🍻More happy hours to love | Let’s Eat

With Pennsylvania raising the limit on happy hours, it’s time we delve into their finer points. Read on and I’ll explain. Also this week comes word about Halloween themed bars (only 50 days away!) and we learn that two Philly restaurants made the best-newcomers list from Bon Appetit.

If you’re wondering about the latest on the return of the destination Mexican restaurant Tequila’s, do I have news for you.

— Mike Klein

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Longer happy hours are coming to Pennsylvania, starting Friday, under new rules that will allow bars to extend their discounts from 14 to 24 hours a week.

24 hours a week?!

That would be six days of four-hour happy hours. Few Philly bar owners seem to want that much happiness. Some may pick up a few hours here and there — maybe a two-hour late-night block. Others will maintain the status quo, especially if they don’t want to sacrifice profit margins for foot traffic. (When all is said and done, that $4 happy-hour beer might cost over $3 to pour, including overhead.)

Also: Were you aware that, until the law changes Friday, a bar in Pennsylvania cannot offer a combo discount of a food item and a drink — for example, selling a $7 beer and a $15 burger for $20?

Read on as I recap the new laws.

Five can’t-miss happy-hour food recommendations

Bake’n Bacon (1148 S. 11th St., 5-7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4-6 p.m. Fridays): The menu includes porky pleasures such as deconstructed hangin’ bacon ($9) with strips of bacon-caramel-sauce-covered bacon hanging on a rack, above cornbread.

Osteria (640 N. Broad St., 5-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 4-7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4-6 p.m,. Sunday): The signature chicken liver rigatoni ($10) or bucatini cacio e pepe ($11).

Pizzata Pizzeria & Birreria (1700 E. Passyunk Ave., 4-6 p.m. weekdays): The meatballs (shown below) or the full-size 14-inch pizza ($8).

Via Locusta (1723 Locust St., 4-6 p.m. weekdays): The grilled fig toast ($7) or the agnolotti ($8).

Wilder (2009 Sansom St., 4:30-6:30 p.m. weekdays): Smoked duck sandwich ($6).

Deals

🍹With the Center City District Sips promotion over for 2024, there’s still Happy Hour Philly’s Summer Social, which has rounded up nearly three dozen bars offering $4 beer, $4 wine, and $5 cocktail specials from 4-6 p.m. Wednesdays through Sept. 25. Venues are here.

🍹Fishtown Taps offers $5 beers, $6 wines, $7 signature cocktails, discounted appetizers, and small-plate specials at about two dozen spots in the 19125 area from 5-7 p.m. Tuesdays through Oct. 29.

Bon Appetit’s 2024 best new restaurant list includes Meetinghouse, the Kensington bar on the former site of Memphis Tap Room, and My Loup, the Rittenhouse bistro from chefs Alex Kemp and Amanda Shulman. BA says the 20 restos on the national list create menus “infused with personality and a real sense of place.”

At only 50 days till Halloween — and two days before Friday the 13th — it’s high time to consider this season’s crop of seasonal, spooky-theme pop-up bars. On my radar now:

🎃 Nightmare Before Tinsel (116 S. 12th St.) will open Sept. 13 and expand to the second floor of the old jewelry store for a pop-up bar (ages 21 and up) dubbed “Haunted Mansion.” After Oct. 31, the joint will be redecorated into the venerable Christmas themer Tinsel.

🎃 Craftsman Row Saloon (112 S. Eighth St., shown above) will debut its Halloween experience, open to all ages since it’s a restaurant and bar, on Sept. 13. The theme is “Nightmare Before Christmas and Friends,” with characters inspired by the Tim Burton works Nightmare, Beetlejuice, and Wednesday.

🎃 Taqueria Amor (4410 Main St., Manayunk) will run as “The Afterlife at Amor,” a Beetlejuice-inspired Halloween bar, from Sept. 12-Nov. 3.

