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Openings
The Local 44-associated bottle shop we first mentioned nearly a year ago is ready for action — Brendan Hartranft and Leigh Maida will open the doors to the long-in-the-works addition, just a few feet east of the Spruce Street side of L44 (4333 Spruce St.), today at 3 p.m. To incentivize: One free cask pour of Yards ESA per visitor.
"People think of Local 44 when they think of beer in this neighborhood," says Maida, so opening a retail space was a logical move for them. Their cold case features upward of 500 mix-a-six choices, and beer geeks will flip over the library-style large-format selection, situated up a short set of stairs in the back. (We spy Jolly Pumpkin La Roja, Dogfish Head Noble Rot, Kriek de Ranke, Lost Abbey Serpent Stout and Aventinus among the options.) There are a few bar seats up near the register for drinkers to crack open their purchases, or have a few glasses off the Local 44 beer engine, which has been routed this-a-way to provide shoppers a fresh-poured respite.
The bottle shop will be open Sunday to Thursday from noon to 10 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to midnight. The phone number, awesomely, is 215-222-CANS.
View galleryOn Monday we got the drop on putting up menus for Square Peg — chef Matt Levin's high-end comfort food salon with Barry Gutin and Larry Cohen (Cuba Libre, 32 Degrees) at the one-time home of Marathon Grill at 10th and Walnut. The menus read like a delight, with all-day breakfasts, meatball sandwiches and meatloaf with smashed potatoes (both with Levin's own beef mix) and a daily plate selection including items Levin brought from Adsum, such as homemade pierogies fried chicken.
Now, we snagged Levin, who'll launch Square Peg with a series of soft-open dinners on March 21 (soft-opening lunch starts in April), for a Q&A. He's been busy this week playing with his brand-new fryer, taste-testing spiked-up milkshakes and getting his feet wrapped. You'll find out below what that means after the jump.
Last night marked the debut of Popolino (501 Fairmount Ave.), the new BYO from most-Italian-Irishman-we-know Peter McAndrews. Translating to "commoner" in the Roman dialect, Popolino is a trattoria focused on both recognizable dishes from The City of Seven Hills and age-of-empires preparations reinterpreted. "It felt like Rome," McAndrews says of the former Lafayette Bistro's existing interior columns and touches. (Gesturing toward a mythological relief on the wall: "Look at that, freakin' Zeus!") It's the unrecognizable-to-most ancient era of Roman cooking that excites McAndrews the most. "You would be surprised how much food you can actually do when you're doing Roman," he says.
We didn't see this one coming: Partners Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook will open Citron and Rose (sounds like a Federal Donuts flavor, no?) in Merion this summer. Well, technically, a dude named David Magerman will open it, since the Zahav boys already own some non-kosher enterprises you may have heard of (hi, ribs at Percy Street) and can't be official proprietors. Oy.
If you peek in the windows of Square Peg at the glass-encased corner of 10th and Walnut, it doesn't look like too much has changed since the space was (like two months ago!) part of the Marathon Grill chain. (Designer Owen Kamihira is dotting the bricked-up high-ceilinged room with large-scale photos of locals.) But it's a new week, and the GuestCounts Hospitality team of Larry Cohen and Barry Gutin (Cuba Libre) and executive chef Matt Levin (Adsum) are getting ready to preview Square Peg’s menu, with a two-week test run for dinner starting next Wednesday, March 21 at 4:30 p.m. (Lunch runs begin April 5.)
Alan Su, a Chinese-by-descent Temple alum with both front- and back-of-house experience in the restaurant industry, is looking to open Nom Nom Ramen (20 S. 18th St.) in the Center City space that was last the Korean quick-serve B.B. Go. Su says he's tested out ramen-yas across the country, leading him to the conclusion that Philly needed more dedicated spaces for the stuff. Shooting for "the first day of spring" (technically March 20, or next Tuesday) for a soft-open, Nom Nom will specialize in rich hakata-style soup (that's the fatty pork-bones broth), though Su also sends along this pic of a spicy miso-based variation that'll be on his menu.
UPDATE [12:45 p.m.]: Just chatted with Su and got some more details. "I've tried ramen everywhere," he says, "and I wasn't able to find anything remotely close to what I've tasted elsewhere in Philly." Nom Nom will be a true hakata-style ramen-ya in that all soups with start with a tonkotsu (pork) base, to be modified with the addition of miso, soy sauce or salt later. Seasonal specials will come into focus once Nom Nom is up and running; expect a soup boasting home-style crab stock combined with tonkotsu broth, among other options. Su won't offer gyoza — he feels it's overdone — but does plan on doing apps like salads and pork and soft-shell crab buns.
What began with $500 and a juicer has turned into a storefront in Midtown Village. Jennifer Richmond and Joel Odhner quietly opened Jar Bar (113 S. 12th St.) early this week without so much as a street sign out front to let people know. (Meal Ticket first mentioned it in June.)
Richmond and Odhner are the creators of Catalyst Cleanse, a line of fresh-squeezed rejuvenating juices distributed locally via designated pickup locations. Today, their beverages are shipped to customers all over the United States. "Folks [are] ordering from California," says Jar Bar staffer/right-hand man Calvin. "You're telling me with all those eggheads in California, you can't find some good juices out there? Nope. People are paying $180 just to ship [Catalyst Cleanse] juices that already cost $180. People tell us we've got the best juice in the U.S."
Looks like our hunch from August was right on: A new Chipotle — yes, just three blocks down from the cornerstone shop in the old Susanna Foo (1512 Walnut St.) — has taken over the sweet 12th-and-Walnut space previously held by Potbelly. It opened up quietly last week. Same menu and same hours (11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily) as other local Chipotle locations.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Paul Davis and Steve Renzi snuck out their Kung Fu Hoagies cart, which we first mentioned back in November, out for a quick run the other day, practice for their official rollout at Clark Park this coming Saturday, March 10, at 10 a.m. The partners plan on vending their vegetarian fare — they're not a strictly vegan operation, though everything on their opening menu does happen to be vegan — from Clark Park on the weekends (Sunday, March 11 too) and from 34th and Chestnut on weekdays. If you miss that paint job, inspired (like the name) by Davis' practice of martial arts, you need way better glasses.
This summer we mentioned that the restaurant space at the Philadelphia Art Alliance (251 S. 18th St.), which has long seemed like an ideal venue for a next-level restaurant concept, was under the control of Michelin-starred chef Ed Brown, food/beverage honcho of Restaurant Associates. Signage recently went up revealing the name of the slated-for-spring project — Rittenhouse Tavern — and now the heads of both front and back of house are locked in. Nicholas Elmi, chef de cuisine of Le Bec-Fin up until this weekend, will run day-to-day at the Tavern, working with Brown to develop and execute a modern American menu. They've also tapped Dan Elliott, a veteran of Oyster House, Rouge, Alma de Cuba and Lacroix who last opened Fairmount's Hickory Lane, as GM.
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