Where to dine before or after a show | Let’s Eat

We’ve come with recommendations for great springtime shows and restaurant destinations to match. Also this week, we drop by lounges serving cocktails along with music played on vinyl and drop suggestions for suhoor and iftar dining, as well.

— Mike Klein

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How many times have you gotten show tickets and then had to decide where to eat? Rosa Cartagena picked 10 great shows this season and Jenn Ladd followed up with restaurant recommendations. They’re not all fancy-pants spots. IHOP is even involved.

Muslims observing Ramadan forgo food and drink from sunrise to sunset, often gathering for suhoor, the pre-dawn meal, and iftar, the dusk meal. Hira Qureshi offers ideas for restaurants open during early suhoor hours and those offering specials for iftar.

Where can you go to sip cocktails and listen to music spun on vinyl? Earl Hopkins and Dan DeLuca drop by vibey places like 48 Record Bar and Fountain Porter, and will tell you about Vinylcon!, a marketplace coming next month.

Sit back and enjoy a Zoe Greenberg yarn about the R.O.M.E.O. Club. That’s short for Retired Old Men Eating Out, which gathers for breakfast daily at Hymie’s in Merion Station. They share more than just scrambled eggs, as you’ll see.

Kensington Quarters will close after business Saturday, wrapping nearly 10 years in Fishtown. Its announcement, posted on Instagram, called it “an honor to be a part of this epic food community” and said plans for the space would be announced in coming weeks. (Owner Michael Pasquarello declined to discuss before deadline.) KQ opened in October 2014 with a meat-centric restaurant, meat classroom, butcher shop, and bar. Heather Thomason was butcher from spring 2015 to spring 2016 before opening Primal Supply, which ended its run nearly a year ago. KQ’s counter closed in 2016. KQ also spawned two KQ Burger locations. Since fall 2019, its menu has been predominantly seafood.

Chima, the South Florida-based Brazilian steakhouse, has left its home of 15 years at the Kennedy House, 20th Street and JFK Boulevard. Staff walked in last weekend to learn that it had become the second location of Horsham’s NaBrasa, also a Brazilian steakhouse with AYCE salad bar. (It is accurate to say that this isn’t owner Eddy Reis’ first rodizio.) It’s open now. Management tells me that in time they will spice up the drab dining room, boost the happy hour, and spruce up the bar. If you have a Chima gift card, you can redeem it at NaBrasa through May 31.

Dim Sum Garden’s new location, only two doors down (1024 Race St.), is under construction and on track to open by year’s end.

Above is an early look inside Breezy’s, the deli and grocery that chef Chad Durkin plans to open in early April at 23rd Street and Washington Avenue on the edge of Point Breeze, across the way from his takeout shop, Small Oven Pastry Shop & Porco’s Porchetteria. It will be stocked with deli meats, sandwiches, smoothies, and other high-end groceries.

Chef changes

George Sabatino has crossed the city line into Delco for the executive chef’s role at Rosemary (25 E. Hinckley Ave., Ridley Park). Sabatino, whose long resume includes Barbuzzo and his own Aldine, replaces opening chef Elijah Milligan after eight months.

Ariel Tobing brings East Asian and Indonesian inspiration to the breakfast/lunch menu at the cafe/wine bar Forin (2525 Frankford Ave.), effective Thursday, with such dishes as kecap manis-braised chicken over turmeric rice; spiced coconut salad; and matcha haupia, a Hawaiian coconut pudding. He worked at Kiki Aranita’s Poi Dog — which explains the glazed spam breakfast sandwich he will offer — before joining her now-husband, Ari Miller, at Musi. Hours: 8 a.m.-3 p.m. daily.

Restaurants opening soon

Rice & Sambal (1911 E. Passyunk Ave.) is chef Diana Widjojo’s reprise of her Indonesian supper club at chef Joncarl Lachman’s Dankbaar, where she starts an open-ended engagement on Thursday. There’s a six-course prix-fixe dinner with vegan alternatives ($85) on Thursday and Friday and a family-style Liwetan-style feast on Saturday ($100). It’s BYOB; $5 corkage. Reserve via Resy.

