Category: Restaurants

Philip Korshak, the poet-baker who left town after closing his cult favorite Korshak Bagels 2½ years ago, plans to return to South Philadelphia this spring with a new, deliberately modest venture:

Korshak Picnic Provisions will be a corner shop built around grilled hot dogs, house-made sourdough biscuits, and the idea that food is community.

“If I had to model this place after something, it’s Mr. Hooper’s store on Sesame Street,” Korshak said. “The weird little corner shop that’s always there.”

It’s a former animal hospital at the southeast corner of 13th and Reed Streets, across from the old Faragalli’s Bakery and Columbus Square Park. He is targeting a May opening.

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Korshak impressed both the New York Times and Bon Appétit with his bagel shop, which opened in May 2021 at 10th and Morris Streets. But success came at a price. When he closed it in September 2023, he cited financial and personal strain.

The shop’s popularity brought pressures that clashed with his ideals. Korshak resisted automation and expansion, wary of becoming something other than a neighborhood bakery. His staff was one of the first in the city to unionize at an independent cafe. (Korshak voluntarily recognized the union.)

“The staff would prefer to continue,” he wrote in his farewell letter, “but the changes to the process in exchange for efficiency … are not changes I think … are on brand for Korshak Bagels.”

He also wrote that the shop “simply can’t function economically. And provide a living wage. And work/life balance. And reasonable prices.”

Korshak’s path back to Philly

After closing Korshak’s Bagels, Korshak first lived in Seattle but relocated to Austin, Texas — his previous stop before Philadelphia. He had no real plans other than working on a memoir and “spinning my wheels,” he said.

Then the phone rang last fall. It was Pat Duffy, a friend who owned the building where Korshak used to take his pet cat for veterinary care. “He said, ‘I’ve got this spot. The neighborhood misses you. It could use your vibe,’” Korshak said.

Korshak initially demurred. “I told him I wasn’t in town and I wasn’t ‘doing the thing’ anymore,” he said. “But just to be thought of — in that world of absurdity and hope — meant everything to me.”

Duffy walked him through the space over FaceTime. The building, which had been outfitted to become a takeout bakery, had little more than a plumbed floor and sinks. There was no ventilation hood or even potential for a sprawling production line.

Which was exactly what intrigued Korshak.

“What I already knew how to do wasn’t that interesting to me anymore,” he said. “What I don’t know yet, that’s compelling.” He moved back to Philadelphia on Dec. 20, settling in Conshohocken.

The idea for a picnic provisions shop, anchored by hot dogs, came quickly. The corner sits near a bike path, a dog run, a playground, and softball fields. Korshak imagined it as a rendezvous point before or after the park: a place to grab a soda, a cookie, a sourdough biscuit with honey from Green Meadow Farm, or a couple of hot dogs “because dinner’s in a couple hours.”

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“I’m an old guy,” the Brooklyn-born Korshak, 58, said. “I’ve had a lot of hot dogs and a lot of picnics. I like both.”

Korshak’s reasoning is more philosophical than nostalgic. “The hot dog appealed to me because it can’t really be fetishized,” he said. “You can’t put it on a ‘best of’ list in any meaningful way. It’s ubiquitous. It transcends nationality. For me, food is the connector — it’s not the end in itself. A hot dog almost refuses to be the end in itself. It’s silly, fun, quick.”

Korshak Picnic Provisions will offer four styles of dogs, all grilled: a standard beef or vegan dog with mustard, relish, onion, or kraut; a Coney-style dog with chili, cheese, and onions (with vegan chili available); a Chicago dog with traditional through-the-garden accoutrements on a poppy-seed bun; and a Pacific Northwest dog topped with cream cheese, fish-sauce ketchup, and cabbage. Though he has not yet selected a supplier, he plans to use all-beef dogs.

He plans to source buns from Mighty Bread Co., around the corner, shifting away from the labor-intensive, in-house production that defined Korshak Bagels. “It’s not about the hot dog I can make — it’s about what happens when we work together,” he said. “I love baking, but I’m not interested in running big production again.”

