Expect big things from Wilder, a new three-story, 150-seat restaurant in Rittenhouse

“We decided to go big,” said chef Brett Naylor the other day at the black-and-white stone bar at Wilder, the restaurant he opened this week with his wife, Nicole Barrick, at 2009 Sansom St. near Rittenhouse Square.

By “big,” he means 150 seats over three floors, with two full bars, an open pizza kitchen, crudo and raw bar, and a 25-seat private dining room with its own kitchen and bar. And big menu, with “food that we all like when we go out to eat,” said executive chef Bob Truitt. Big hours, too: open for dinner only right now, seven nights a week. Daily lunch and brunch will begin in about a month.

The name Wilder is befitting: lavish decorations include a vintage Persian rug that was first sewn together and then sculpted to the walls, and an antiques store full of chandeliers and other fixtures.

Barrick and Naylor, who was executive chef at Oyster House before becoming a partner at Mission Taqueria upstairs, had always had their eye on the 2000 block of Sansom. “Coolest block,” Naylor said. “It’s got a record store, a secondhand store, a comedy club,” plus such restaurants as Village Whiskey, Melograno, Porcini, and Vic Sushi Bar. (Naylor has since bowed out of Mission.)

Then the building with an attached carriage house, which housed the Academy of Social Dance, came on the market. Barrick and Naylor bought it in 2019, aiming to open Wilder a year later.

For his first employee, Naylor called chef Bob Truitt, whom he met two decades ago when both were line cooks at Morimoto. Truitt, who grew up in Rutledge, Delaware County, had gone to greater glory with stops at El Bulli in Spain, followed by Corton and the Altamarea Group in New York. He was named one of Food & Wine’s best pastry chefs in 2013 at Altamarea’s Ai Fiori.

Truitt and his wife and kids relocated to the Philadelphia suburbs in summer 2019, and design and planning commenced with Hope Velocette of Velocette Studio. Naylor and Barrick got their first city permit for construction in early March 2020, essentially to gut the buildings. Although COVID-19 delayed the project, it provided for less pressure on the construction side. “I didn’t want to open when there was no vaccine,” Naylor said. “Then we were pushing to open and then, thank God, we didn’t. We didn’t have full staffing.”

Aside from naturally leavened sourdough pizzas and his own bread, Truitt is doing pasta, dry-aged strip steak, roast chicken, and grilled mackerel. There’s a children’s menu, too.

Naylor recently invited staff to participate in a meditation workshop, with the idea of addressing the triggers and stressors that arise from working in a restaurant. They will be offered regularly.