La Sera Italiana (1608 South St.) is a cozy, rustic Italian BYOB from Albert Murraku opening Thursday in the former Entree. Murraku previously cooked at La Viola in Rittenhouse. Menus are up on Instagram.

BierHaul Townhouse (15 N. Walnut St., West Chester) is looking at the end of next week at the former Split Rail Saloon. This is an offshoot of Bierhaul near Glen Mills, with an indoor beer garden upstairs and a bar downstairs.

Banh Philly. This elegant but simple bamboo-lined BYOB, now fully open after several weeks of trial runs, is drawing raves from my Vietnamese friends, who point out especially solid renditions of dishes from all over Vietnam. Along with the staples (banh mi, pho, bun bo hue, and summer/spring rolls, you’ll find such specialties as lotus stem salad with shrimp, pork, pickled vegetables, herbs, fried shallot, and peanuts (aka gỏi ngó sen tôm thịt) shown above, and vermicelli noodle with grilled pork (bún chả hà nội) below. See the menu here.

(Besides Banh, there’s the new A Taste of Spain location, the newish Black Turtle Coffee, Mochi Ring Donut, Mix Bar & Grill, the Hart of Catering, and El Merkury, plus a forthcoming second location for DaMò Pasta Lab, all within a block of 21st and Chestnut.)

Banh, 2102 Chestnut St. Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Wheelchair accessible. BYOB.

The Stephen Starr restaurant Borromini, planned for the former site of Barnes & Noble on the Walnut Street side of Rittenhouse Square, has cleared a hurdle. Exterior-design tweaks won approval last week from the Philadelphia Historical Commission. Starr fancies Borromini as an Italian spin on his Parc. There’s a budget of $18 million, as he testified, and it’s about a year away.

The first-ever microbrewery in the heart of Moorestown — and the first in New Jersey with an educational element — will replace the long-dormant Community House swimming pool on East Main Street. Kevin Riordan tells us about the deal that also includes Rowan College at Burlington County and King’s Road Brewing Co. This could be big: Alcoholic beverage sales had been prohibited in the town since 1915.

The American Vegan Center will launch its season of 90-minute veg-history walking tours on March 20 and March 23 (1 p.m.), starting from the center at 17 N. Second St. in Old City. Those two tours ($45) include lunch. Subsequent tours are $15. Registration is required.

Old City Coffee just changed hands after 39 years. Imagine this: It opened a full decade before Starbucks came to town.

What went wrong with your baking? We have answers.

Shot-size bottles of booze bring in big bucks to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. The PLCB tells me it sold nearly 23.7 million of the 50mL bottles last year, for a total of $34.7 million. According to the sales figures released last week, which brand was the top-seller?

A) Smirnoff vodka

B) Tito’s vodka

C) Fireball whiskey

D) 99 Peaches schnapps

Find out if you know the answer.

Who keeps building websites for restaurants that have everything but the hours and menu? I don’t care [that] the chef Andy uses Midwestern flair.

This wasn’t posed to me. It was a rhetorical question posted to X by user @watn_tarnation, and when I reposted it, my Instagram audience howled in agreement.

Yes, restaurants’ attempts at marketing can be frustrating. Potential customers routinely scour sites, Facebook pages, and Instagram profiles for basic info that just isn’t there. No address, no hours, no menus. Just as maddening are the restaurants that advertise one set of hours on the web and another on social media. And how about the restaurants that do post menus, but they are out of date and — surprise! — carry old prices?

You may scoff, “first-world problems.” But they seem easy enough to solve, even for restaurateurs who insist that they’re “too busy for this [stuff].”

Which brings me to ask: What’s bugging you about restaurants today? The lack of phones to reach a live person at a restaurant? Noise? “Hidden” auto-gratuities? Late-comers? Table hogs? Restaurant folks as well as “civilians”: Let’s air this out. Email me.

📮If you have a question about food in Philly, e-mail me at mklein@inquirer.com for a chance to be featured in my newsletter.

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