in Dijon vinaigrette with a dash of nutmeg, and the Ovenbird Bakery bread, which arrives with an almost indecent slather of Kerrygold butter and a proper pinch of flake salt.

Tuesday through Saturday, the chalkboard menu features a dozen daily dishes, all rooted in the rustic and resourceful pantry of pastoral Europe, inspired by seasons and history.

“It’s what we like to eat,” says Powell, which she calls “good, honest, comforting, classic” food, and that includes her homemade desserts, like apple cakes with vanilla custard and baked-to-order madeleines, each tinged with a touch of nostalgia. “So much of cooking back home, it’s almost like folk tradition—in that things are passed down.”

Much like this pub, which keeps the candle burning for its ever-changing neighborhood. Old regulars return, while newcomers amble in, perhaps to hear an Orioles game on the radio, or catch a set of traditional Irish music, or try a hand at the weekly dart league, or shoot the breeze with Estes, who now runs the bar, its inventory stocked with leftover Scotch from Birds of a Feather.

If you look closely, a tiny taxidermied creature keeps watch behind him. The Wren was named in part after a Celtic tradition,  based on the ancient myth that this unsung but savvy songbird once outsmarted the eagle to be crowned the king of all fowl.

On Aliceanna, this old-soul watering hole proves that small can mean mighty, too.

THE WREN: 1712 Aliceanna St. HOURS: Tues.-Sat. 3 p.m.-10:30 p.m.; dinner starting at 5:30 p.m. PRICES: Appetizers, $5-18; entrees, $20 38; desserts, $14-20. AMBIANCE: Classic pub.