Fiore Fine Foods is moving to East Kensington after 4 years in South Philadelphia

Seeking an improved quality of life, chefs Justine MacNeil and Ed Crochet plan to move their Italian restaurant, Fiore Fine Foods, from Queen Village to smaller, cafe-style digs in East Kensington.

The last day of service at 757 S. Front St. will be April 1, and they hope to open in late spring or early summer at 2413 Frankford Ave., the former Flow State Coffee Bar.

For now, Fiore Fine Foods is serving dinner Wednesday through Saturday, plus Sunday brunch.

The move from a full-service, 78-seat restaurant with bar to a 20-seat cafe will come with abbreviations of both the concept (daytime only, Thursday to Monday) and the name (simply Fiore).

» READ MORE: From the archives: Craig LaBan's review of Fiore Fine Foods from 2019

The couple will offer their Italian pastries, breakfast sandwiches, and gelato by the pint and scoop (from a 12-flavor case), as well as pastas, stews, soups, and other savory dishes. “We want to take a lot of the style we do at dinner and offer it during the day without it being as formal as dinner service,” MacNeil said. “But we still want to offer the same quality of dishes and offer stuff that translates a little better for daytime.”

Catherine Peña will continue as pastry chef and Courtney Testa will continue as front-of-house manager.

MacNeil and Crochet relocated to Philadelphia in 2018 after leaving high-profile New York jobs — she as executive pastry chef at Del Posto, he as chef de cuisine at Craft, and then executive chef for Starr Catering at the New-York Historical Society and Carnegie Hall. After Crochet had taken a job at Rat’s Restaurant in Hamilton Township, N.J., the couple sought to establish roots in a city that MacNeil said had an “approachable, human scale.”

Fiore opened in early 2019 to acclaim at the short-lived Kanella South, which previously was the Village Belle and Frederick’s. The pandemic shut them down, sending them first to make quarts of soup (with the proceeds given to staff) and pints of gelato for pickups, which paved the path to dinners to-go. Pastry and breakfast sandwiches returned, followed by the return ofdinner service. Then came the second shutdown, which they said gave them the push to think outside of the box of what a restaurant is.

“We looked toward maybe doing a different path, where we both could still be chefs and both make the food we want to do,” MacNeil said.

February 2022 brought a real game-changer: the arrival of their son, Roman.

Moving to daytime hours, MacNeil said, “we think will help a lot of team members and give everyone a better work-life balance, allowing them to do stuff with their families, which is just kind of impossible with a p.m. restaurant.”