Beyond hot dogs, Picnic Provisions will carry crisps, crackers, jams, honeys, sodas, candy, and seasonal produce. Korshak will keep much of the product line local. He said he is talking to Rhonda Saltzman of Second Daughter Artisanal Bakery and Carol Ha of Okie Dokie Donuts about stocking some of their products. He also envisions stocking non-edible picnic goods — kites, blankets, quilts — reinforcing the shop’s central metaphor.

There will be baking, just not at former volumes. Helen Mirren, his pet name for his long-ferment starter, will inform a sourdough biscuit and a sourdough-spiked cinnamon roll. (Korshak has been testing at the former Conshohocken Bakery, run by longtime friend Danny DiGiampietro, who hosted his first bagel pop-ups.)

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This time around, he says, the sense of risk is different.

“It’s all exciting to me,” he said of the new venture, which will have three employees. “The only thing that scares me is if this becomes bigger than it’s intended to be — but I don’t think it will.”

The goal, he said, is durability rather than buzz. “A friend of mine talks about being ‘hot.’ You can only be hot for so long. After that, you’re judged against whether you were hot or not. But the things people truly love aren’t hot — they’re established. They become part of the common language.”

“I’ve been around,” Korshak said. “Philly doesn’t exist anywhere else. The people here are the reason it’s the way it is. It’s unlike anywhere.”

He said he found it “unbelievable” that his last name means something positive to Philadelphians. “How do you not keep trying to do something worthy of that?” he asked. “The goal isn’t accolades. It’s helping someone get through their day a little better — even if you never know about it.”

Sounding more poet than proprietor, he returned to the idea that first drew him back: movement.

“I’m incredibly lucky,” he said. “And if you’re not moving forward, you’re not moving at all.”

Savú opened earlier this month in Washington Square West with a clear pitch: dinner and nightlife under one roof — and a retractable one, at that.

“The concept is really about bringing a little bit of Miami and New York to Philadelphia,” said owner Kevin Dolce, the restaurant’s managing partner and founder of Hi-Def Hospitality. “There are places that do dinner and places that do nightlife. We want both in the same space, consistently.”

Savú occupies the two-level space that last housed Cockatoo, an LGBTQ-friendly bar-restaurant. Dolce said Savú is aimed at everyone. The first floor is anchored by an enormous rectangular bar for walk-ins at the center of the room, with seating wrapped around it. Lounge seating lines the fling-open front windows at 13th and Chancellor Streets, where DJs spin Thursday through Sunday from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., shifting the mood from dinner to late-night. Cocktails stick to standards — espresso martinis, French 75s — alongside Champagne and bottle service.

Upstairs, two additional bars designated for customers with reservations serve a dining room outfitted with banquettes and low lighting. When weather allows, the retractable roof will open, creating an indoor-outdoor feel rare among Center City restaurants.

Savú’s address — along the restaurant row that includes Barbuzzo, Double Knot, and El Vez — has turned over in recent decades. A midcentury diner called Dewey’s once stood there, followed later by Letto Deli. The building was razed in the mid-2010s and replaced with a modern structure that reopened in 2017 as Maison 208. That concept gave way in late 2020 to Cockatoo.

Chef Maulana Muhammad’s dinner menu signals a push toward a higher-end night out: caviar bumps paired with fries and champagne, lamb chops, grilled branzino, lobster pasta, and ribeyes.

Muhammad, a graduate of the Restaurant School, has been around the block. She interned at the old Striped Bass and spent 12 years at the Four Seasons on Logan Square under chef Jean-Marie Lacroix and his team. Through the 2010s, she ran her own restaurant, Maulana’s Café, in the Philadelphia Design & Distribution Center in Wissahickon, and then worked for Constellation Catering just before the pandemic.

