One of Philly’s most anticipated bars of the year opens today

Northern Liberties has had a humming bar scene for decades, long anchored by Ortlieb’s and Standard Tap. Splashy newcomers come (and go) on occasion, thanks to the Piazza and other developments along Second Street, and there are standout restaurants like Pietramala, Pera, and Apricot Stone. But by comparison, NoLib’s food and drink landscape has been dwarfed by that of Fishtown and Kensington, where buzzy openings happen on the regular.

This week, however, Northern Liberties scores one of the most anticipated new bars of the year. Field Day, from James Beard Award-winning bartender Danny Childs and his wife, Katie, opens today.

Field Day, at 923 N. Second Street, is a love letter to our region. Its food and drink menus highlight ingredients and culinary traditions from as far west as Appalachia and Lancaster County, as far east as the farmlands of South Jersey and the Shore, and as far South as the Chesapeake Bay. Early food hits from the bar’s soft open include tomato pie and seasonal Roman-style “field pie,” Lebanon bologna sandwiches on sourdough English muffins, a roast pork “Philly dip” with long hots and broccoli rabe, skillet chocolate chip cookies, and fluffy seasonal water ice (currently Concord grape).

The bar is a showcase for Slow Drinks, shorthand for Childs’ farm- and field-to-bar beverage approach, documented in his award-winning book by the same name. He first developed it at Cherry Hill’s Farm & Fisherman Tavern, where he worked for nine years, and he’s since applied it as a consultant at bars like Almanac and La Jefa, where Slow Drinks-style cocktails — heavily influenced by local, seasonal ingredients and ancient fermentation practices — are interpreted through Japanese and Mexican lenses, respectively.

At Field Day, the Philly area writ large gets the Slow Drinks treatment. That means a cream-clarified cream soda cocktail that gets its vanilla notes from shagbark hickory bark harvested in Tewksbury, N.J.; an umami martini enriched with brown butter, sweet Jersey corn-made miso, and lacto-fermented beech mushrooms from Kennett Square; and an orange crush flavored with house ginger beer and wild persimmons from Childs’ own backyard.

The list goes on. There are 36 cocktails in the bar’s keystone-stamped, leather-clad “Field Guide” menu (designed by Haridelle’s Kylie Silvestri) that’s subdivided by highballs, martinis, shaken, stirred, dessert drinks, and nightcaps. The guide details the ingredients and backstory behind each drink, with a legend to indicate its sourcing and processes. In that sense, Field Day is a textbook destination cocktail bar, but that’s not the owners’ goal.

“We want anybody to walk in here and feel welcome, and that it’s not like they’re going to school, that they’re just at a great bar,” Childs said. “And if they want to learn more, they can.”

The Childses, who live in Pennsauken with their two young kids, want Field Day to be for the neighborhood, too. To that end, they have a streamlined “$15 Holler” cocktail list — nine drinks, no notes — targeted to locals dropping in for a casual drink and a bite. There’s a robust lineup of nonalcoholic drinks, including housemade sodas, kombucha, and lemonade, plus coffee, tea, wine, a Tonewood-brewed house lager, and Guinness. There’s also a kids’ menu, complete with a botanical-themed coloring page and crayons.

The family-friendliness is also borne out in the personal touches that suffuse the bar’s design, overseen by Katie Childs and Betsu Studio’s Laura Weiszer. The walnut shelves above the bar are lined with souvenirs from their travels as well as family heirlooms, including both of their great-grandfathers’ bottle cappers (Danny’s brewed sassafras rootbeer, Katie’s made dandelion wine). Portraits of the couple are framed inside the bar’s host stand, drawn by Italian illustrator Gianluca Cannizzo, whom Childs met on a Slow Drinks work trip. There’s another Cannizzo illustration in the bathroom, depicting the military tent the couple lived in for nine months on a Marlton Christmas tree farm, at the beginning of their Slow Drinks journey.

All the little things are an effort to transform this former auxiliary space for Cescaphe Ballroom into a homey, welcoming spot that’s trying to telegraph comfort above all else. Roughly half the seats in the space, including all 20 bar seats, are earmarked for walk-ins.

With a 50-seat dining room and 25 employees, Field Day is arguably just as much restaurant as bar. The kitchen is led by James Beard-nominated chef Melissa McGrath of Sweet Amalia fame, who’s bringing to bear her considerable South Jersey seafood expertise with steamed clams, smoked fish dip, and a fish fry. McGrath is backed by sous chef and preservation pro April McGreger, whose pickle plate is already a must-try.

Splitting time between the kitchen, bar, and Field Day’s upstairs R&D lab is Jamaar Julal, who spearheads various fermentation projects, including miso made from stale tomato pie and several cheongs (fermented syrups) made from foraged fruits.

McGrath, McGreger, and Julal are part of a deep bench of talent that also includes floor lead John Dougherty, who’s worked with Childs since his Farm & Fisherman days, and bar lead Erin Dassler, a Chicago transplant who was previously at legendary tiki bar Three Dots and a Dash and Kitty’s Cosmopolitan Club.

Childs is thrilled to have assembled a team of this caliber. “These are people that I love and respect and look up to in a lot of ways,” he said. “To see them all coming here, working for Katie and I — we go home at the end of the day every day and we’re like, ‘Oh my goodness.’”

Field Day, 923 N. Second St., 215-703-9458, fielddayphilly.com. Hours: 4 p.m. to midnight Wednesday through Saturday, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Reservations available on Resy.