Frosted vegan pop-tarts, swirls of dairy-free soft serve, and meatless bacon-egg-and-cheese croissants have officially arrived in East Falls.
Crust Vegan Bakery opened Thursday at the intersection of Ridge and Midvale Avenues, just off Kelly Drive. The move from its two-space operation in Manayunk to a larger location enabled the confectionery to consolidate its retail storefront and commercial kitchen, said owner Meagan Benz.
Benz spent more than nine months transforming a 3,000-square-foot office along the Schuylkill River into what she called a “cakelike retail space” with baby-pink walls piped with white paint and ceiling tiles modeled after Lambeth-style cake trims. Light from oversized front-facing windows dapple a trio of pastry cases filled with batches of all-vegan sweets, from cheesecake slices and cinnamon buns to black-and-white cookies and crumb-coated coffee cakes. Baristas-slash-bakers pull espresso shots and whisk matcha for lattes sweetened with house-made syrups.
“I wanted to create a place where people think, ‘Oh, I can get everything I need there,’” Benz said.
Crust Vegan Bakery owner Meagan Benz with a display case of treats on opening day Jan. 8 at the bakery’s new location at 4200 Ridge Ave. in East Falls. Crust moved there from Manayunk.
Benz, who went vegan in 2009 while a freshman at University of North Carolina Greensboro, launched Crust in 2015 as a wholesale vegan bakery out of a commissary kitchen at 220 Krams Ave. in Manayunk. When custom cake and wholesale orders dried up almost overnight in 2020, she and then-co-owner Shannon Rocheopenedtheir storefront at4409 Main St.as a way to keep on staff they would’ve otherwise had to lay off during the pandemic, a move Benz said ended up making Crust profitable enough to bring on more employees.
“Retail is where we make more money,” said Benz, 35.
Now, the business has outgrown the satellite storefront that saved it.
Jordan Fuchs prepares pop-tarts at Crust Vegan Bakery’s former commercial kitchen space on Krams Avenue.
Splitting time and staff between the retail space and commercial kitchen proved logistically challenging. Benz said Crust’s storefront manager wound up spending most of her time ferrying pastries between locations, a half-mile journey that led to lots of wasted product.
“It was a really short distance, but people drive crazy — someone slams on the brakes in front of us and we’re done for,” Benz said. “We had many times where things would tip over and we’d have to determine if it was still usable.”
At Crust’s new location, a sparse yet cozy cafe area with two tables and a large, lived-in green couch bleeds into the kitchen, where staff pivot from packaging cakes and swirling soft-serve cones to frosting pop-tarts. The streamlined setup has allowed Benz to dream big. Already on her wish list for the future: a separate convection oven for made-to-order breakfast sandwiches, a back room for cake-decorating classes, and more room for colorful displays.
A brown sugar pecan pie pop-tart, soft frosted cookie, and vanilla strawberry cake from Crust Vegan Bakery are plated next to a hot latte. Beverages are new to the bakery.
Benz spent two years looking for the right location, unwilling to compromise on a short list of non-negotiables. Most of the bakery’s 15-member team live in Northwest Philly, she said, so the new space needed to remain in the area while being more transit-accessible.
Crust’s new location sits at the convergence of five bus lines. It also will leave Manayunk without a pastry specialist when Crust’s former commercial-kitchen neighbor Flakely decamps for Bryn Mawr in February.
Taleema Ruffin takes an order from Chase Sanders and Ryan Martinez-Peña, of East Falls, at the counter of Crust Vegan Bakery’s new location at 4200 Ridge Ave. on opening day, Jan. 8, 2026.
Crust’s move also marks the launch of its first-ever coffee program, headed by cake decorator-turned-beverage coordinator Jordan Fuchs.
The bakery will serve a short but sweet menu of coffee and tea drinks, with beans and matcha sourced from Rise Up Coffee, a fair-trade roaster based in Maryland. Crust makes its own vanilla and mocha coffee syrups, and Fuchs has plans for a rotating menu of seasonal additions. The signature drink will be a black sesame latte, Fuchs said, and she’s currently perfecting a chocolate-covered strawberry latte in time for Valentine’s Day.
Jordan Fuchs pours a rosetta on top of a hot soy latte inside Crust Vegan Bakery. Its new retail space in East Falls has enabled the bakery to start a beverage program.
Crust will also continue selling two things Benz said many of her vegan customers desperately miss from their dairy-consuming days: soft-serve ice cream and hulking breakfast sandwiches.
Benz’s breakfast sandwiches are served on flaky vegan croissants or thick biscuits, both made in-house, with Just Egg patties and seitan bacon that crisps up like the real thing.
The bakery started offering nondairy soft serve year-round in 2023, Benz said, as a way to satiate her own craving. Crust uses a vanilla base made with pea protein and then adds mix-ins for flavors that rotate every two weeks. The ice cream is silky, and curls out of the machine with the flourish of a Dairy Queen swirl. It’s sweet, but doesn’t quite capture the essence of its full-dairy counterpart; Benz said that’s the point.
“If our ice cream doesn’t exactly taste like dairy ice cream, that’s OK,” she said. “I just want it to taste really good.”
Crust Vegan Bakery’s dairy-free soft serve menu, which is offered year round and includes toppings.
Pastries are still the main event at Crust’s new location. The bakery’s staff make roughly 22 dozen pop-tarts a week, with some bakers spending a full eight-hour shift solely on rolling out dough, preparing fillings, and sealing the edges for baking. To make the process smoother, Benz made a custom crimping tool that creates cartoonishly perfect hash marks. Her favorite flavor is the wild berry, a dead ringer for the purple-frosted Kellogg’s version.
Also on offer: slices of sweet potato, Oreo, blueberry lavender, and funfetti cheesecakes (gluten-free and vegan) that take up a pastry case’s entire top shelf. The secret to Benz’s recipe is Tofutti cream cheese, which is versatile enough to be customizable and easily whipped into a dairy-accurate texture.
“I make a lot of things because I want them, I miss them,” Benz said. “Then I hope other people do, too.”
A display case of vegan cheesecake, cake slices, and cinnamon buns inside Crust Vegan Bakery’s new location at 4200 Ridge Ave. in East Falls.
Crust Vegan Bakery, 4200 Ridge Ave., Philadelphia, 215-298-9969. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Fairmount’s pup-friendly pub the Boozy Mutt is closing its doors Jan. 3 after just over two years in business, co-owners Sam and Allison Mattiola announced via Instagram on Monday.
“After much thought, we made the difficult decision to close the Boozy Mutt … What began as a dream became something truly special because of our community — our guests, our team, and all the good mutts who walked through our doors,” read the post, which has been shared over 1,400 times. Nearly every comment is from a dejected dog parent wishing for another round of beer and belly rubs.
The Mattiolas, who are married, opened the Boozy Mutt at 2639 Poplar St. in December 2023, transforming former rock-and-roll dive the North Star into roughly 7,000 square feet for pooches and their people to roam across two floors and an outdoor patio. The venture was inspired by pandemic-era trips to a dog park with Bernadoodle Buba, where the couple would camp out with lawn chairs and a pack of beers to make friends.
At the Mutt, as regulars called it, dogs are allowed to mingle off-leash under the supervision of aptly-named “Rufferees” who monitor and facilitate healthy play. All owners had to register their pet’s vaccinations before gaining access to the space, which includes a self-service dog wash room, outdoor TVs, a summertime-only puppy pool, and a menu of bite-sized “human grade” dog treats.
