Loch Bar brings Maryland-style seafood and all-day dining to Broad Street

When Baltimore restaurateur Alex Smith was scouting locations, he remembered a trip that he took to Philadelphia a decade ago to see Estia, the upscale Greek seafood restaurant across from the Academy of Music. It inspired his own restaurant, Ouzo Bay, which opened in 2012 in Baltimore’s Harbor East.

From there, operating as Atlas Restaurant Group, Smith embarked on a staggering run of openings in Maryland, Florida, Texas, and D.C. He has nearly three dozen now.

But none in Philadelphia.

Then he heard that developer Carl Dranoff was looking for a tenant for the ground floor of his Arthaus condo building across from the Kimmel Center. Smith realized that Philadelphia and Baltimore have certain similarities, Smith said: East Coast port cities with longtime seafood traditions and blue-collar ethos.

Last weekend, Smith opened Loch Bar — the fourth, after locations in Baltimore, Boca Raton, Fla., and Houston.

Loch Bar, a classic seafood tavern with an open layout and 13½-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, has an enormous raw bar that adjoins a 17-seat bar that serves 100-plus brown spirits, as well as beers and cocktails. There are 50 seats outdoors on both the Broad Street and Spruce Street sidewalks, as well as a rarity in restaurants today: live music nightly.

Smith said he decided on Loch Bar for Philadelphia based on the performance of the location in Baltimore, which is at the Four Seasons Hotel. “We look at it as our all-day restaurant,” he said. “What we were really looking for was an amenity for the Avenue of the Arts and Arthaus, as well as a lot of the other high-end residential that’s around that area.”

Loch Bar fully lights the corner of Broad and Spruce, also occupied by the Kimmel Center (with Garces Trading Co. restaurant and Volvér on the Spruce side), the Wilma Theater, and Steak 48 steak house. Smith said he enjoys a synergy with Steak 48, whose location in Houston’s River Oaks district is next to Loch Bar.

To counter the “out-of-town” label, Smith has installed locals in charge. Chef Michael O’Halloran, who worked at Fork and White Dog Cafe years ago, was chef-owner of Old City’s Bistro 7 for nearly 14 years before a brief stint in South Philadelphia with Bistro La Bête. Most recently, he was executive chef at Stella in New Hope. General manager Lynn Rinaldi was chef-owner of Paradiso in South Philadelphia for its run of nearly 15 years.

The menu focuses on Mid-Atlantic-inspired seafood, including towers, Dover sole, Maryland-style crab cakes, lobster, and king crab, but “we do have people who come in and grab a burger or a lobster roll or a salad,” Smith said. Lunch specials are offered, in addition to the all-day menu.

He estimated average dinner price tags of $75 to $85 per person including alcohol, putting it squarely in line with many Center City destination restaurants.

Loch Bar opens at 11 a.m. for lunch and spans happy hour, dinner, and late night. Weekend brunch is a few weeks away.

The live music — mainly solos or duos starting after dinnertime — plays into the Avenue of the Arts leitmotif. Arthaus is on the former site of Philadelphia International Records, where producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff created the sound of Philadelphia in the 1960s and ‘70s. The building was razed several years ago, making way for Arthaus.

Smith, 39, started in the food business while a student at the University of Delaware by opening a Häagen-Dazs ice cream shop next to a movie theater in a downtown Baltimore building that his grandfather, a baker turned developer, was opening. Then came a nearby deli, selling pizza and sandwiches. His next move was fine dining.

Loch Bar’s opening weekend in Philadelphia pleased Smith. “The crowd’s been young, old, and diverse — people from all walks of life,” he said.