Author: Michael Klein

In late 1996, Carlos Melendez took a chance on a watering hole off the beaten path in Conshohocken and created Coyote Crossing, still one of the suburbs’ most popular Mexican restaurants. Ten years later, he opened what proved to be a short-lived outpost in West Chester before deciding to double down by expanding the original restaurant.

And that seemed to be enough until one night last year when he and his wife, Steffany, were out to dinner at Maurizio’s Bistro, near their home in Moorestown. Melendez struck up a conversation with owner Maurizio Randazzo.

“He told me, ‘You know what, Carlos? I’m tired. I’m having knee surgery, and I just don’t want to do this anymore. I’d like to sell it,’” Melendez said.

Melendez initially was reluctant to open another restaurant, but his wife urged him to look at it as a creative exercise. “And she was right,” he said.

Taco-Yote — a mashup of “taco” and “coyote” — opened Dec. 12. It’s a deliberate shift from Coyote Crossing. Moorestown is dry, so there is no bar. It’s also much smaller, with a lower price point and a menu engineered for takeout and delivery as much as for dine-in.

The food reflects Melendez’s upbringing in Mexico City and his decades in restaurants — he worked with Tequilas founder David Suro at the Carlos ‘n Charlie’s chain many years ago. The design is bold with hand-painted artwork and an intimate feel.

His mother-in-law, Ada Marina Estela, painted several pieces in the restaurant, including a prominent Frida Kahlo-inspired portrait in the main dining room. Steffany Melendez, a fashion designer, is behind “everything you see — the colors, the artwork, the aesthetic — that’s all her,” Carlos Melendez said.

Central to chef Oscar Velasquez’s menu is a custom grill designed by Melendez and built by a fabricator in Tennessee, similar to one at Coyote Crossing. Fueled by charcoal and wood, it allows for live-fire cooking.

Maurizio’s pizza oven is now pumping out pizzas inspired by Mexican street food: tacos al pastor, mole poblano, shrimp, birria (with consommé on the side), and rajas poblanas.

“One of the biggest challenges with Mexican food is how it travels,” Melendez said. “If you order tacos, no matter where they’re from, by the time they arrive the tortillas are soggy, so we package it differently. We separate the protein from the tortillas. You get the protein, you get the fixings, and you get freshly made corn tortillas. That way, when you assemble the taco yourself, the tortilla hasn’t had time to absorb moisture.”

He said they apply similar thinking to pizza. “If you put sauce directly on the dough, it eventually makes the pizza soggy during transport,” he said. “We put the cheese down first. That way, the sauce isn’t in direct contact with the dough, and the pizza travels much better.”

The menu also includes family-style meals — fajitas and similar dishes — where everything is packaged separately so customers can assemble them at home.

And then there is a Cuban sandwich.

“When I was a kid, my father [the actor Carlos Duran] would visit occasionally. My mom would drop me off at this sandwich place in Mexico [Tortas Don Polo] while we waited for him, because he was always one or two hours late. I’d sit at the counter and watch them make Cuban sandwiches for hours. I memorized the whole routine. That sandwich stayed with me. It has American cheese, Oaxaca, queso fresco, and Chihuahua cheese, pulled pork, chipotle dressing, avocado, and — very important — pickled jalapeños.” The bread is lightly buttered and heated so it’s soft.

“We put that sandwich on the menu because it’s personal,” Melendez said. “I’ve been making it for myself for years.”

Taco-Yote, 33 E. Main St., Moorestown, 856-323-5500. Hours: noon to 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday, noon to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Restaurants are not around forever, so it is special when a signature dish takes on new life well after last call.

Take the Milan salad, essentially a deconstructed BLT with shrimp dressed in a distinctive Italian-Russian dressing, popularized by Jimmy’s Milan. Three decades after the Rittenhouse supper club’s closing, it lives on two blocks away at D’Angelo’s. (Cofounder Tony D’Angelo was Milan’s chef.) Order the D’Angelo’s salad, take a bite, and enjoy the time warp.

Restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow, who will open the swank Mr. Edison at the Bellevue next year, told me that he plans to revive other Philly classics, including Georges Perrier’s galette de crabe, the Le Bec-Fin chef’s take on a Maryland crab cake.