Tess Bodden (left) and Jenn Maher pose with their pet shih tzus Hazel, Hendrix, and Kelce at the Boozy Mutt, a popular third space for dog parents in Fairmount.
The bar felt like a version of Cheers for pet parents almost immediately, regulars told The Inquirer, thanks in part to a rotation of events that ranged from weekly quizzos to breed meetups and Pitch-A-Friend nights for singles. A monthly membership was $40, while an annual Mutt subscription cost $360.
The bar had upward of 100 regular members, Sam Mattiola said, all of whom will receive prorated refunds in the coming days. “People would tell us that this was their third space, that they go home, they go to work, and they go to the Boozy Mutt,” he said. “We walk away with our heads held high knowing that we achieved our goal of creating a place that made people feel at home.”
And yet, the Mattiolas said, running a bar that catered to dogs and their owners in equal measure proved increasingly challenging as the cost of rent, insurance, food, and alcohol continued to increase. While dog-friendly bars and beer gardens have taken off in the South, the concept has had mixed success in Philly: Manayunk dog bar Bark Social closed abruptly last year after its parent company declared bankruptcy. Its replacement, an outpost of the Atlanta-based company Fetch Park, opened in November.
“It’s a pretty overhead-intensive business model that we have, and it’s just gotten pretty hard to make the math work after the last couple of years,” Sam Mattiola explained. “There was just always something new hitting [us] in the face.”
Darby, a 5-year-old shih tzu, sits on a picnic table at the Boozy Mutt in Fairmount during an August 2025 breed meetup.
The Boozy Mutt’s 26 employees were informed of the impending closure before the announcement went public Monday, Allison Mattiola said, and the couple has spent the last three days putting together job recommendations. Neither she or her husband had worked in hospitality prior, and the couple has no immediate plans to revive the business elsewhere.
Where is Fido to go?
Already, the Boozy Mutt’s impending closure has been ruff — pun intended — for Fairmount pet parents.
“It’s a loss for us and a loss for the dogs,” said Sarah Kuwik, whose 2½-year-old pooch Willie “grew up at the Mutt.”
Kuwik started taking what she described as her “50-pound mutt” to the bar almost immediately after it opened. It has given Willie a social life most adults would envy.
Willie goes on dates at the Mutt with his girlfriend Bea, a 3-year-old golden retriever who clings to him like a magnet. And in June, Willie had a joint WrestleMania-themed birthday party with his best friend Levon, also a mutt with boundless energy.
Willie (left) poses with his golden retriever girlfriend Bea (right) and his best pup friend Levon at the Boozy Mutt, where the trio first met.
Kuwik doesn’t know how Willie will handle the news: “He’ll pull us toward [the Boozy Mutt] every time we’re on Poplar [Street] … it’s going to be very confusing.”
The Boozy Mutt is also what drew Valerie Speare to Fairmount in the first place. Speare put an offer on her current rowhouse a mere four blocks from the bar after grabbing brunch there in between open houses last spring. Now she goes to the Mutt four times a week with her pugs Lily and Winston, who are both deeply playful (and deeply codependent).
The Mutt “is exactly the kind of thing I want in a neighborhood,” said Speare, who has lived in the area for a year-and-a-half. “Where else can I go have a mimosa on a Saturday morning and have my dog sitting in my lap?”
Valerie Speare, of Fairmount, and her pugs Winston and Lily lounge with Chihuahua pals at the Boozy Mutt. Speare takes her pugs to the bar four times a week, she estimates.
For others, the bar has fostered connections that extend beyond puppy playdates. Katherine Ross has lived in Fairmount since 2004, but has seen the neighborhood — and the people in it — with new eyes, thanks to her 4-year-old pug Hoagie.
At the Mutt, Hoagie likes to beg for bites of Old Bay and truffle-coated fries or splash in the puppy pool. Ross, meanwhile, has enjoyed getting to meet her neighbors.
“I’ve lived in this neighborhood for over 20 years, and to be honest with you, I didn’t know all that many people until I got a dog,” Ross said. “Having a place like the Boozy Mutt brought a lot of friendships together.”
A popular gluten-free bakery is coming to the Main Line.
Flakely is moving from behind the bright pink door at 220 Krams Ave. in Manayunk to a Bryn Mawr storefront in early February, said owner Lila Colello. The new takeout-only bakery will replace a hookah lounge at 1007 W. Lancaster Ave.
“We’ve really outgrown our space,” Colello told The Inquirer. Manayunk “wasn’t ever meant to be for retail.”
A trained pastry chef who worked for the Ritz Carlton and Wolfgang Puck Catering, Colello was afraid she’d have to give up the best things in life — bread and her career — when she was diagnosed in 2010 with celiac disease, an inflammatory autoimmune and intestinal disorder triggered by eating gluten.
Instead, Colello spent the next seven years finding ways to get around gluten, a protein found in grains like wheat, rye, and barley (and thus most breads, bagels, and pastries). She perfected kettle-boiled bagels and pastry lamination before starting Flakely in 2017 as a wholesaler.
Colello moved into the commercial kitchen at Krams Avenue in 2021, where customers have spent the last four years picking up buttery chocolate croissants, brown sugar morning buns, and crusty-yet-chewy bagels from a takeout window in an industrial parking lot. Inquirer restaurant critic Craig LaBan has called Colello’s bagels “the best he’s tasted outside of New York,” and in 2024, Flakely was voted one of the best gluten-free bakeries in the United States by USA Today.
Lila Colello, owner and head baker at Flakely, helped patent a way to laminate gluten free dough for croissants.
Flakely’s industrial Manayunk location has required some concessions, Colello said: The majority of their goodies are par-baked and frozen by Colello and three full-time employees for customers to take and bake at home. Otherwise, Colello explained, the lack of steady foot traffic would lead to lots of wasted product.
In Bryn Mawr, Flakely will be a fully functional takeout bakery with a pastry case full of fresh-baked goods, from full-sized baguettes and browned butter chocolate chip cookies to danishes and Colello’s signature sweet-and-savory croissants. A freezer will also include packs of Flakely’s take-and-bake doughs, bagels, and eventually, custom cake orders.
Once she’s settled in, Colello said, she hopes to run gluten-free baking classes and pop-up dinners out of the storefront — offerings (besides the ingredients) that she hopes will differentiate her from other bakeries in the area.
“My vision is for this to be a magical space where people can come in and leave with a fresh croissant, which people can’t really do” when they’re gluten-free, said Colello, who lives in Havertown. “We offer our customers things they miss. That’s kind of our thing.”
Flakely owner Lila Colello poses in front of one of Flakely’s pink gluten free pastry ATMs, which vend take-and-bake goods at four locations in the Philly area.
What about the pastry ATMs?
The permanent storefront does not mean Flakely’s signature pink pastry ATMs will disappear, said Colello. But they will move.
Colello installed Flakely’s first pastry vending machine inside South Philly’s now-shuttered Salt & Vinegar. With the tap or swipe of a credit card, the smart freezer would open to let customers choose their own take-and-bake pack of croissants, pop-tarts, muffins, or danishes. Using it felt like a sweet glimpse into the future.
Flakely currently operates pastry ATMs inside Collingswood grocer Haddon Culinary, the Weaver’s Way Co-op in Ambler, Ardmore smoke shop Free Will Collective, and Irv’s Ice Cream in South Philly, where enterprising customers top their pastries with scoops fresh out the freezer.