After handling production that had her and colleagues cranking out 50,000 meals a day, she stepped away from the kitchen to help operate her family’s home healthcare agency.

Muhammad joined Savú a year ago to build the menu, after her brother, who knows Dolce, mentioned plans for the restaurant. “I like simple, good food,” Muhammad said. “I love creativity, but I want people to feel full and satisfied. I don’t want them leaving and stopping somewhere else to eat.”

Dolce has brought in chef Dominique Shields, founder and former owner of North Philly’s Pretty Girls Cook, to oversee weekend brunch, which starts Feb. 28 with such offerings as seafood grits with fried flounder and shrimp, pancakes with fried chicken wings and honey butter, and oxtail hash along with made-to-order omelets and classic egg plates with beef or turkey bacon. In addition to the 11 a.m.-to-3 p.m. brunches, there will be a Sunday Champagne brunch from 4 to 8 p.m. that will be a ticketed, entertainment-focused event upstairs. General admission will include a drink and booths will be reservable.

Dolce, whose background is in financial consulting, got a taste for nightlife in September 2023 when he opened Taste Cheesesteak Bar on the ground floor of the Sterling, an apartment building at 1809 JFK Blvd. It was, and still is, one of the city’s few cheesesteak shops offering DJs and a full bar.

Dolce has been on a tear of lease-signing. In 2024, he announced plans for Enigma Sky, a three-story Thai-fusion restaurant and lounge in the former Golf & Social at 1080 N. Delaware Ave., as well as Taste Taco Bar, under the Larry Fine mural at Third and South Streets, at the former Jon’s Bar & Grille. Last year, Dolce said he was also converting the former 7-Eleven store at 1084 N. Delaware Ave., next to Enigma Sky, into Finish Your Champagne, a brunch-driven concept. Citing delays with permitting and approvals, Dolce said Taste Taco Bar is expected to open for Cinco de Mayo, with Enigma Sky and Finish Your Champagne opening by the end of the year.

“Philadelphia is about to have a huge few years: the World Cup, the city’s 250th anniversary, the MLB All-Star Game, NCAA tournaments, PGA events,” Dolce said. “Millions of people are coming, and we want to grow alongside the city and be part of that story.”

Savú, 208 S. 13th St., 445-223-4865, savuphl.com. Initial dinner hours: 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday to Saturday. Brunch (starting Feb. 28): 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Champagne brunch: 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Like Major League Baseball installing the pitch clock or Apple dropping the headphone jack from iPhones, a small shift can have a major impact.

The same is true of sandwiches: After 96 years, South Philadelphia landmark Pat’s King of Steaks has made two subtle but significant tweaks.

The stand at the crossroads of Ninth, Passyunk, and Wharton is now offering seeded rolls, from longtime supplier Aversa Italian Bakery, alongside the plain hoagie-style rolls Pat Olivieri first used when he introduced the steak sandwich in 1930.

Owner Frank Olivieri said his father, Frank P. Olivieri, didn’t want seeded rolls “probably because his father [Harry] and his uncle [Pat] beat it into his head that he could not change the recipe whatsoever for whatever reason. But since my father unfortunately passed several weeks ago, I thought maybe it’s time to change up a little bit,“ he said. ”Seeded rolls are something that I do when I make them at home for myself.”

Pat’s announced the “new school” seeded-roll option on Instagram as a limited-time offering, but Olivieri said it likely will be permanent. (Across the street, Geno’s still offers plain rolls only.)

The second change — subtle but more significant — is happening on Pat’s grills.

Since Pat’s began offering cheesesteaks in the 1950s, cooks layered the sliced cheese over the beef and let residual heat do the melting on the sandwich. Now, the cheese is melted into the meat and optional onions on the grill before everything gets mixed and goes into the roll.

Olivieri said his father resisted melting cheese on the grill out of concern for maintaining the cooking surface. The new method produces a more integrated bite, with cheese distributed evenly. (Traditionalists, he said, can ask for the classic layered technique.)

