Tired Hands Brewing opens St. Oner’s, a joint in Fishtown
There's a Chinese-inspired menu, washed down by Tired Hands' own beer, wine, kombucha, and coffee, in a buzzy-neon atmosphere.
Ardmore’s Tired Hands Brewing Co. is in soft-opening mode of St. Oner’s, its first brick-and-mortar location in Philadelphia. It’s now serving evenings at 2218 Frankford Ave., in the long-ago-converted Fishtown rowhouse that previously housed Pickled Heron and Tierce.
It’s across the street from Tired Hands’ seasonal beer garden, which is going into its third year.
Founder Jean Broillet IV operates with a wicked sense of humor. Scour any religious tract and you will not find a Saint Oner.
“St. Oner’s” is a twist on “stoners.” You say it “Saint 1-ers.” (Raise your hand if you just remembered the band called “The Oneders” from the movie That Thing You Do.)
A few steps up off the street level, the 35-seat-or-so St. Oner’s is done up in a clean, slick black and white, with white neon running along the tops of the walls and ringing artwork. Providing contrast is green lighting. Half the room is bar, including a small rail in the rear near the kitchen.
Chef Bill Braun calls his menu "kind of a look at our culinary history through the lens of Chinese cooking,” he told me. “It’s a love for Chinese food and Chinese cooking, and we’re messing around with the flavors a lot. But it’s really just highlighting experiences, techniques, ingredients, and relationships with purveyors ... and filtering them through the lens of Chinese cooking.”
Give you a few examples: clams and XO sauce over bucatini; “leftover” lo mein, whose chilled noodles and veggies are topped with ginger scallion sauce; mapo tofu noodle made with house-extruded rigatoni, mushroom, and tofu (best to add pork); dan dan noodles with Szechuan chicken liver sauce; and twice-cooked pork belly. Your sole dessert is white chocolate ice cream with orange-ourison granita and what Braun calls “fortune cookie shatter.”
There’s no brewing on premises. The bar program, however, is like nothing else out there.
In its nearly eight years (with three locations in Ardmore), Tired Hands has expanded beyond beer into kombucha (333), wine, and coffee roasting (Awake Minds), making St. Oner’s "a one-stop shop,” says Broillet. "We literally curate every drop of liquid except for distilled spirits.”
Nine Tired Hands beers from the various locations are on tap, plus four bottles, two wines, and four cocktails.
It’s open this week for walk-ins at 4 p.m. Reservations via Resy begin Friday. Feb. 28.