Irv’s ATM will make the move to Reap Wellness in Fishtown on Jan. 5 when the ice cream shop closes for the season, Colello said. And come February, the smoke shop’s ATM will transition to Lucky’s Trading Co., a food hall at 5154 Ridge Ave. in Roxborough. The hope, Colello said, is to space the locations out enough so she’s not competing with herself.
“We’re finally in the middle of where everything is,” Colello said. “And that’s kind of the goal.”
Flakely, 1007 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr, 484-450-6576. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday.
There’s a whole lotta shakshuka going on at Café La Maude, Nathalie and Gabi Richan’s snug, perpetually busy French-Lebanese bruncherie in Northern Liberties. In fact, the café offers two varieties of the comforting sunny-side-up-egg-topped dish that traces its roots to Amazigh (also known as the Berbers of North Africa). The red shakshuka, more prevalent on local menus, floats beef sausage, crispy chickpeas, pesto, sliced fingerling potatoes, and harissa labneh atop a rich, spiced tomato sauce studded with onions and peppers. Café La Maude’s green version sits on the opposite side of the color wheel: green tomatoes, spinach, kale, and green fava beans, plus sweet potatoes and fried cauliflower, with a drizzle of carrot tahini sauce and a sprinkle of toasted almonds. Budgeting your pita consumption is essential so you can be sure to get every drop of sauce.
Café La Maude, 816 N. Fourth St., 267-318-7869, cafelamaude.com
— Michael Klein
The candied ginger scone from The Bread Room, Ellen Yin’s new-ish bakery at 834 Chestnut St.
Candied ginger scone at the Bread Room
There’s a lot to love about Ellen Yin’s new-ish bakery The Bread Room — the fudgy olive oil brownie, the large hoagie salad with capicola, and the holiday pies — but perhaps the menu’s most overlooked gem is the humble candied ginger scone. I’ve been getting it almost weekly as a reward for braving the cold (and my perpetually late SEPTA bus) to go into the office, and it’s often the best bite of my week. What makes the Bread Room’s scone so distinct is the texture, dense enough to verge on a biscuit with an outer crust only made better by a light pink ginger glaze. It feels like biting into just-hardened royal icing, and reveals a soft and sweet crumb. The ginger is potent but never overpowering, more sweet than zesty.
The Bread Room, 834 Chestnut Street Ste. 103, 215-419-5830, thebreadroomphl.com
— Beatrice Forman
The egg custard with uni and swordfish bacon (far left) was served as part of a platter of raw and cooked seafood for the first course at Heavy Metal Sausage Co.’s Feast of More Than Seven Fishes.
Egg custard with uni and swordfish bacon at Heavy Metal Sausage Co.
On Monday night, my partner and I got to experience the absolute feat that is Heavy Metal Sausage stuffing 14 people into their butchery for an honest and approachable — yet extremely technical — meal that adds layers to the Italian American tradition. Every bite was wonderful, including a key lime cured mackerel and an acidic eel stew over Bloody Butcher polenta. But the night’s showstopper was a velvety egg custard, served in a ramekin and finished with heaps of uni and cubes of swordfish bacon alongside a platter of other raw and cooked seafood.
Did you know swordfish bacon was a thing? I didn’t, and now I want it forever. Chef Pat Alfiero said he salted, cured and cooked his swordfish the same way he would for pork bacon. Perhaps pig bacon might be overrated.
I could go on and on about the amazing duck wings glazed with black pepper hoisin at Atlantic City’s Cardinal, a cavernous restaurant with an inventive menu from chef Michael Brennan. The kitchen and bar focus on the details (my reposado and biscotti liqueur cocktail came topped with a literal biscotti), but it was the main course that left me truly wide-eyed.
Behold the Halibut Schnitzel, two words I’ve never heard said together. It arrived with two meaty pieces of lightly pounded out and schnitzel-ed halibut perched happily atop a very caper-forward lemony sauce and a carpet of tiny bell peppers. A charred lemon sat beside them. It was a puckery, flaky, satisfying coat of many flavors. Delish.
Cardinal Restaurant, 201 South New York Ave., Atlantic City, N.J., 609-246-6670, cardinal-ac.com
— Amy S. Rosenberg
A Popeyes chicken sandwich and fries almost made Inquirer reporter Dugan Arnett miss his train to Boston. It was well worth it, he writes.
No. 1 Combo from Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen
As a kid, whenever I’d complain of being hungry, my dad would respond with one of his favorite idioms: “Hunger,” he’d say, “is the best sauce.” He was wrong, of course. The best sauce is the blackened ranch dipping sauce at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.
I was already running dangerously late to 30th Street Station to can an Amtrak train to Boston, when I stumbled upon a Popeyes on Market Street. In no world was this a responsible detour, particularly with a $200 train ticket hanging in the balance. But Popeyes is an American culinary institution, and when you come across one in the wild, you must take advantage. (After all, there’s a reason a trendy Long Beach, Calif. brunch spot once got caught serving Popeyes chicken with its dishes and then vehemently defended itself.) I ordered a spicy chicken sandwich combo meal with a biscuit and proceeded to eat it the way fast food is meant to be eaten: Out of the bag, standing, with only a modicum of self-shame. The chicken patty? Juicy and impossibly plump. The fries? Psoriasis-scabbed and fresh out of the fryer. The biscuit? A butter-kissed dream.
In the end, I still managed to make my train — though, after that meal, it would’ve been well worth it even if I hadn’t.
The salmon kebab from Kanella comes plated with grilled green lettuce, fiery red harissa, sweet purple onions, and a wedge of lemon.
Salmon kebab at Kanella
It’s not island weather, but the best thing I ate this week was the salmon kebab with a squeeze of sumac-sprinkled grilled lemon at Kanella in Center City. The salmon was a succulent orange-pink, crispy on the outside, tender and juicy within. Yes, my mom and I were the only patrons in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Yes, it was nearly sleeting outside, but the restaurant was so charming. And none of that mattered when this dish arrived. The salmon shared a plate with grilled green lettuce, fiery red harissa, sweet purple onions, and that wedge of bright lemon. The service was warm; holiday covers played on the sound system. I’d come back in any time.
A ceramic coffee mug shaped like a stick of salted butter. Glittery Christmas tree ornaments fashioned after tins of beluga caviar, knotted pretzels, and even an Ozempic syringe. A Phanatic-shaped bottle opener made from discarded wooden baseball bats, plus Phillies-themed press-on nails, sweatshirts printed with South Philly landmarks, and lots and lots of bespoke Eagles merch.
Those are just some of the wares on offer from Red Gravy Goods, a new food and Philly-centric gift shop that opened earlier this month at 1335 E. Passyunk Ave. The store is the latest project from Valerie Safran and Marcie Turney, the married entrepreneurs who helped revitalize the Gayborhood with a string of boutiques and restaurants along 13th Street.
Some — like gourmet food market Grocery and vibey Mexican restaurant Lolita — puttered out during the pandemic. But others — Barbuzzo, Bud & Marilyn’s, and beloved Italian spot Little Nonna’s — have stuck around to become Center City stalwarts. Safron-Turney’s last project was Darling Jack’s Tavern, a casual-yet-design-forward bar that opened in 2023.
The East Passyunk Avenue gift shop Red Gravy Goods is stocked with Philly-coded merchandise, ranging from decks of pasta-printed tarot cards to Jason Kelce prayer candles.
Red Gravy Goods is the couple’s first foray into South Philly. It’s as much an homage to their new neighborhood as it is to their other brands.