Now let’s consider shrimp pil pil, which restaurateur Dmitri Chimes introduced in the mid-1990s at Pamplona, his Washington Square West tapas bar, and later served at all of the locations of Dmitri’s, his no-frills Greek taverna. The appetizer delivered a one-two punch of chili and garlic with a burst of lemon to prep you for your entrée — perhaps the smoky chargrilled octopus or a rich bowl of cioppino.

When chefs Amanda Shulman and Alex Kemp were planning their new Pine Street Grill at 23rd and Pine Streets — which housed a Dmitri’s from 1999 to 2014 — they asked their Fitler Square neighbors what they wanted in a restaurant. “They all kept referring back to Dmitri’s,” Shulman said.

Kemp said he called Chimes, who still lives in the neighborhood. “He hand delivered us the recipe,” he said. “We’re just super-excited to keep a part of his legacy going. I will say that ours is more of an homage since we know it could never be exactly the same. We started with Dmitri’s recipe as a base and then iterated it a bit, but inherently, it has [the] same ethos and qualities.”

Kemp and Shulman have done justice to this classic.

Pamplona/Dmitri’s recipe called for large shrimp. At Pine Street, they’re going big with six jumbo shrimp, topping them with an abundant sauce that is far creamier and more herbaceous than I remember. They’re also thoughtfully adding grilled bread to ensure plate-cleaning.

Now perhaps they’ll consider adding spanakopita or baklava to the menu …

Chefs Amanda Shulman and Alex Kemp have each built distinct destination restaurants — the newly Michelin-recognized Her Place Supper Club and My Loup. This week, they opened one together.

Pine Street Grill, across from Fitler Square at 23rd and Pine Streets, is their take on a neighborhood restaurant. It’s a comfortable, restrained setting with white stamped-metal ceiling, Streamline Moderne-style schoolhouse light fixtures, white walls, and a long bar running through the narrow space. The two single-occupancy restrooms are intentionally contrasting: One is entirely pink, while the other is a tribute to the Sixers, from the photo-collage wallpaper down to the “Smells Like a Sixers Win” candle on the toilet tank and basketball-shaped soap dispenser on the sink. Fitler Square-based contractor Kaman Global built the restaurant, with Philadelphia firm Canno Design consulting.

The menu, by Shulman, Kemp, and chef de cuisine Jonathan Rodriguez, is timeless American. For starters, there’s a snack plate of mortadella-stuffed cherry peppers, olives, and spelt crackers ($11); shrimp Louie served in little gem lettuce cups with avocado and pickled onion ($16); wings in brown-butter hot sauce with Stilton blue cheese ($14); and a small soft pretzel with hollandaise mustard ($10). There also are Philly Balls, croquettes filled with roast pork, provolone, broccoli rabe, and spicy relish ($12 for two) that previously appeared on My Loup’s opening menu.

Sandwiches include a turkey club with maple bacon on multigrain ($16) and a signature double dry-aged smashburger with Cooper Sharp and onion condiment on a seeded milk bun ($22).

There’s a chopped Greek salad with Persian cucumbers, marinated feta, tomato, red onion, and oregano ($15) and a root-vegetable salad with chicories, aged cheddar, cranberries, and praline vinaigrette ($16). Entrées include hanger steak with pot-roast jus ($30); half a rotisserie chicken with gravy ($28); grilled salmon with piccata and spinach ($27); and eggplant Parmesan ($26).

Desserts include a nut-free carrot cake ($13) with rum raisins, carrot jam, and cream-cheese mousse; sourdough chocolate-chip cookie skillet ($12) with vanilla ice cream — the same cookie Shulman serves at Her Place; and a sundae ($14) of malted-milk ice cream with brownie bites, spiced walnuts, hot fudge, and a cherry.

There’s even a children’s menu, dubbed Belle’s Bites, after their daughter’s middle name: $10 each for nuggets and fries, grilled cheese, crudités and ranch, and red or white shells.

The late-night special for grown-ups, offered from 9:30 to 10:30 p.m., is any draft beer and the burger.

Jillian Moore, bar director of My Loup and bar consultant for the group, developed a cocktail list that includes a freezer martini made with local vermouth, a John Daly cocktail (a boozy Arnold Palmer) on draft, and Irish coffee. There’s Guinness, Strongbow cider, and birch beer on tap.

Nicole Sullivan, Her Place’s beverage director, set up the wine list, which draws inspiration from European tavern culture. General manager Allyson Allen has worked with Shulman and the couple’s Libbie Loup group for several years, including at Her Place and Amourette, their 2024 summer pop-up.

