High Street on Market to open in NYC

Buoyed by its wildly successful first year and a half, High Street on Market - the casual sibling of Fork in Old City - plans to open a second location in Lower Manhattan.

Ellen Yin and chef Eli Kulp say they have signed a deal at the corner of Hudson and Horatio Streets in the West Village and expect to open in the late summer or early fall.

The High Street concept - ingredient-driven American foods and stellar baked goods served from breakfast through dinner in a cozy cafe setting - will remain. This location is a third larger than the original at 308 Market St.

"You'll very much know you're in a High Street, with certain touches very specific to New York," said Kulp, who moved from his longtime home of New York to Philadelphia three years ago to become chef at Fork, next door to High Street.

"We probably won't have a map of Philadelphia on the wall, though."

Kulp recently became a partner in Fork and High Street.

High Street Hospitality Group operates those restaurants as well as a.kitchen and a.bar in the AKA Rittenhouse Square.

"We decided to strike while the iron's hot," said Yin, who said the real estate deal at 637 Hudson St. almost literally fell in their lap after they initially had considered setting up in other areas such as Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, NoMad and Chelsea. "We're thinking we can expand this concept."

Unlike many other restaurant groups that dabble in assorted ethnic concepts, Yin and Kulp plan to hew to contemporary American cuisine. An expansion to New York - where Kulp has plenty of connections - seemed like a better fit than simply adding a restaurant in the Philadelphia area. "We feel like we've covered a lot of ground in Philadelphia," Yin said.

Kulp described Philadelphia as a "busy, full market."

High Street has picked up all sorts of accolades since its September 2013 opening. It was Craig LaBan's 2014 restaurant of the year. Bon Appetit named it No. 2 in the country in its annual "America's Best New Restaurants" issue. Travel and Leisure named it one of the best new restaurants in the world. Its baker, Alex Bois, is a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef, 2015 and was the subject of Bon Appetit's "How Chef Alex Bois Creates Some of the Country's Best Bread and Bagels." Kulp himself was Food & Wine magazine Best New Chef for 2014.

Meanwhile, Fork pastry chef Samantha Kincaid was named one of Food & Wine's best new pastry chefs for 2014, and a.kitchen and a.bar chef de cuisine Jon Nodler is also a semifinalist for the James Beard Award for Rising Star Chef, 2015.

A dish of angry crab spaghetti from High Street on Market also helped Philadelphia cinch the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Ed Rendell and Michael Nutter took Democratic National Committee members to dinner there during a scouting trip.