“We really just love everything that South Philly is. Yeah, it’s Philadelphia, but it’s also its own thing — red sauce and pasta,” said Safran, 50. “It just feels like [South Philly] never goes out of style.”
Though the pair now lives in Chestnut Hill, South Philly has long captivated Safran and Turney. They pick up breads from Sarcone’s Bakery and certain pastas from Claudio Specialty Foods for Little Nonna’s, and often sneak sweet treats home from Mighty Bread for their two daughters. Whenever Turney passes the uniform store at Ninth and Christian Streets, she said, she cracks a smile.
The couple purchased the East Passyunk Avenue building in 2017, which property records show used to be an auto body shop. The name comes from Little Nonna’s Sunday Gravy, a pasta dish heaped with a San Marzano marinara and a side of beef short ribs or meatballs. To reiterate the theme, Turney covered accent walls in a tomato-printed wallpaper.
“You have to respect those old businesses that are still here, still kicking,” said Turney, 55. “We’re a good connector to what’s happening further up the avenue.”
Croissant-shaped jewelry organizers and sets of pasta candles are sold at Red Gravy Goods, a new South Philly gift shop.
Curating a Philly “shoppy shop”
Red Gravy Goods is what the internet calls a “shoppy shop”: a broad collection of highly curated gift shops, artisan markets, and modern-day general stores where, as Emily Sundberg wrote in New York Magazine, “you can touch all of the products you see on Instagram.” Shoppy shops are places of discovery, often merchandising things like trendy condiments next to goods from small local brands.
What differentiates Red Gravy Goods is that more than half the stock comes directly from Safran’s brain. Roughly 60% of the store is exclusive to the Safran-Turney universe, where Safran works with a rotation of top-secret local illustrators and designers to create prints sold only at Red Gravy Goods, Open House, and Verde (the duo’s other gift shop).
The rest, Safran said, is sourced from trade show trips and social media. She never peers into other Philly boutiques for inspiration.
Roughly 60% of Red Gravy Good’s merchandise is exclusive to the East Passyunk Avenue gift shop — including unofficial Eagles gear.
“I don’t want what they have … because everything gets repeated,” Safran said. “If it brings me joy, it’ll bring someone else joy … There’s nothing serious about this.”
Nearly everything in Red Gravy Goods costs under $100, save for a couple of big-ticket items, like a forest green shoulder bag covered in beaded footballs from local apparel brand Phannies, that retails for $120.
The front of the 1,000-square-foot store is a hodgepodge of Philly-coded food paraphernalia, from butter-shaped coffee mugs and a deck of pasta-themed tarot cards to shimmering Italian cookie ornaments, and a candle that smells exactly like a soft pretzel. Like any good shoppy shop, there’s also condiments from trendy sauce brands such as Ayoh!
Customers are able to customize caps with upward of 50 patches designed by Valerie Safran, who co-owns Red Gravy Goods.
The back of the store, meanwhile, is for apparel and accessories, from claw clips (shaped like cannolis) to children’s clothes and a wall of unofficial Eagles swag.
Already, most of the store’s bestsellers are Safran’s designs: A mug printed with “F— Dallas” in cartoonish script; a children’s nursery sign that says “Shhh … an Eagles fan is sleeping”; and a new crew neck covered in illustrations of South Philly iconography that range from a Mummer and a cup of John’s Water Ice to the awning of P & F Giordano Fruit & Produce.
The piece-de-resistance of Red Gravy Goods is a custom hat patch bar currently manned by Turney.
Customers choose a Philly sports hat for $34, and then can add a patch from what will eventually become a line of roughly 250 patches designed by Safran. Each costs $6.
Inquirer reporter Beatrice Forman shows off a customized “Bird Gang” baseball cap from Red Gravy Goods. It features a heat-pressed patch of Saquon Barkley’s iconic reverse hurdler.
The first 52 patches are already in store, and run the gamut from sports pennants and cartoonish pretzels, to depictions of Saquon Barkley’s iconic reverse hurdler, and uncannily accurate miniature versions of a SEPTA bus.
The hats are prepared on-demand, with Turney operating a heat press machine. When done right, Turney said, it should take less than a minute to press down a trio of close-together patches.
A sign reading “Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia” is seen with various stickers, at Red Gravy Goods at 1335 E. Passyunk Ave.
Already, said Turney, their 7-year-old Harlow aspires to be a shop owner when she grows up — just like her moms.
Red Gravy Goods, 1335 E. Passyunk Ave., 267-764-5532. Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily
Customizable hats inside Red Gravy Goods, which will heat press patches on demand. A hat costs $38, and each patch costs $4.50.
On a November afternoon, Gary Shusman slid hundreds of dollars’ worth of caviar across the counter for inspection at the Center City oyster bar Pearl & Mary. The seven 1-ounce tins were flipped upside down so the chef could scan the individual eggs for irregularities. Deep-green pearls of golden osetra glistened like tiny emeralds in the overhead light.
They were all perfect.
Shusman, 50, is in the business of tiny fish eggs. His company CaviarXS supplies the Philadelphia region’s most in-demand restaurants with sturgeon caviar imported from parts of Europe and Asia. Shusman only sells wholesale so his prices don’t reflect retail rates, he said, but a single kilogram of similar-grade caviar could cost consumers roughly $3,500.
These precious beads are on the menu at nearly 50 upscale hotels and restaurants in and around Philly. They’re heaped on bluefin tuna nigiri at Jesse Ito’s notoriously difficult-to-book Royal Sushi omakase. They ooze out of a $65 double cheeseburger from Honeysuckle. They’re spooned onto petite rye tartlets filled with wagyu tartare at Emmett and plated next to crispy gold pierogis at Harp & Crown.
A tin of golden osetra caviar sourced by Gary Shusman’s CaviarXS, which supplies caviar to many of Philly’s most in-demand restaurants. Similar grade caviar retails for $3,500 per kilogram.
Provenance, Her Place Supper Club, and Friday Saturday Sunday — three of Shusman’s top clients — all took home Philadelphia’s first Michelin stars. Several others, including Honeysuckle, earned recommendations from the storied gastronomic guide.
Chefs choose to work with Shusman because his concierge-esque style adds an extra layer of luxury to caviar — something his clients say they appreciate as the fish eggs become trendier and more “accessible.”
“I think chefs are artists,” Shusman said, “and what I do is like supplying paint to Michelangelo.”
Despite the hoi polloi’s enthusiasm,caviar still occupies a mostlyrarified space in Philly. It’s largely reserved for high-end tastings and prix fixe menus, meted out carefully with a mother-of-pearl spoon. The fish eggs’ growing presence represents a rising tension in Philly’s food scene, which attracts national acclaim — and with it, more expensive restaurants — as the city continues to have a stark poverty rate.
Some chefs say, let caviar be caviar.
Class dynamics are top of mind at North Broad Street’s Honeysuckle. Chef Omar Tate uses Shusman’s caviar for the McDonald’s Money: a pricey burger sandwiched by milk bread that’s adorned with black truffles, flecks of edible 24-karat gold, and golden osetra pearls.
The McDonald’s Money double cheeseburger from Honeysuckle includes CaviarXS golden osetra, truffles, and edible gold fleks. “It’s a metaphor for consuming the money you don’t have,” said Tate.
It’s an ode to Tate’s childhood in Germantown. When he would ask parents for money to get McDonald’s, “I’d get told no because we didn’t have it,” he said. “There’s truffle on this burger, there’s caviar … It’s a metaphor for consuming the money you don’t have.”