Pine Street Grill’s corner space has had a busy history: It housed Stix, a vegetarian restaurant, from 1997 to 1999; a location of Dmitri’s from 1999 to 2014; a branch of wine bar Tria from 2015 to 2017; and most recently Cotoletta, which closed last year after a five-year run.

Shulman, a Connecticut native and Vetri alumna, burst onto the Philadelphia dining scene in 2021 with Her Place, offering versions of the homespun dinner parties she hosted in her student apartment at Penn. She and Kemp opened My Loup in 2023, three months before their wedding. Shulman has received multiple James Beard Award nominations, including Emerging Chef nominations in 2022 and 2023 and Best Chef Mid-Atlantic in 2025. Kemp, who is Canadian-born, previously worked at Montreal’s Joe Beef and New York’s Eleven Madison Park. The couple met at Momofuku Ko in New York.

Pine Street Grill, 2227 Pine St., no phone, pinestreetgrill.com. Hours: 4 to 11 p.m. Wednesday to Monday; kitchen closes at 10:30 p.m. Half of the dining room is reservable via OpenTable for parties of up to eight; remaining tables are held for walk-ins. Happy hour: 4 to 6 p.m. weekdays, with a discounted food menu and $2 off draft beverages.

With two acclaimed restaurants and a high-end coffee bar in Center City, chef Greg Vernick wasn’t looking to expand two years ago when a close friend introduced him to developers working in the Fishtown-Kensington corridor.

They had a mixed-use building going up on Frankford Avenue, just north of the York Street roundabout. Vernick walked the neighborhood. “It reminded me of the East Village — a place you want to hang out at night, but also a real community,” he said. Still, Vernick was not entirely sold on the project until he and his wife, Julie, started spending more time nearby, dining at Fiore across the street and around the corner at Picnic and Zig Zag BBQ.

The developers — Henry Siebert, Ryan Kalili, and Michael Dinan, all Vernick regulars — were keen on having an Italian restaurant in the building, at 2406 Frankford Ave. Vernick’s thoughts naturally turned to Meredith Medoway, the longtime chef de cuisine at his Vernick Food & Drink on Walnut Street. “Her heart has always been in pasta and Italian food,” Vernick said. “She took our pasta program from really good to great. So I started thinking: This could be the right person.”

They’ve targeted “early 2026” for Emilia, a neighborhood trattoria featuring a seasonally flexible menu built around house-made pasta and live-fire cooking. (Vernick’s connection to the project has not previously been made public, and the restaurant’s name, recently set into tiles at the entrance, has been a subject of speculation on community Facebook groups.)

Canno Design’s Carey Jackson Yonce, who worked on Emilia with California-based designer Bob Bronstein, said they were going for “calmness, cleanliness, and contrast,” using contrasting materials, such as cinderblock on the bar’s front, spruce slats lining the ceiling, and oak panels on the walls. (During a visit last week, Vernick declined a request to photograph the space, as it was not completed.)

“I wanted it to feel like the kind of place where you walk in and exhale and relax,” Vernick said. “Industry-friendly, not precious. We want to hit two markets from day one: the neighborhood and the industry. If you get those right, everything else falls into place.”

There will be seating for about 60 in the dining room, with 20 additional seats in a lounge area and 10 at the bar. The bar and lounge are intended for walk-ins, while the main dining room will lean more heavily on reservations.

The 33-year-old Medoway — a Cherry Hill native like Vernick, who is 45 — studied political science at American University in Washington, D.C.

During one college summer, she worked at Hinge Café in Port Richmond and fell in love with cooking. She interned at Vernick Food & Drink, stayed on, worked every station, and moved to Hearthside in Collingswood for its 2017 opening. She spent three months cooking in Calabria, and flew back to the United States to work at Vernick Fish at its opening in 2019. She returned to Vernick Food & Drink in 2021.

At Emilia — a purely made-up name (Vernick said he was tired of putting his own name on restaurants) — Medoway will work on a 48-inch grill fueled by charcoal and oak. The menu is intentionally restrained: about six small plates, six pastas, and six large dishes, supplemented by nightly specials.