Victor Tejada, who came to Philly from the Dominican Republic, now heads Delivery Guys Apps, which links big delivery services to independent immigrant-owned restaurants. As Joe DiStefano explains, the partnership is partly built on empanadas.

Youma Ba (above) is in the final prep mode for Thursday’s reopening of her West African BYOB Kilimandjaro at 44th and Chestnut Streets. Kilimandjaro operated from 2005 to 2020 on that site until its strip center home was razed. The new building has a Grocery Outlet store, as well.

New June, the micro-bakery and online cake studio from Noelle Blizzard, will open its first location this fall at 2623 W. Girard Ave. in Brewerytown. Besides cakes, wares will include cookies, pies, tarts, and pastries. The self-taught Blizzard started out “baking as therapy” during the pandemic in 2021.

Hello Donuts & Coffee says it will close Dec. 1. The reason is mainly competition. Kensington has become over-caffeinated in the five years since these musicians set up on a corner near Lehigh Avenue.

Cafe Ynez, which enlivened a fairly desolate strip on Washington Avenue near 21st Street when it opened 10 years ago, is closing Saturday; it’s a sub-tenant of NextFab, the collaborative makerspace that recently closed to consolidate in North Philadelphia. Among the closing festivities: on Thursday, walk-ins plus a $75-a-head dinner (including tax and tip) with City Wide Social; on Friday, they will “raid the fridge” and sell alcohol in partnership with Jet Wine Bar; and Saturday is the finale during regular hours 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sojourn Philly’s Jill Weber said Cafe Ynez also never fully recovered from the pandemic. (Sojourn also has Jet, Rex at the Royal, and Sor Ynez.)

Foodchasers’ Kitchen in Elkins Park, founded by former Philadelphia school principals and identical twin sisters Maya and Kala Johnstone, has closed after two years, but they say they are shopping for two city locations, one of which is expected to be a ghost kitchen.

Brick & Barrel Taphouse in Maple Glen has closed, just shy of nine years.

Wynnewood’s location of the Anthony’s Coal-Fired Pizza chain has closed after eight years.

As for a round-up of restaurants on the way, take a spin through my recent list of projected openings.

Pearl’s on the Corner. Ten years ago, entrepreneurs took over a dive bar called Dyer’s at Frankford Avenue and Jefferson Street in Fishtown — a building clad in a distinctive curved stucco — and opened a bar called The Yachtsman. Their stated theme: “a tiki interpretation of Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” with a bar made of thatched grass and reclaimed wood and a vibe intended to channel a “weird Polynesian paradise where the sun is always shining.”

The Yachtsman ran into rough seas — judgments, Chapter 11 — and its three-year run ended in 2017. The 150-year-old building, festooned with L&I violations, was razed in 2019, just in time for the construction boom that has transformed the stretch of Frankford Avenue.

Which brings us to the new building at Frankford and Jefferson and its barroom occupant, Pearl’s on the Corner. It’s still narrow, of course, but polished: clean lines, unfussy, modern, with a coffered ceiling that hides some pretty effective soundproofing. Partners Shawn Gormley (the one with the bar background), Tom Gleason, and Doug Graham had the good sense to bring in chef Elise Black, whose background includes sous chef turns at Fork and Royal Boucherie and, more recently, a seafood kitchen out of Lucky Well Incubator.

Look up ⬆️ at that burger, available as a single ($14) or a double ($18). Black mixes short rib and ribeye, slices tomato on the bottom, adds truffle mayo to both sides of a Liscio’s brioche buns, plops a dab of ketchup on the top bun, lays on big slabs of house-made pickles, and some yellow American. If that truffle mayo brings you back to the original burger at Royal Boucherie, well, that’s not a bad thing.

The rest of the food menu is studded with cleverness: tomato creme brûlée ($10, served with toasted baguette and shown above); scallop crudo ($16); lump crab dip ($15, with Ritz crackers and pickled vegetables); and mussels marinière ($16). Available late in the evening only is a steak breakfast eggroll ($14), which is basically a cheesesteak eggroll with ribeye, Cooper Sharp American, caramelized onion, soft scrambled eggs, and honey chipotle ketchup.

Two TVs hang over the 15-seat bar, and the drink menu is stocked with seven classic cocktails, 10 signatures, six beers on draft (all $7 except for the Allagash White, which is $8), a bunch of cans, two N/A beers, and six wines by the glass priced at $7.

Pearl’s on the Corner, 1444 Frankford Ave. Hours: 6-11 p.m. daily. Starting Sept. 12, the kitchen will be open till 12:30 a.m. Starting Sept. 16, closing will be at 1 a.m. Last call for regular menu will be 10:30, and the late-night menu will be on from 11 p.m.-1 a.m.

D.C. gets a version of Rittenhouse’s a.kitchen+bar on Thursday. It’s inside the Hotel AKA Washington Circle. Philly’s executive chef Eli Collins oversees, while chef de cuisine George Madosky (most recently chef of Fork in Old City) will run the day to day.

The finals of SpritzAdelphia are 6-10 p.m. Wednesday at Stratus Lounge atop the Hotel Monaco (Fifth and Chestnut Streets). Judges from the United States Bartenders’ Guild will evaluate spritzes from Alice Pizza, Glory Beer Bar & Kitchen, Gran Caffe L’Aquila, Louie Louie, Midnight & the Wicked, and Positano Coast. The public can sip along, too; tickets are here.

Puyero Venezuelan Flavor (424 S. Fourth St.) will mark World Arepa Day on Saturday with three Philly-theme arepas ($14 each) from 9 a.m.-9 p.m.: cheesesteak (smoked gouda, caramelized onions); roast pork (provolone, garlic broccoli rabe, roasted red pepper); and hoagie (honey-glazed turkey, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickled onion, pink sriracha). A vegetarian version of the hoagie is $12.

New York chef Justin Smillie will be in Philly with his mobile wood-fired pizza oven, SlowFires NYC, for a pizza takeover in the garden at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons (1355 N. Front St.) on Friday and Saturday, starting at 5 p.m.

James Beard-nominated chef Dionicio Jiménez has opened a BYOB called La Baja in what suburban town?

A) Bristol

B) Ardmore

C) Collingswood

D) Ambler

Find out if you know the answer.

What’s happening with Tequila’s? — Raffi H.

Owner David Suro says his luxe Mexican restaurant at 1602 Locust St., damaged by fire in February 2023, should be back in November. The big news here is what Suro and his three children are creating on the back side of the restaurant, with entrance on Latimer Street: It will be a casual restaurant called La Jefa serving breakfast to late night, with coffees and cocktails; the posher Tequila’s will be open for dinner only. As La Jefa’s sign permit hit city records, Jack O’Brien caught the news on his JackPhillyRE Substack. The short story is that La Jefa’s food will reflect the cuisine of Guadalajara, Suro’s hometown.

Suro told me that Guadalajara right now is evolving. “For years, I was dreaming about a movement, and it’s happening right now with these young chefs,” Suro said. This is the circle of restaurant life: When Suro opened Tequila’s in Philadelphia in 1986 (then at 1511 Locust, where Misconduct Tavern is now), “we wanted to be an avant-garde Mexican restaurant doing traditional food,” he said. “Almost 40 years later, though, we’re not avant-garde anymore. There is fine Mexican food all over. The idea at La Jefa is to introduce [the food of] what is one of the most creative cities in Mexico.” He’s retained chef Fabian Lepe, a fellow “Tapatio,” whose menu is still a work in progress.

One other point: Suro said both restaurants will be 100% accessible to wheelchairs, as a ramp was set up in the front and lifts will be installed in the lobby of Tequila’s and the other connecting La Jefa and Tequila’s.

📮 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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