Like most everythingat Tate’s culinary celebration of the Black American diaspora, the burger elicits a big reaction. The presentation’s dramatic irony makes the fish eggs feel more relevant, said Tate, who didn’t learn what caviar was — let alone taste it — until his mid-20s. He doesn’t feel like he was missing out.
“Caviar was never meant to be something consumed at scale, Tate said. ”It’s not food … it’s more closely related to a drug.”
In Society Hill, Provenance chef-owner Nich Bazik agrees that caviar isn’t meant for mass consumption. “Making it cheaper and more accessible just dilutes the product and takes away that exclusiveness, takes away from that moment you want to save up for,” said Bazik, who has a course dedicated to caviar at his French and Korean tasting counter.
Pearls of golden osetra caviar sourced by Gary Shusman sit atop a pile of crème fraîche and squash at chef Nicholas Bazik’s Provenance in Old City.
From nightclubs to caviar bumps
Like Tate, Shusman remembers what it’s like to go without. He and his parents immigrated from Kyiv to Philly in 1989 as the Soviet Union collapsed. He can still recall the scarcity he felt during his childhood in Ukraine, where supermarket shelves would frequently be bare from food shortages.
Caviar has captivated him since he was a kid. He had his first taste while still living inthe U.S.S.R. The pearls, served straight from the tin, were a rare treat procuredfrom the black marketby his uncle, a butcher, or his mother, who worked in food transportation. Once stateside, Shusman’s father made his living by importing Eastern European foods, including caviar.
“I don’t remember ever not liking [caviar], mostly because there was no telling when I would have it again,” said Shusman, licking his lips. “It transports you. You taste the sea.”
Caviar eggs take a decade to develop inside the stomachs of female sturgeon, a hulking freshwater fish most closely associated with the beluga native to the Caspian Sea. To harvest the eggs, you must kill the sturgeon — a controversial process that involves slicing open the stomach to reveal walls of tiny black, amber, or deep-green pearls.
While the caviar industry was undergoing its first major transformation, Shusman, then in his 30s, was partying in Philly. He owned a trio of now-shuttered nightclubs — including Rittenhouse Square’s Rumor and beloved EDM venue Soundgarden — when his wife asked him to consider leaving the industry to focus on fatherhood.
“It was a nonstop party, but it was a lot of work, a lot of stress,” said Shusman, who lives in Richboro, Bucks County, with his wife and two preteen sons. (So far, only one son likes caviar.)
Shusman was working as a real estate developer in 2017 when he found his way back to caviar. He was dining at Royal Sushi’s omakase counter when he gave chef Jesse Ito some unsolicited feedback about the caviar being served.
Royal Sushi’s chutoro tuna nigiri is topped with a heap of CaviarXS’s golden osetra. Chef Jesse Ito was the company’s first official client.
“His caviar wasn’t — I don’t want to say it was bad. It was just OK,” recalled Shusman. “I told him I could find him something better.”
Shusman has supplied Ito with caviar ever since, establishing CaviarXS in 2018. His business largely comes from word of mouth: Bazik learned of Shusman from a Bon Appétit video about Royal Sushi, then recommended him to Evan Snyder at Emmett. Friday Saturday Sunday co-owner Chad Williams connected him to Tate. Chef Amanda Shulman sent Shusman’s number to her husband, Alex Kemp, before the couple opened My Loup in 2023.
CaviarXS’ clients almost exclusively choose golden osetra caviar, a mild, slightly nutty variety that Shusman believes to be the best. He sources it from the Caspian region, though he declines to divulge the names of the farms (or his prices).
“It’s hard to get an exact answer out of people as to where the caviar really comes from, which creates a general distrust,” said Provenance’s Bazik. “I could go online or talk to a rep from a company that says they source their caviar from this place or that place with no stamp of authenticity. Or I could call Gary.”
Crab toast from My Loup topped with CaviarXS pearls. The restaurant, co-owner and chef Alex Kemp said, is loyal to Gary Shusman and his company.
A milkman for fish eggs
Origin aside, chefs choose Shusman’s caviar because he personallydelivers it, kind of like a high-end milkman.
“It’s about the way you make them feel … Chefs like when you hold their hand,” Shusman said. “It’s my personality. I’m very likable.”
Twice a month, Shusman travels to the Brooklyn warehouse where his caviar is stored to handpick the roe he sells to chefs. He searches for perfect pearls — uniform beads of amber that sparkle. They should burst when pressed to the roof of your mouth, he said.
On any given Tuesday or Thursday, Shusman drives around Philly for hours in his white Mercedes-Benz, dropping off tins of caviar in cooler bags printed with photo-realisticfish eggs. In between stops, he take meetings on his phone for his real estate business.
Shusman makes upward of 10 caviar deliveries a day. Often, he’ll clinch a sale by asking chefs to taste the product on the spot.
The pearls permeate much of Shusman’s life. He spoons beads of golden osetra atop of fluffy scrambled eggs for breakfast. Even Shusman’s dog — a 6-year-old Yorkie — gets caviar as a treat. Every time he starts the engineof his car,Shusman’s electronic dashboard beams the words “Hello, Gary Caviar.”
Shusman’s personal deliveries stand out because Philly doesn’t yet have a caviar market large enough to demand that level of service, said Bazik, unlike New York City or Chicago. (That may change now that the Michelin Guide has landed here, Bazik hopes.)
Provenance’s fall 2025 tasting menu included a squash and licorice powder custard topped with a whipped tofu mousse, sorghum puffs, and a spoonful of CaviarXS golden osetra caviar.
“I’m so spoiled … I can count on Gary to go above and beyond,” said Alex Kemp, whose wife and My Loup co-owner earned a Michelin star for Her Place Supper Club.
At My Loup, Shusman’s caviar currently speckles a $35 whitefish doughnut. In the past, Kemp said, he’s used the osetra to top a sour cream-and-onion pork rind and creamy sea urchin mousse: “It tastes so clean.”
Kemp’s loyalty to Shusman runs deep. When My Loup first opened, the restaurant lost over a pound of caviar overnight after a cleaning company accidentally unplugged its refrigerator. Shusman replaced it free of charge.
“I could’ve been lying, but he didn’t ask any questions. It was big for us as a new business,” Kemp said.
Provenance’s October 2024 caviar course, which included Caledonian Blue Prawn, oyster with sweet potato mousseline, and CaviarXS’ golden osetra caviar. Chef-owner Nich Bazik said he spends between $2,000 and $4,000 a week on caviar at the restaurant.
That loyalty boosts sales. Provenance goes through roughly a kilo of golden osetra eggs a week for its caviar course. In the fall, Bazik spooned it atop a whippedtofu mousse that enclosed a firm block of a sweet potato-and-licorice powder custard. Puffs of sorghum sat contrasted with the fish eggs, Bazik said, giving each bite a simultaneous crunch and pop.
The dish was inspired by things Bazik’s 4-year-old son eats (minus the caviar). Provenance pays roughly $2,000 a week — or $8,000 a month — for the fish eggs alone.
“The amount of money we spend on caviar for that one dish isn’t the best business decision I’ve ever made,” Bazik said. “But I keep doing it because it’s Gary. It comes with generosity.”
‘Tis the season of spiked hot cocoa in novelty glassware and donning Christmas sweaters before waiting in line to take Instagram photos.
The holiday bars are back, baby. And this year, they’re making me feel like the Grinch.