Medoway said the pasta dishes are rooted in personal experience rather than strict regional rules. One anchor will be tortellini in brodo, based on a handwritten family recipe she received while staying in Emilia-Romagna. Another is what they’re calling chicken ragù bianco — a white ragù made with hand-cut chicken and offal — inspired by a staff meal that they ate at the American Academy in Rome during a tour of Italy.

“It was the best pasta we had on that trip,” Vernick said. “Simple, balanced, and deeply satisfying.”

Elsewhere, the menu leans toward lighter preparations and Vernick’s bold style, with brothy sauces, acidity, and restrained use of fat rather than heavy butter-and-cheese finishes. Subtle char from the grill will appear throughout the menu, even in dishes that do not come directly off the fire. Proteins include rabbit prepared in cacciatore style with orange, rotating fish dishes, shellfish stew, and a nightly steak special.

Bread service will be complimentary: house-made focaccia, the imported Italian breadsticks known as grissini, and Mighty Bread’s sesame ciabatta. A separate bread course, the crunchy carta da musica, will be offered as a menu item.

“We want the neighborhood to feel like this is their place,” Medoway said. “You shouldn’t need a reservation just to come in for a drink and a snack.”

The wine list will focus exclusively on Italian bottles. The cocktail program is still being finalized but is expected to emphasize lighter, simpler drinks.

Emilia is expected to employ between 40 and 50 people. Vernick said opening a restaurant today requires tighter menus and less waste than a decade ago, but also greater attention to staff experience — from locker rooms to staff meals — as an essential part of operations.

“We’re building this deliberately,” Vernick said. “It’s taken time — but that’s the point.”

The long-awaited revival of Cobbs Creek Golf Course on the edge of West Philadelphia is taking shape not just on the fairways, but at the table.

Little Horse Tavern — a full-service restaurant, bar, and event space named in honor of Charlie “Little Horse” Sifford, the Black golfer who led the integration of the PGA tournament in the 1960s — opens Monday. The Fitler Club and Strother Enterprises are overseeing it.

The tavern, in a new building on Lansdowne Avenue called the Lincoln Financial Center, is next to a heated, 68-bay driving range, similar to a Topgolf. (Buckets of balls start at $10.) Nearby is a nine-hole short course designed for beginners and families, and — expected to open in 2027 — the renovated 18-hole championship-level course known as the Olde Course.

All told, the $180 million effort aims to transform Cobbs Creek into a premier public golf destination. The club, founded in 1916, offered access to players when the game was largely off-limits to anyone but white men who could afford memberships at private clubs.

Cobbs Creek was Sifford’s home course in the 1950s. Sifford — who got his nickname because of the horse pendant he wore — went on to win two PGA Tour events and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2006; he died in 2015 at age 92.

The course fell into disrepair in the 2000s and was closed in 2020. Shortly after, “a group of people who loved Cobbs Creek started asking, ‘What if this could be Philadelphia’s Bethpage Black?’” said Fitler Club president Jacob Smith, referring to the celebrated public course on Long Island that hosted the 2025 Ryder Cup.

That idea grew into the Cobbs Creek Foundation, which raised money and secured partnerships with Troon, the large golf-management company, and the Tiger Woods Foundation, which operates the adjacent TGR Learning Lab, aimed at teaching the game to schoolchildren.

In addition to its public dining room and bar, there’s a private event space upstairs that can host up to 200 people.

The tavern is decorated with murals; one depicts Sifford and fellow local sports figures Johnny McDermott, Dawn Staley, Kobe Bryant, and Wilt Chamberlain.

Fitler manager Clancy Smith oversees the restaurant as food and beverage director. Chef Adam Carson is putting out a something-for-everyone mix in his all-day menu, which starts at noon.

There are tater tots, a basket of chicken tenders and onion rings, and wings (choice of six sauces). Sandwiches, accompanied by tots, onion rings, salad, or fries, include a double smash burger, turkey club, fried chicken, and truffle chicken salad.

He’s also aiming a bit higher with esquites guacamole; huarache pizza; yellowfin tuna ceviche dressed in leche de tigre and avocado mousse; and a mixed green salad including fennel, radish, compressed apple, golden raisins, Cabot clothbound cheddar, sunflower brittle, and lemon vinaigrette. Top price is $20 for the cheesesteak. (Michael Franco, Fitler’s vice president of operations, says he expects to lower it to $18 once beef prices drop.)

There’s a full bar, including beer, wine, and nine cocktails. Rose Is a Rose, named after Sifford’s wife, is a floral spritz featuring gin, honey, lemon, sparkling rose wine, and a dash of rose water, and it’s garnished with an expressed lemon twist and dehydrated rose buds.

Fitler’s involvement grew out of its interest in projects with civic impact. Though best known as a members-only club in Center City, Fitler wants to expand its hospitality expertise beyond its walls.

“We look for opportunities where we can contribute something meaningful to the city,” said Smith, whose golf handicap is 13. “This was at the top of the list.”

For Strother Enterprises, a family-run food service company that began as a catering business in West Philadelphia, the connection is deeply personal. Robert A. Strother and Natasha Strother Lassiter are first cousins whose fathers — Ernest Strother and Robert Strother Jr. — worked as certified caddies at Cobbs Creek when they were teenagers.

“This was one of their first jobs,” Strother said. “They carried bags here all day, multiple rounds a day. Cobbs Creek was part of their upbringing.”

Lassiter said returning to the course as partners in its rebirth brings the family’s story full circle. “Being from West Philly, seeing this space restored, and being able to contribute to it in a meaningful way — it’s emotional,” she said. “This isn’t just another project for us.”

Strother manages day-to-day operations and oversees the after-school snack program at the TGR Learning Lab.

“This project isn’t just about hospitality,” Lassiter said. “It’s about community, education, and access.”

Little Horse Tavern, 7403 Lansdowne Ave., 267-900-3740, cobbscreekgolf.org. Initial hours: noon to 8 p.m. daily.

As the health inspector left Cafe Michelangelo in the Far Northeast last week, she affixed a “cease operations” sticker to the front door, ordering the restaurant to close for at least 48 hours.

Co-owner Giuliano Verrecchia got an idea.

He would come clean.

Chastened by the report’s findings and mindful of his restaurant’s previous dodgy health inspections this year, Verrecchia decided to go public and explain all 16 violations, one by one.

This would be a bold, uncommon strategy. Typically, as word of a shutdown spreads through social media, restaurateurs play defense while users pillory the establishment.

“I wanted to put my side out there and be transparent,” Verrecchia said, adding that he considered some of the cited issues “a bit misleading.” He and his manager, Danielle Runner, printed out the inspection report, added commentary, and posted it to Michelangelo’s Facebook page on Dec. 4, the day after the shutdown.

Addressed to “all of our amazing customers,” the post on Michelangelo’s profile paired the exact wording of the health report’s violations with Verrecchia’s own explanation (and redress or occasional rebuttal). He detailed 16 violations, including “peeling paint observed on walls in one of the women’s restroom areas” (“Bathrooms and storage areas were repainted yesterday,” he explained) and “ice build-up observed in the first-floor walk-in cooler unit” (“removed ice build-up,” he wrote).

Reaction to the post was mostly positive. Customers replied with words of support. Some commenters — several of whom identified as food-service industry workers — downplayed the inspector’s finding, describing them as minor.

(In a Facebook post earlier that day, the restaurant described the violations as “non-hazardous,” which was not entirely accurate.)

On Friday, Dec. 5, Michelangelo passed its reinspection, paid a $315 fee, and prepared to reopen. Verrecchia held his breath. Would the public respect his attempt at transparency?

A Northeast Philly staple

In 1992, brothers Michael and Angelo DiSandro combined their names to open a family-friendly Italian restaurant, complete with bocce courts and room for 250 guests, in a Somerton strip center. By Northeast Philadelphia standards, Cafe Michelangelo was years ahead of its time, serving espresso and brick-oven pizza. Angelo DiSandro died in 2012, and Michael has stepped aside from the day-to-day operation.

Verrecchia, 56, a nephew, oversees the restaurant, which has a bar in a rear dining room as well as a newer second bar on a covered, heated patio. There’s live music at least three days a week. Michelangelo’s business, like that at many older restaurants, hasn’t been the same since the pandemic. Rising food prices and labor costs have cut margins, and competition has become keener. Customers can get a world of cuisine delivered via apps.

To boost traffic, Verrecchia offers a $15 lunch buffet Tuesday to Friday with two pastas, two proteins, salads, and pizza. Over dinner, the calamari, the parm dishes, and pizzas still move, but he said his customers are cautious about spending. He still sells bigger-ticket items — steak, rack of lamb, whole fish — “but I’m not charging you $45,” Verrecchia said. “I’m charging you $37 and I’m not making money on it, but if you want a steak and the kid wants pizza? You got a home run.”