He said the updates reflect customer requests, not competitive pressure. Many newer shops favor seeded rolls and grill-melted cheese, arguing that the crunch and cohesion improve texture. Pat’s has adopted those elements — with limits.

While newer operators often finely chop their steak, Pat’s remains committed to its sliced, or “slab,” style.

“There’ll be no banging on the grill,” Olivieri said.

Other additions have appeared. Two years ago, Pat’s started to offer chicken cheesesteaks and Cooper Sharp cheese — the darling of the new-gen shops. Pat’s still offers American, but Olivieri said he plans to phase it out. “It’s kind of redundant,” he said.

The shop has tweaked things before.

In the late 1970s, Olivieri said, he and his mother, Ritamarie, began offering mushrooms and peppers after hearing customers ask for them. His father didn’t notice at first.

“He was looking at one of the invoices and said, ‘When the hell did we start selling mushrooms and peppers?’” Olivieri recalled. “I said, ‘Three weeks ago, Dad.’ He goes, ‘Oh, are they selling?’ I said, ‘Yes.’”

They stayed.

Still, Olivieri sets some boundaries. “I draw the line at pepperoni,” he said.

Piccolina is the newest entry from restaurateurs Michael and Jeniphur Pasquarello, and it may also be their most personal.

The Italian restaurant opened Monday inside the Society Hill Hotel at Third and Chestnut Streets, occupying a compact spot that was originally an oyster bar in 1830. The corner restaurant is anchored by the big-bellied, handmade brick Marra Forni pizza oven installed by the hotel’s owners, who closed their own restaurant in the space in December. At night, the bar glows against warm brick and plaster, giving the room a sense of intimacy.

For the Pasquarellos — whose restaurant history dates to 2003, when they opened their first Cafe Lift bruncherie in Callowhill — Piccolina marks a shift in focus. Over the years, the couple added a Cafe Lift in Haddonfield and moved the original location to 12th and Spring Garden (after closing a short-lived branch in Narberth), and opened the nearby concepts Prohibition Taproom (corner bar) and La Chinesca (Mexican). They also had a six-year run of the wood-fired pizzeria Bufad, and a decade in Fishtown with the beef-, then fish-centered Kensington Quarters.

Piccolina is a return to the Pasquarellos’ South Philadelphia roots: He grew up near Chadwick and Shunk Streets, and she grew up two blocks away, at 17th and Ritner. Her grandparents, the Bernardinis, ran Bruno’s luncheonette — later Brunic’s. (Brunic’s lives on, under different owners.)

“It’s tapping into memory and the feeling of where it all came from,” Michael Pasquarello said. But although the menu includes flavors they grew up with, Piccolina is not a South Philly red-gravy house. “We took all of that and then we let Alex put it through his filter.”

Alex is chef Alex Vazquez, whose resumé includes Vernick Food & Drink and Friday Saturday Sunday, where he rose over a five-year run from garde manger to sous chef.

At Piccolina, Vazquez is turning out traditional pastas like bucatini amatriciana and malfadine al limone. Stracciatella is folded into the campanelle vodka just before plating, giving the sauce a loose, creamy pull rather than a heavy coat, Michael said. There’s oxtail lasagna, too, built with just three layers of fresh pasta — a technique Pasquarello traces back to Kensington Quarters.

“We used to do these thin lasagnas because we wanted crispy edges,” Michael said. “Alex loved that idea. So we do braised oxtail, a really rich tomato sauce, drizzle Alfredo through it, then fire it in the brick oven so you get those crisp edges.”

Vazquez’s Neapolitan pizzas are sturdy-crusted, all the better to keep up with a load of toppings. Inspired by Bufad, there’s a sausage pie finished with béchamel, broccoli rabe, and shaved pecorino, as well as a mushroom pizza that had developed a following before the restaurant closed at the end of 2018.