Holiday bars typically run from the weekend after Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, and Philly has no shortage of them. This season brings pop-ups that serve cocktails inside snowmen-shaped mug, a mini-golf course with a greased North Pole, and a slew of Santa impersonators looking to make some extra cash.
And cash they will make: Holiday pop-ups can give bars and restaurants an extra leg up during what already is the busiest time of year, with the most successful — such as New York City’s Miracle on 9th Street — spawning lucrative franchise opportunities. Sometimes, however, they yield more coal than Christmas magic, like when drunk St. Nick impersonators spill into the street at the end of the annual SantaCon bar crawl.
Holiday bars have always struck me as late-stage capitalism holly jolly-ified, because they commodify something as simple (and cheap!) as the joy of drinking with your friends in December.
Despite this, I have a soft spot for them. I love taking in the slightly tacky displays and sipping on a sugary cocktail from a novelty glass that I’ll pay extra to take home. There’s also something magical about the tipsy train ride home that comes after, where my friends and I crack enough jokes to turn an overrated experience into one we end up doing annually.
Christmas lights hang from the bar inside the Emo Christmas pop-up inside foundation at 699 N. Broad Street.
This season feels different to me . One bar has ruined it for the rest by stripping away the whimsy and up-charging for something more nefarious: A holiday bar distilled down to its barest elements — gimmicky cocktails and Hobby Lobby discount-bin decor held together by a barely-there theme. There’s no sentiment behind the displays of miniature nutcrackers and colorfully wrapped (empty) gift boxes, just profit motive.
The batch’s most egregious offender is the Emo Christmas bar pop-up that runs through Dec. 28 at Foundation., an event space beneath the Divine Lorraine on North Broad Street. It’s hosted by Bucket Listers, an New York City-based company that puts on limited-run events in cities across the U.S., from a Christmas Bar co-signed by Mariah Carey in Los Angeles to a murder-mystery dinner series in Miami.
In Philly, Bucket Listers’ track record is mixed: When I attended their cereal-themed pop-up bar in March, plastic bowls of resin Fruit Loops fell from the photo wall. But I had also won putt-putt at this year’s Christmas collaboration with Libertee Grounds (the second of Bucket Listers’ three holiday pop-ups), where the mini-golf course was decked out in Philly-centric holiday decor, like a sleigh covered in Philadelphia Parking Authority tickets.
The Taking Back Christmas welcome cocktail (left) and the I’m Not Okay cocktail (right) sit in front of an Emo Santa Claus at the Bucket Listers’ Christmas pop-up at Foundation.
So when I learned before Thanksgiving that Bucket Listers was hosting an Emo Christmas pop-up, I was undeterred by any red flags. I love Christmas, and I spent high school on the outskirts of a clique of emo teens, cool enough topartake in My Chemical Romance listening sessions but not cool enoughto vape with. If I was going to love a holiday bar, it should’ve been this one.
A poser bar that preys on nostalgia
I paid $57.20, after fees, for two Friday night tickets to Emo Christmas. The cost included one welcome cocktail per ticket, but, as I would later learn, any drinks or food beyond that would be pay-as-you-go.
The only thing that’s punk rock about Bucket Listers’ Emo Christmas bar is that it doesn’t care about first impressions.
The decorations feel half-baked, amountingto fake Christmas trees and a trio of full-sized nutcrackers that had black Sharpie smeared under their eyes to mimic eyeliner. Across from them stood a mannequin dressed as Santa, with swide-swept fringe bangs so you know he’s emo. Like everything else in the bar, he smelled lightly of kitchen grease.
Each Bucket Listers pop-up is clearly designed as Instagram bait, as evidenced by the influencers that post about each one. Yet the space is too dim to take any photos. The only lights in the room emanated from the Christmas trees or red-tinted neon signs with phrases that no one has ever uttered seriously, such as “happy holidays, you bastard.”
Christmas stockings hanging on the wall at the Bucket Lister’s Emo Christmas bar Philly pop-up. One honoring Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker has his name misspelled.
It’s clear the space was decorated by posers. The back wall is covered in Christmas stockings labeled in chicken-scratch with the names of so-called pop-punk greats: Brendon Urie, Pete Wentz, and my personal favorite, Tavis B., a misspelled bastardization of Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker.
I cringed, and cringed again while skimming the food and drink menus, which read as a list of poorly constructed puns. There’s the Panic! at the Pizza Bites (deep-fried pockets of sausage and cheese) and the Blink Wing82, which come in sets of six with either Buffalo sauce or dry rub. The most unfunny is the Still Into-fu, a tofu hoagie on a long roll named after “Still into You,” a pop love song from Paramore.
My friend had already sent of photo of the menu to be flamed by her groupchat. “The obvious choice is Panic! At the Disco Fries,” she read from her phone. “BlinkWing182? All the Small Wings is right there.”
An unexpected silver lining was our bartender. A true elder emo, he led with apathy, dodging questions about what’s good on the menu and the decorations with a shrug and a simple answer: “I don’t know. I just work here.”
Buffalo cauliflower, pizza bites, and a slider from the Bucket Lister’s Emo Christmas Bar pop-up in Philly. Tickets start at $16.00 and do not include food or drink beyond a welcome cocktail.
The bartender’s eyes roll while squeezing black food coloring into the aptly named I’m Not Okay, a vodka-club soda cocktail zhuzhed up with a whisper of blackberry. By the time he got to my Mezcal Confessional, he was was over it, leaving out the orange bitters to serve me a clear glass of mezcal spiked with brown sugar.
Not that it mattered. Both drinks tasted like rubbing alcohol despite being made with completely different spirits. That’s a first — a Christmas bar where the drinks aren’t sweet enough. We toasted to the bartender’s commitment to the bit while an overdramatic ennui overtook me.
I felt like I was taken for a ride, and not one on Santa’s sleigh.
Christmas trees decorate the dimly lit seating area inside the Bucket Listers’ Emo Christmas Bar pop-up at Foundation.
Emo Christmas preys on nostalgia. All holiday bars are designed todo this. Maybe the decor reminds you of a favorite window display from childhood or a scene from your guilty-pleasure Christmas movie. Or perhaps the peppermint espresso martini recalls the Schnapps you downed on your first pre-Thanksgiving Blackout Wednesday. The anticipation of it could even feel like waiting for a turn with mall Santa.
I usuallydon’t mind paying extra for an experience like this. When done right, these bars conjure feelings that are more difficult to come by in adulthood: whimsy, silliness, glee.
I came to Emo Christmas in search of all of those things. I left with none, only a check for $82.00 and a shriveled-up Grinch-sized heart.
The largest U.S. outpost of thepopular Vietnamese coffee brand Trung Nguyên Legend is open in South Philly.
Packer Park residentsEstelle Nguyen and husband Vandy Doopened their Trung Nguyên Legend franchise at 113-117 Washington Ave. late last month. The couple transformed a one-story cabinetry showroom into a 5,000-square-foot cafe with two floors and a year-round roof deck,where customers can sip on citrusy espresso tonics, frothy Vietnamese egg coffees, or strong phin pour-overs, paired with a small array of European pastries (macarons, eclairs, mille-feuille) delivered daily from an off-site bakery.
Founded in 1996, Trung Nguyên is one of Vietnam’s largest coffee brands, known for turning robusta beans from the country’s Central Highlands region into a well-regarded line of ground and instant coffees sold internationally.
Hot Vietnamese Egg Coffee served over a pool of warm water at Trung Nguyên Legend’s Philly location at 113-117 Washington Ave.