The aftermath

Michelangelo reopened the same day it passed its reinspection. The phone rang over the weekend. It was a group of teachers canceling their large annual party. Then another big order fell through.

Neither cited a reason. Business was down about 25% on Friday, the restaurant’s first day back, and remained soft Saturday. There was a slight improvement Sunday. The restaurant is closed Mondays. Tuesday was slow again, which Verrecchia partly attributed to cold weather. He said it was too soon to tell what was driving this.

Timeline of inspections

In interviews, Verrecchia said he acknowledged that some of the inspector’s findings required attention, but added: “I don’t think those issues put customers in jeopardy.”

“You as a layman read what they wrote and you get scared,” he said. “I wanted to explain what’s really meant.”

He cited rules about labeling containers as an example. “If [the inspector comes in] at 11:30 [a.m.] and my guys are prepping, some things won’t have labels because they have to open them up,” he said.

Verrecchia said he was cited for some issues that had been addressed previously, including cracked floors observed in the kitchen preparation area. “I had already fixed it and showed her,” he said. The report called out a chest freezer that was not commercial-grade. “I fixed that, too, but it still showed up again as if nothing had been done.”

“She made some valid observations,” he said. “I’m not denying that. But the wording in those reports can sound scarier than it really is if people don’t understand the terminology.”

But given its inspections in 2025, Cafe Michelangelo’s record showed mounting problems.

This also was not the restaurant’s first involuntary closure. In February 2023, an inspector cited repeated violations, including improper food labeling, missing temperature controls, rodent activity, improper food storage, and sanitation problems such as grease on walls near the hood, food debris and mouse droppings in the basement, damaged flooring, and missing wall tiles. The restaurant also was cited for using plastic crates to elevate beverages in the takeout area.

Cafe Michelangelo was allowed to reopen four days after that 2023 reinspection, and a follow-up two months later found no serious violations.

At the next inspection, Feb. 27, 2025, four risk-factor violations were noted: missing handwashing supplies, a dirty ice machine, missing date-marking, and unlabeled chemicals. All were corrected on site.

By Sept. 11, the violation count had risen to six and included flies throughout the facility, shellfish storage and record-keeping problems, and significant structural and equipment issues. The Health Department ordered a reinspection.

On Oct. 29, many of the same issues appeared again as repeat violations, and a certified food-safety manager was not on-site at the start of the inspection.

On Dec. 3, the inspector pointed out unsafe cooling of salads and onions, along with unresolved pest, handwashing, and facility problems — all what are deemed “imminent health hazards.” She also logged six risk-factor violations, which include any violation that increases the likelihood of foodborne illness; three of them were repeats. Two and a half hours after the inspector walked in, Michelangelo was shut down.

Corrections and changes

Verrecchia said the inspection issues were a wake-up call. He said he has tightened oversight throughout the restaurant, which employs about 30 people.

“I’m on it every single night now,” he said. “I’m re-educating my team. I’ve got to be more diligent. If I [mess] up, I admit it. I [messed] up. I’m human.”

He is now conducting mock inspections at the end of the day. “I walk through everything, write up what’s wrong, and then go over it with the staff in the morning,” he said.

He also has begun purchasing new equipment, including wall-mounted metal shelving and fruit-fly traps where required.

Verrecchia said he is standing by his decision to go public.

“If I didn’t think it was right, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I can’t afford to shut down again — and I’m not going to.”

The door of Banshee at 16th and South Streets will be unlocked Thursday, welcoming patrons for crispy onion tarts, chicory salad, and a saucy Spanish mackerel dish you can mop up with house-made sourdough. They can then polish it all off with a sip of draft wine or a sesame- and pineapple-laced whiskey sour.

The cozy, modern American bistro is a refined addition to the Graduate Hospital neighborhood. And although two of its backers will be familiar to followers of Philly’s restaurant scene, Banshee marks a clear break from the Asian-inspired street food and graffitied airs that defined their earlier work.

Shawn Darragh and Ben Puchowitz, who founded Cheu Noodle Bar (2013), Cheu Fishtown (2017), Bing Bing Dim Sum (2015), and Nunu (2018), have brought on two key former employees as partners: twin brothers Kyle and Bryan Donovan, 34.

Kyle Donovan — who started at the original Cheu near 10th and Locust and later managed Bing Bing on East Passyunk until it closed in 2024 — is Banshee’s general manager, overseeing 12 walk-in-only bar seats and about three dozen seats in the dining room.

Banshee executive chef Bryan Donovan was opening sous chef under Puchowitz at Cheu Fishtown before he went on to cook at Sqirl in Los Angeles and Contra, Wildair, and the Four Horsemen in New York City.

Darragh and Puchowitz, now in their early 40s, have moved on from the day-to-day of restaurant work. Darragh, the front-of-the-house/marketing guy, runs a construction company. Puchowitz — who as a 23-year-old ran the kitchen at the late, great Rittenhouse BYOB Matyson — works in real estate.

“It’s fair to say we’re all grown up now,” Darragh told me. “We’re trying to carry over that neighborhood spirit but take it a step further — maybe a little more refined but still fun.”

The visual shift, not only from their former restaurants but also from the building’s previous occupant, Tio Flores, is obvious. Stokes Architecture + Design created a warm, Scandinavian-inspired space with natural woods, curtains, table lamps, pendant lights, and a mushroom-wood accent wall. The up-lit bar anchors the room.

Banshee was originally planned for the former Bing Bing space on East Passyunk Avenue at 12th Street, but that deal fell through. Chefs Biff Gottehrer and Kenjiro Omori are renovating it for a new restaurant called Tako Taco.

Mediterranean, Basque, and modern American flavors

Don’t expect ramens or dumplings at Banshee. The menu leans Mediterranean/Basque — chef-driven but not inaccessible. Premium ingredients include Berkshire pork collar ($25) and Lady Edison ham ($17) with persimmon and fromage blanc. The center-of-the-table dish is a half chicken ($39) with pickled peppers and buttery Marcona almonds.

Vegetables take center stage: braised leeks with boquerones, pepitas, and Comté ($14); grilled Kyoto carrot with txakoli sabayon ($15); and a chicory salad with dijonnaise, pear, and nutty, creamy Midnight Moon cheese ($15). Fermentation-driven umami shows up in red kuri rice with koji butter and nori, as well as a winter citrus salad finished with brown butter, pine nuts, and umeboshi. About half the menu is vegetarian, and five dishes are vegan or easily made vegan.

The tarte flambée ($15) is one of the most distinctive dishes on the menu. It starts with a yeasted semolina dough that’s rolled through a pasta sheeter, cut into squares, and baked on olive oil-lined sheet trays. It’s topped with smoked crème fraîche, caramelized onions, raw onions, maitake mushrooms, chives, and hot honey, and finished with a leek-and-parsley powder made from dehydrated leek scraps. Crispy and bold, “it’s layered onion flavor all the way through,” Bryan Donovan said.

A dill mignonette brightens the Barnstable oysters ($22). Hamachi crudo ($18) is sliced thick to highlight the fish’s natural fat and paired with a bright, acidic sauce made from minced peppers, passion fruit puree, shio koji, and white verjus. “The sauce actually came first, and then we tailored the fish to it,” Donovan said.

A larger plate of Spanish mackerel ($24) is served over grilled Brussels sprout leaves tossed in a smoked clam emulsion with thyme and tamari, finished with olive oil tapenade and pickled golden raisins.

“We’ll change vegetables seasonally and add more snacky, fried, and skewer-style items as we settle in,” Donovan said. “Spontaneity and experimentation are part of the spirit of the place.”

There’s a baked Alaska (not done tableside) and a butterscotch Krimpet filled with boysenberry jam for dessert.

Check average is projected at $70 to $75 per person for two to three dishes and one drink.

The Banshee partners brought in lead bartender Mary Wood to build the cocktail program, working alongside assistant manager Madeline Anneli. “None of us are professional bartenders, so we wanted real expertise on cocktails,” Kyle Donovan said.

Wood’s list draws from home-cooking influences and ingredients already used in the kitchen. The Dirty Banshee ($16) — olive oil-infused vodka, garlic fino, and blue cheese olive — leans deeply savory. Beet imbues the Crowd Work ($15), a sparkling gin cocktail with lemon and quinine. The bar also offers low-ABV drinks, nonalcoholic options, fermentation elements such as tepache, and an accessible beer lineup.

Hours are 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday through Monday. Reservations are available on Resy on a rolling 30-day basis.

Banshee, 1600 South St., 267-876-8346, bansheephl.com