Bored with finance, Kevin Dolce went into the cheesesteak biz. His next stop: Philly nightlife and a cheesesteak empire

Buy a sandwich from a Philly-style steak shop, and more than likely, you’re taking it to go.

Kevin Dolce wondered: What if you had a shop dedicated to steaks but that also offered a full bar and dine-in service? With a decade as a business consultant behind him — but no restaurant experience — he ran the idea past a friend who has been in hospitality for decades.

His friend didn’t talk him out of it.

Taste Cheesesteak Bar, which opened in September on the ground floor of the Sterling, an apartment building near Logan Square at 1809 JFK Blvd., has become quite the scene: The bar seating and high-tops fill up, particularly in the evenings, and the shaded patio seating outside takes on a festive feeling. It’s particularly popular during Center City District SIPS. As DJs spin, revelers show up not only for traditional beef and chicken cheesesteaks but for veggie, salmon, jerk chicken, and oxtail cheesesteaks on rolls from Liscio’s Bakery, while bartenders sling cocktails like the “Hennything Is Possible” and “A Long Night,” which is made with tequila, rum, vodka, gin, sweet and sour, triple sec, and Coca-Cola. Beer and soda are sold in cans.

“Philly has good cheesesteaks — don’t get me wrong,” Dolce said, rattling off his favorites such as Angelo’s, Cafe Carmela, Pat’s, Geno’s, and Dalessandro’s. “But when you look at every single one of those cheesesteak locations, you’re just coming up ordering, taking out, and going. Nobody really gets to sit down and actually have a cheesesteak with a cocktail. They go hand in hand. I wanted to do something specifically for us that hasn’t been done. Unless you’re going to a restaurant or a steak house, that’s just not happening.”

Dolce, 34, is the youngest of Herman and Philina Dolce’s three children. The couple, who emigrated from Haiti four decades ago, settled in New York before moving to Philadelphia’s Mount Airy section. Dolce recalls the work ethic of his father, a property superintendent for Trump International who kept his job in Manhattan and came home on weekends. “He would fix whatever needed to be fixed in the house, grocery shop, wash the cars, mow the lawn, everything like that, and then he’d go back to New York to work,” Dolce said.

Dolce went to East Stroudsburg University, majoring in biology and minoring in business.

After graduation, he interned at UBS, the financial services company, followed by a job in the New York office of marcusevans, a media, corporate marketing, and information company.

Nine years ago, Dolce was about a year into the MBA program at New York University when his father suffered a hemorrhagic stroke. That brought Dolce back to Philadelphia, where his father is on hospice care at home. “We didn’t want him in a nursing home,” Dolce said.

Dolce worked as a vice president at two business-development companies and started a consultancy called 1990 to help fledgling entrepreneurs get set up in business. Last year, he spent a month in Southeast Asia, stopping in Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, and Singapore. “Long story short, I came back from Bali. I’m extremely bored,” he said. “All the time I was gone, I had delegated my business. It was automated. I called my friend and said, ‘Let’s do something.’”

“I had never had any hands-on experience” with restaurants, Dolce said. “But I know how to scale a business and I wanted to do this.”

In July, Dolce saw the space at the Sterling, which had been a pizzeria and wine bar called Fahrenheit 451. “We had a handshake deal that day, got everything over to the lawyers that week, and by Aug. 3, it was ours,” he said. They gutted the space by Aug. 28 and opened Taste on Sept. 16.

Emboldened by his foray into hospitality, Dolce is building a three-story restaurant and lounge called Enigma Sky in the former Golf & Social in Fishtown. On the first floor is a speakeasy-type lounge and Latin restaurant; above it is a luxe second-floor restaurant and a roof deck overlooking the Ben Franklin Bridge. He expects it to open in phases over the summer.

Dolce also is building his second Taste, in Charlotte, N.C. His five-year plan includes four new Taste locations a year — not in Philadelphia, but in cities such as Houston, Nashville, and Harrisburg.

Harrisburg?

“It’s desolate out there,” Dolce said. “They need a good cheesesteak.”