Not every Trung Nguyên coffee shop is as massive —or luxurious — as the new Washington Avenue outpost. The chain operates 1,000 locations across Vietnam, China, and Europe, the majority of which are grab-and-go stores. Legend stores, however, are the brand’s version of a Starbucks Reserve, with more seating and higher-end touches like interactive coffee services.
Most of Trung Nguyên’s U.S locations are Legends. The first franchise opened in Southern California in 2023, with six outposts across Portland and Texasfollowing soon after. Nguyen and Do’s location is the only one on the East Coast, a fact Nguyen brags about.
“I wanted to do something gorgeous,” said Nguyên, 52.
Under her careful supervision, baristas at the first-floor counter crouch down to ensure that the amount of cold foam is level across matcha, sesame, and tiramisu lattes. Nguyen folds napkins printed with the Trung Nguyên logo into perfect equilateral triangles. As she greets customers,Nguyen promises tours of the rooftop lounge to people she hopes will become regulars.
The coconut matcha at Trung Nguyên Legend on Washington Avenue in South Philly.
Nguyen and Do, both Vietnamese, moved to Philadelphia in 2005 to become big-time entrepreneurs: Together, they own a South Philly daycare, a wedding planning business, and Asian Palace, a Chinese restaurant at 2001 Oregon Ave. that doubles as a banquet hall.
The Trung Nguyên franchise, Do said, is the couple’s first venture that pulls directly from their culture. Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee exporter, known for strong coffees brewed through phins, slow-drip coffee filters that help retain the heat and intensity of coffee grounds. The country’s coffee shop scene is also somewhat different; shops generally stay open past 10 p.m and gladly let customers linger.
Trung Nguyên instant coffees, phin filters, and other merchandise available for purchase at the Vietnamese coffee chain’s South Philly Legend store.
“We’ve lived in Philly for over 20 years,” said Nguyên. “We didn’t see any spot like this where you could hang out with coffee and dessert.”
The final result is a Trung Nguyên unlike any other in the U.S. The couple paid a sum “in the low six-figures” to sign a franchise agreement in February 2024, Nguyên said, and invested “significantly more” to add a second-floor dining space to the former showroom.
The size was Nguyen’s idea, like most everything else in this Trung Nguyên. (Do, her husband, mostly nods in agreement while snapping photos of his wife at work.)
“This is all me, honey,” Nguyen said. “I wanted a pop.”
Vandy Do and Estelle Nguyen posed for a portrait at Trung Nguyên Legend Coffee World Philly on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025 in Philadelphia.
The space is decorated in tones of black, beige, and brown — Trung Nguyên’s signature colors — with grand couches and plush fabric chairs that Nguyen said she lobbied the company to include, breaking with their standard look.
A 17-foot tree covered in fake fuschia flowers looms over the main staircase. It was another of Nguyen’s visions: After spotting a barren tree on the side of a South Philly road, Nguyen had Do cut it down, the branches hanging out of his trunk on the drive home. She spent roughly a week gluing strands of flowers onto the salvaged tree. Its stump sits on the cafe’s patio, surrounded by a plant wall and a water fountain.
That, Nguyen said graciously, was her husband’s idea.
The roof deck at Trung Nguyên Legend Coffee World Philly on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025 in Philadelphia.
Different coffees for different floors
South Philly’s sprawling Trung Nguyên also offers a choose-your-own adventure element: Depending on which floor one visits, customers have the option to order coffee brewing experimentsreminiscent of a high school chemistry class.
“It’s like playing” with your coffee, Nguyen said.
All of the store’s coffee beverages are made with Trung Nguyên-brand arabica and robusta beans — the latter of which is stronger with double the caffeine content. Baristas use both phins and a traditional espresso machine, depending on the order.
Though there’s plenty of seating throughout, downstairs ismainly intended for to-go coffees. Customers can watch baristas prepare drinks with military precision. Nguyên said the most common orders thus far have been yuzu coffee — an espresso tonic spiked with fresh-pressed yuzu juice — and a “matcha cloud” with matcha-oat milk cold foam floated atop iced coconut water.
Co-owner Estelle Nguyen pours condensed milk as part of the Ottoman Iced Milk Coffee service at Trung Nguyên Legend.
Open from 3 to 9 p.m. daily (hours are subject to change as Nguyen hires more staff), the upstairs is the only level where customers can order Trung Nguyên’s signature Zen, Ottoman, and Legend coffee services, all of which include a 20% gratuity.
Each service comes with percolating coffee that’s been arranged on a tray with the appropriate phins or kettles for the customer to finish the process, along with finishing accoutrements like milk and sugar, and an amaretti cookie — Nguyen’s personal touch. QR codes display instructions on how to create the perfect pour.
Nguyen’s favorite service is the Legend. To get the perfect sip, customers must wait for grounds to finish passing through a phin before adding a thimble-sized serving of condensed milk to the brew and pouring the mixture over a glass of ice. Another option is the elaborate Ottoman service, a five-step process that involves transferring the coffee from a jug to a traditional Turkish ibrik to a petite teacup. The end result of this coffee theater tastes like a smoother, slightly bitter version of cafe con leche.
The second-floor interior of Trung Nguyên Legend Coffee, where a 20% auto-gratuity is applied.
Also available on both floors: creamy Vietnamese egg coffee, which became Vietnam’s signature drink in the 1940s after bartenders in Hanoi started subbing milk for whipped eggs to cope with a dairy shortage. Trung Nguyên’s version comes blended with ginger to neutralize the smell of the egg; it goes down easy, in layers of frothy foam and slightly sweet coffee. Do recommends trying it upstairs, where the drink is served hot over a bowl of warm water in order to retain its temperature.
The concoction will run dine-in customers $8.34 for an 8-ounce cup. If they want to recreate the experience at home, they can purchase Trung Nguyên-branded products.
“A lot of people told me I was crazy to sell $10 coffees and invest so much,” said Nguyen. “This is my big challenge.”
Trung Nguyên Legend, 113-117 Washington Ave., 215-755-1953, trungnguyenlegendphilly.com. Hours: 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. daily
(left to right) The Yuzu Coffee, Vietnamese Egg Coffee and Tiramisu Latte at Trung Nguyên Legend in Philadelphia.
There’s magic at work in Philly’s dive bars. Some are great for the memories made in their low-lit, low-key backdrops. Some have a hard, regulars-only shell that melts away the moment you plant your butt on the barstool. Others feel frozen in time — portals to an era where beers were cheap, smoking inside was allowed, and strangers could become friends over a drink or three.
But for several years now, Philly’s dives have felt in jeopardy, with the cost of a drink rising along with real estate prices. At least one strand of dive — the smoking bar — is decidedly on the way out, evidenced most recently McGlinchey’s closure, but also stalwarts like Grumpy’s Tavern and Buckets going non-smoking earlier this year.
It’s made us think, Why wait to celebrate something until it’s gone?
So The Inquirer is asking readers: What are Philly’s best dive bars, and what makes them special?
Fill out the form below to tip us off to your favorite Philly dive. If your bar makes the list, an Inquirer reporter may follow up.
The National Labor Relations Board is pursuing charges against Philadelphia-based restaurateur Stephen Starr and his company, Starr Restaurants, over union-busting allegations at his D.C. steakhouse St. Anselm, according to documents reviewed by The Inquirer.
The NLRB’s case revolves around anti-union activity that Local 25 alleges occurred in February at St. Anselm, one of three D.C.-based Starr restaurants that sought a union at the start of 2025 and the only one where workers voted to unionize.