The larger plates push the “memory through a chef’s lens” idea most clearly, Michael said. The half-chicken marsala starts with dry-aged birds that are brined, air-dried, and cooked, then finished with a deep marsala sauce and hearth-fired mushrooms.

“I remember my mom making chicken Marsala for us,” he said. “So the idea was, what does that look like when you take it [more] seriously?”

The pork Milanese follows a similar logic. Vazquez brines the pork for 24 hours with coriander, fennel, garlic, and peppercorns before breading it in panko and frying it crisp. It’s served with a hearty crock of escarole and beans — a dish Michael describes as almost universal in South Philadelphia kitchens. “That dish is home to me,” he said.

“I love red-sauce places,” Vazquez said. “It’s so Philly. I just wanted to put my spin on what I want to eat — a red-sauce, pizza, pasta place that’s a little nicer.”

Piccolina serves dinner daily, with lunch and brunch expanding the menu into panini, egg dishes, and sweets like maritozzi French toast stuffed with mascarpone whip. The full bar includes six beers on draft, negroni and other cocktails, and an Italian-only wine list.

Piccolina, 301 Chestnut St., 267-761-4120, piccolinaphl.com. Hours: 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. for dinner. Lunch (noon to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday) starts Feb. 17 and weekend brunch (11 a.m. to 4 p.m.) starts Feb. 21.

Philadelphia’s German roots run deep, and the beer halls and bakeries that generations of families started here have left a stamp on the city.

As such, Philly is also a pretzel town, Jim Mueller says. While he was growing up in Northeast Philadelphia in the late 1990s, soft-pretzel bakeries dotted neighborhoods across the city. He and his family bought pretzels from the now-closed Ben Franklin Pretzels on Kensington Avenue near Ontario as well as Federal Pretzel Baking Co. at Seventh and Federal.

Five years ago, Mueller was working as a UX designer and was craving a fix. “It kind of hit me that there were no pretzels to be gotten that weren’t straight from the [Philly] Pretzel Factory,” Mueller said of the ubiquitous Bensalem-based franchise. “I wanted to make them the way I remembered them tasting: buttery, rich, and flavorful.”

Mueller began studying recipes, and he and his wife, Annie, started a side project called Pretzel Day Pretzels. They began doing pop-ups and deliveries.

On Saturday, Pretzel Day Pretzels went the brick-and-mortar route at Fifth and Dickinson Streets in South Philadelphia, opening at the former Milk & Sugar space with a simple setup: takeout only and morning-to-early-afternoon hours.

Mueller rolls and bakes standard-issue soft pretzels, but his specialties are stuffed pretzels and German varieties that you don’t really see around here, particularly Swabian pretzels.

“It’s a little different from a Bavarian,” Mueller said. “Bavarians are what most people are familiar with — thick all around. Swabians have a big belly and skinny arms, and the arms get a little crunch to them. You can split the belly and stuff them. You can do more with them than a regular pretzel, and it opens up a lot of possibilities to experiment.”

Stuffing is where Pretzel Day Pretzels leans hardest into variety. The most popular option is the long hot-provolone pretzel, with other offerings including chili pretzels, pizza pretzels, bialys, cinnamon-sugar pretzels, and, on some days, pretzel dogs and Bavarian cheese logs. The lineup will shift slightly week to week, Mueller said, “but we’ll always have the core stuff.”

Saturday’s opening was low-key, with small giveaways such as heart-shaped pretzels and tote bags. The shop will offer coloring pages for kids that can be redeemed for a free pretzel.

“I just want it to be a pretzel shop for everyone,” Mueller said. “I don’t want it to feel high-end or bougie — just a neighborhood pretzel shop.”

As he sees it, Pretzel Day is meant to feel less like a concept and more like a missing piece put back into place.

“You always hear that Philadelphia’s a pretzel town,” he said. “But then you think — where are all the pretzel shops? I never thought I’d open one when I started doing this, but here we are.”

Pretzel Day Pretzels, 1501 S. Fifth St., instagram.com/pretzeldaypretzels. Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday.