New restaurants for 2024 | Let’s Eat

We’re looking back and forward this week: back at the restaurants and chefs, as well as the food trends of 2023, and we’re looking forward to a busy 2024 on the dining scene. Also this week: Check out a sober festival and learn how to cater your own Three Kings Day fete.

— Mike Klein

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If you’re looking for new restaurants, you will really like 2024. At least 75 openings are on my radar — almost all independent restaurants such as Youma Ba’s African destination, Kilimandjaro (above) and Davide Lubrano and Vincent Gallagher (below) at a new location of Pizzata Pizzeria called Pizzata Birreria. Since this list was published last week, I’ve found at least a half-dozen more newcomers, including a second location for the Kibitz Room (North Wales), a new branch of Kooma Asian Fusion (Cherry Hill), a luxe Indian restaurant in Mount Laurel called Haldi, and an expansion of sushi specialist Osushi to Wayne. Click here and you’ll be up to speed.

That said: I address a recent rash of restaurant closings, including three big spots in South Jersey. (The TGI Friday’s in Marlton, too?) Read on.

Philly’s restaurants got some serious national love in 2023. Critic Craig LaBan picks the highlights from the best crop of newcomers in years (such as Kalaya, where he enjoyed this shaved ice dessert), proving our dining scene is only getting better.

By conservative estimates, Craig’s work took him to over 275 restaurant meals across the Philadelphia region in 2023, where he feasted on well over 1,000 dishes. Here’s what he liked the best.

Underground supper clubs! Halal hot chicken! Trade unions! Hira Qureshi runs down the trends that defined Philly’s food scene in 2023.

The touring Dry Vibes sober festival will bring together conscious drinkers, wellness brands, and Real Housewives of New Jersey-approved nonalcoholic cocktails to an event space in the Callowhill neighborhood. Founder Drew Davis told Hira: “We want people to forget that they’re not drinking.”

Contributor Alisha Miranda, a native of Puerto Rico, enjoys playing Día de Los Reyes holiday host — a source of merriment encompassing an all-Puerto Rican dinner party complete with a boisterous playlist and endless coquito on Jan. 6. She shows you how to throw your own Twelfth Night celebration.

Koch’s Deli of University City was a family affair from the 1970s to the 1990s, and many will remember it this way: Bob Koch handing out slices of pastrami to waiting customers, as he did in this photo in 2000, five years before his death. Henry Savage reports that Koch’s — well, the name, anyway — is fixing to relocate from 43rd and Locust to Independence Mall.

South Jersey craft beer brand Flying Fish Brewing Co. has filed for bankruptcy protection, and Nick Vadala reports that it’s just months after a deal fell through that would have seen it sold to Cape May Brewing Co.

Mr. Pig Korean BBQ. The 30 stainless-steel exhaust tubes extending above the cooking tables to the ceiling create a “modern factory” look at this spacious Korean barbecue restaurant, which opened last week at The Crane, a new apartment building at 10th and Vine Streets on the edge of Chinatown. There’s even more metal rolling around the floor — carts filled with platters of bulgogi, steak, pork belly, and bowls of banchan.

Staffers do the cooking at Mr. Pig, owned by Vietnamese-born Dan Ngo and his wife, South Korea-born Eun Park. They had been in the restaurant business a decade ago in Virginia, and when their boys expressed interest in attending college in the Philadelphia area, they decided to relocate and dive back in.

A planned location nearby didn’t pan out, but they found a larger space, with a view of Center City through the big windows. You can order kitchen items, such as soups and stews, dumplings, cheese tteokbokki, bibimbap, stir-fried squid, and buckwheat cold noodles, but you might just go for the show. They’ll set you up with salad and get to work on the grill with a pork combo (pork belly, pork ribs, and spicy stir-fried pork) or a beef combo (sliced beef brisket, bulgogi, ribeye, strip loin).

Figure on $50 a person or so for the tabletop cooking, plus extras. Right now, they’re extending a 20% discount as it’s BYOB pending the liquor license.

Ngo is fond of bourbons, so he’ll offer them as well as beer, wine, and soju.

Mr. Pig, 1001 Vine St. Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. ADA accessible.

Libertee Grounds, the bar/mini-golf course at 16th and Girard, on Friday marks its expansion into the vacant storefront next door. It adds a state-of-the-art golf simulator area, plus nine new mini-golf holes to complete the 18-hole mini-golf course, now spanning two floors.

Horsham’s location of The Farm and Fisherman Tavern is starting Monday hours, but with a charitable twist. Instead of the regular menu, it will offer five varieties of cheesesteaks, plus fries, onion rings, and chicken wings, from 5 to 10 p.m. in the bar area and to go. The seeded rolls will be made from the dough from Backdoor Pizza, which operates out of F&F’s Cherry Hill location. For January, Monday night cheesesteak sales will benefit Pennypack Farm.

Pulitzer-winning playwright James Ijames (Fat Ham) says his relatives proclaimed the steak at which Philly restaurant the best they ever had?

A) Pat’s

B) Geno’s

C) Barclay Prime

D) Ishkabibble’s

Find out if you know the answer.

Why all the closings over the holidays? — Gerald R., via email

It’s a textbook case of “what goes up must come down.” Everything closes at some point — except maybe McGillin’s Olde Ale House, Philly’s own Methuselah, around since 1860.

Restaurants and other businesses close for myriad reasons: Owners retire (such as the Au family at Chinatown’s Shiao Lan Kung, whose last day after 36 years will be Jan. 14). They give up after a fire (such as Marco Polo in Elkins Park). Their landlords raise the rent (Manoa Diner in Havertown). Real estate speculators representing a cannabis dispensary (Mexican Food Factory in Marlton) or a car wash (Cherry Hill Diner) come bearing wads of cash.

Most close for the obvious reason: They are businesses, and revenues must exceed expenses.

Closings tend to cluster at the end of the year after management takes stock through the fall and decides to clear the books at the end of the year and not drag the mess into January, a traditionally slow month. Apparently, this was the case at the Mount Laurel location of the Jose Tejas chain, which opened in December 2022 and abruptly closed over the weekend. The TGI Friday’s in Marlton Square also just gave up after more than 35 years.

Late December is also when many closings are announced, like Pizza Crime in Haddonfield, which will wrap up operations in late January. A rent increase is driving this, said owner Arnab Maitra, who wants to relocate.

What can the public do about the business reasons?

For this, I’ll turn to a Facebook post from Roy Cooper and Fiona McPhee, who just closed their True Blue Bakery locations in Royersford (opened in 2017) and Malvern (opened only several months ago).

Marveling at the outpouring of concern after they announced their closing, they wrote: “The unfortunate truth is, if we had received just half that level of support over the last six months we would have survived. It’s too late for us, but maybe it’s not too late for some of the other amazing small businesses out there. ... If you want the vibrancy of a main street with unique and interesting businesses, put your money and effort there. Otherwise, your town will be just like so many others with the same chains in the same strip malls.”

They also suggest some cost-free ways to support, such as writing Google reviews and engaging with small business’ social media to help boost the brands’ online reach. Even if businesses post frequently on Instagram, as True Blue did, they need plenty of engagement to catch the algorithm. More follows, likes, saves, and comments mean more exposure.

During a phone chat, McPhee said: “Some people feel like it’s kind of a sudden decision, but the writing was on the wall for a while.”

“But we held out as long as we could for our employees. We didn’t want people to be out of a job on Christmas,” said Cooper, who no longer will bake commercially. He’s changing careers.

📮 Have a question about food in Philly? E-mail your questions to me at mklein@inquirer.com for a chance to be featured in my newsletter.

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