The complaint consolidates a set of unfair labor practice (ULP) allegations Local 25 initially filed to the NLRB on behalf of St. Anselm workers, who said that Stephen Starr and a St. Anselm supervisor directly coerced employees with false information, made promises of improved benefits if they voted against unionizing, and threatened loss of revenue if they voted for it.
In one instance, the complaint alleges, Starr “interrogated” a St. Anselm staffer about their union involvement during a one-on-one conversation.
A delegation of workers pose in front Stephen Starr’s D.C. steakhouse St. Anselm before delivering their union petition in Feb. 2025.
The ULP filings were submitted to the NLRB in June. After investigating, the board’s general counsel found merit in the accusations that Starr Restaurants, Starr, and the supervisor violated the National Labor Relations Act. It is now set to bring the charges before an administrative judge on Feb. 24, 2026.
“We are aware of the complaint and strongly disagree with the allegations made therein,” a Starr Restaurants spokesperson for St. Anselm said in a statement. “We look forward to vigorously defending this case through the litigation process.”
The spokesperson declined to address whether Starr spoke directly with St. Anselm employees about union efforts, citing pending litigation.
“It speaks volumes about what happened at this restaurant that, given the challenges that the NLRB is facing, that [general counsel] have chosen to act on this issue,” said Benjy Cannon, Local 25’s communication director, referring to the staffing shortages the agency has faced.
A spokesperson for the NLRB declined to comment.
A contentious dynamic from the start
In January, workers at three of Starr’s sevenD.C restaurants announced plans to unionize with Local 25: French bistro Pastis, Parc-inspired brasserie Le Diplomate, and St. Anselm, an outpost of the upscale Brooklyn steakhouse. The Starr workers, along with employees at two high-profile restaurants affiliated with Knightsbridge Restaurant Group, would’ve ultimately added 500 members to Local 25, if the drives proved successful.
Nearly a year later, both union campaigns remain caught up in litigation.
A picket line outside of Stephen Starr’s D.C. restaurant Le Diplomate is led by Unite Here Local 25 after Starr Restaurants challenged a unionization vote at St. Anselm.
Relations between Starr Restaurants and organizers there turned acrimonious almost immediately. The Washingtonian magazine reported that Starr Restaurants hired anti-union consultants from the American Labor Group to meet with St. Anselm staff. Other employees there told online publication Eater that Local 25 organizers had ambushed them at their homes and pressured them to sign cards that indicate they want to vote for union representation.
Only workers at St. Anselm voted to unionize in February. Local 25 lost the union election at Pastis by a margin of 20 votes, and Le Diplomate’s election has been suspended indefinitely as of March.
Starr Restaurants has yet to recognize the St. Anselm union and filed an objection to the results with the NLRB in February, alleging that Local 25 organizers unfairly influenced the outcome through a campaign of bullying and intimidation. The case remains open.
What workers say
Working conditions at St. Anselm have been a mixed bag, according to Ana Reyes, who has been a line cook at the steakhouse since 2022. The fast-paced workplace allowed her to make enough money to help put her youngest daughter through her freshman year of college, Reyes said in Spanish through an interpreter. But, she said, management often ridiculed employees who didn’t speak English, telling them to learn the language if they wanted to get questions answered about pay or scheduling.
Greg Varney (left) and Ana Reyes, both with Unite Here Local 25, outside Starr headquarters at 134 Market St. as they work to unionize.
Reyes, 43, told The Inquirer that she wanted to join Local 25 for respect: “Whether we speak English or not, we deserve to be respected because we’re doing the work they don’t want to do.”
About two weeks into the union drive in February, Reyes recalled, Starr personally asked to meet with all morning-shift staffers. During the meeting, she said, Starr was “surprised to learn that we didn’t get raises each year … and promised to look into it.”
“He made a lot of promises about sick pay, about vacation pay,” Reyes said. She added that nothing has changed to date.
One host at St. Anselm spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. About four months into working there, she said, Starr asked to chat with her alone, pulling her aside in a near-empty restaurant to ask questions about any problems she had and her involvement in the union.
“I certainly felt cornered and uncomfortable,” she said. Starr “ultimately told me that supporting the union was [quote-unquote] delusional, and that if I voted no, it would be in my own best interest.” The host departed St. Anselm a month later for a full-time customer service job.
Dennis Asaka, a St. Anselm bartender, doesn’t recall Starr making any promises about improved wages or benefits when he sat in on a voluntary informational meeting led by the restaurateur.
In late 2024, however, Asaka recalled a new server at St. Anselm, asking to join him for Bible study at his Baptist church in Arlington. After attending a second meeting, Asaka said, the server invited him to her house to discuss their faith. There, Asaka said he was instead met by several coworkers who pressured him into signing a union card. Asaka declined.
“I felt like I was kind of blindsided and just kind of used a little bit,” Asaka said.
Cannon denies the union ever engaged in such conduct: “We don’t believe that there were any labor laws broken.”
Stephen Starr (right) talks with Erik Battes, Starr Restaurants’ executive vice president of food and beverage, during at a menu-tasting for the Italian restaurant Borromini, in Philadelphia, July 1, 2025.
What happens next?
Unfair labor practice charges are common, said Rutgers University labor and employment law professor James M. Cooney, and cover a variety of tactics that employers or unions can use to interfere with union elections, from retaliation and coercion to promising incentives. Once a ULP is filed, a regional NLRB will launch an investigation. If the board believes there’s merit, they will issue a complaint.
After the hearing, both parties can appeal the administrative law judge’s decision with the NLRB at the federal level, which can decide to uphold and or reject the decision. There’s no punitive damages on the table in most ULP complaints, Cooney said, only an admittance of wrongdoing.
The five-member federal NLRB has been in a bureaucratic standstill since January, when President Donald Trump fired board member Gwynne Wilcox. The move left the independent agency without a quorum, forcing the NLRB to leave hundreds of cases in limbo.
So, why then did the NLRB decide to wade into union drama at one D.C steakhouse?
Because the charges are “old school, really in-your-face-type labor violations,” said Cooney.
“These violations appear to be really egregious that the board just couldn’t overlook them. It’s true that the board isn’t moving on a lot cases, but this one may be easier for them to prove,” Cooney said. “Everybody knows you can’t threaten workers for supporting a union, and you can’t make promises. This is labor law 101.”
Former President Joe Biden waves to the crowd gathered outside Stephen Starr’s Rittenhouse Square restaurant Parc, where he dined for lunch with his family in April 2023.
Starr is a registered Democrat who has donated thousands of dollars to campaigns for politicians including Tom Wolfe, Barack Obama, Sen. John Fetterman, and Hillary Clinton, according to OpenSecrets.org. His restaurants are common stomping grounds for D.C’s political elite, including former President Joe Biden.
In June, Local 25 called for a boycott of Starr’s three buzziest D.C. restaurants (all currently uninvolved in union efforts). To date, 88 members of Congress signed on, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, and Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Cooney does not think the NLRB’s complaint has partisan motivations. “The board has been historically apolitical” at the regional level, he said.
Regardless, the stakes of the proceedings are high for all parties, including employees.
If St. Anselm is forced to recognize the union, Asaka said he’d quit. “I have [health] insurance that includes dental and medical. I have a 401(k) plan. I have commuter reimbursement … I have paid vacation. Those are things that don’t really happen in restaurants,” he said. “I have everything I need.”
