Stimulus grants mean Day by Day and other Philadelphia restaurants will live to see another day

Owner Robin Barg is trying again with her 40-year-old restaurant after being closed for 5 months during the pandemic.

Day by Day owner Robin Barg (left) and her daughter, Molly, outside of the restaurant at 21st and Sansom Streets.Read moreJOSE F. MORENO / Staff Photographer

Published April 12, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ET

Day by Day, one of Philadelphia’s original bruncheries, has joined a growing list of Center City restaurants reopening after a long, cold winter of pandemic uncertainty.

In November, owner Robin Barg shut down the restaurant at 21st and Sansom Streets that she opened in 1981 on the former site of a series of delis. She said the 25% indoor capacity was not workable and her core of business-lunch deliveries had dried up — a fate that befell other Center City eateries.

At 70, Barg deliberated all winter about her own future and the restaurant’s.

What clinched her decision to reopen?

“Government money,” Barg said of the stimulus grants for which she qualifies. Among the sources for funding is the American Rescue Plan, which earmarked $28.6 billion for restaurants.

Barg said she spruced up the interior and added outdoor seating on the Sansom Street side.

Day by Day joins the recent reopening of another Center City old-timer: Marathon Grill at 16th and Sansom Streets, which was heavily damaged during the unrest last spring. Libertine, a bar and restaurant at 13th and Spruce Streets, also returned this week as did Barcade, the Fishtown funhouse (1114 Frankford Ave.), and Royal Boucherie in Old City (52 S. Second St.). Also of note: Angelo’s Pizza on Ninth Street near Fitzwater reopened April 9, four months after a fire.

At Day by Day, Barg is working with her daughter, Molly, who does all the baking.

Day by Day’s original mission was “lunch at my place, dinner at yours,” Robin Barg said. She initially had a takeout counter offering prepared foods — an idea that apparently was years ahead of its time. That didn’t last too long. The restaurant morphed into a cozy Center City daytime diner, offering baked goods, big salads and sandwiches amid a constantly changing menu, and off-premises catering.

Now, fresh off several months of shutdown during which her son Michael got married, “I feel very invigorated,” she said. “I think that my kind of food is still what people are looking for. It’s innovative but it’s not too strange — updated old classics.”

Hours for now are 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.