Walnut Garden opens in Rittenhouse with beer, drinks, food — and like a thousand people
The beer garden is expected to return next year as plans unfold for a high-rise. The Walnut Street site previously accommodated three historic buildings that were torched in 2020.
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What if they opened a beer garden just down the block from Rittenhouse Square, and nobody came?
That was not the case Wednesday for the premiere of Walnut Garden, a seasonal destination at 1706-10 Walnut St., filling the empty lot that will become a high-rise. The former occupants were three historic buildings that were looted and heavily damaged by fire during a night of destruction in May 2020.
Walnut Garden’s premiere drew about 1,000 people, all told, between the 4 p.m. ribbon cutting and the midnight closing, said Gary Murray of FCM Hospitality, the operators. It can accommodate 500 people at once.
Walnut Green, which is expected to return in 2024 and possibly 2025 as plans unfold for the new building, is similar to Parks on Tap, the mobile beer garden that FCM principal Avram Hornik operates with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.
It has picnic-table seating, restroom facilities, children’s activities (including a wooden Jeep with a slide), and shipping containers converted into drink and food sales on the 11,500-square-feet of space. There’s also a 40- by -60-foot canopy tent for shade, a large-screen TV for sporting events and movie nights, and a soft-serve ice cream station.
The menu, billed as Asian street food, includes green papaya salad, cold sesame udon noodle salad, Korean-style spicy barbecue pork sliders, bulgogi sliders, Japanese fried chicken karaage, charcoal-grilled sate, and crispy scallion pancakes. Drinks include five beers on tap, $12 and $13 cocktails, canned cocktails, nonalcoholic beverages, and — the most popular offering Wednesday — white peach sangria.
Hours are noon to midnight daily.
The site’s previous buildings — housing a McDonald’s restaurant, a Vans shoe store, and a Dr. Martens shoe store — were ransacked and set ablaze on the night of May 30, 2020, following a day of somber demonstrations condemning the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Only the facades remained, and the city recommended demolition, which occurred in early 2021. The Dr. Martens store subsequently relocated to 1704 Walnut St.
The buildings previously had separate ownership but were packaged together for a sale, valued at $15 million.
The beer garden idea, which has broad support from business and community leaders, patched up an eyesore. After the demolition, the site was ringed by a fence that was covered in graffiti — “a wound on the street” is how Paul Levy of the Center City District described it.
The idea grew out of discussions among Levy, Richard Gross of the Center City Residents Association, Paul Steinke of the Preservation Alliance, and Ari Weber of Brookliv, a brokerage firm in Brooklyn and one of the developers.