Dozens of new restaurants are coming to the Philly area | Let’s Eat

Who is not opening a restaurant around here? There’s a boom, and we name names. Also this week: a brewpub bans kids after 2 p.m., the Philadelphia-New York City restaurant connection is heating up, and we found a bar that serves no alcohol while delivering a good time.

⬇️ Read on for a quiz.

📝 Send me tips, suggestions and questions here.

📧 If someone forwarded you this newsletter and you like what you’re reading, sign up here to get it free every week.

If you see this 🔑 in today’s newsletter, that means we’re highlighting our exclusive journalism. You need to be a subscriber to read these stories.

— Mike Klein

The restaurant scene is rebounding after nearly three years of uncertainty. I run down about five dozen places on the books for 2023. They’re all over the place: high-end, casual, BYOBs, bars, splashy, low-key, city, suburbs, celebrity restaurateurs, and eager upstarts. 🔑

A look back at 2022′s openings: Luxury was in. But so was low-key. South Philly, Kensington, and Fishtown were hot. But so were Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, and Conshohocken. Mexican cuisine flourished, as did Turkish and vegan. Here’s a look back.

Among restaurateurs making moves nowadays in Philadelphia, few are as bold as Derek Gibbons and Tim Liu, who run Glu Hospitality.

Brewpubs have become a hangout for kids. Last weekend, though, Kensington’s Human Robot Brewery put its foot down: None are allowed after 2 p.m. Cofounder Jake Atkinson told my colleague Jenn Ladd that the final straw, as it were, was the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when many schools and daycares were closed: “With everyone off, it just hit the point where I was like, ‘OK, we’re done.’”

“It’s like ‘Cheers’ without the hangover” is one way to describe Volstead by Unity in Manayunk, Philadelphia’s only zero-proof bar. But is a bar without alcohol still a bar? “There’s a social lubricant effect,” co-owner Robert Ashford told my colleague Rita Giordano. “People get more vocal and boisterous. They’re having fun. What you don’t have is all the negative aspects. People aren’t getting into fights.”

Philly and New York have long exchanged restaurants. Michael Solomonov (above) and Steven Cook have new hits in Brooklyn with Laser Wolf and K’Far, and this year, Philadelphia will see a new franchise called Brooklyn Dumpling Shop. Here’s the latest.

High-tech? I’d like to think of Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, which just opened in the Rittenhouse building that previously housed Aerie and American Eagle, as high-tech maki.

From the moment you walk in and put your info into a tablet to secure a table, it’s a streamlined digital experience. Covered plates of sushi (photo below) drift by on a conveyor belt; you pay $3.55 each, counted electronically as you place the empties in a slot. If you order ramen, udon, fries, dumplings, or another hot dish from the touchpad menu atop your table, the food will be zipped straight to you on a second conveyor belt. A robot with blinking eyes (that’s Kur-B) delivers drinks. Humans are around, too.

There’s an impressive selection of decently prepared sushi and sashimi — the generic “spicy popcorn shrimp roll” and “tuna roll” plus more ambitious offerings that I might not expect from a chain. Over the course of several minutes the other night, for example, the conveyored plates contained toro, albacore otoro, negitoro, sockeye salmon, aburi eel with miso cream cheese, hamachi tataki with ponzu oil, tuna yukhoe, Spanish mackerl, Hokkaido scallop, and inari. Payment via screen was a snap; the tab for my 11-year-old and me was $55.

The only quirk was the restroom situation — down the elevator to the basement and around several corners.

Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, 1721 Chestnut St. Hours: 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Briefly noted

Eli Kulp and Marisa Magnatta of the “Delicious City” podcast are pairing chefs for collabs billed as the Delicious City Supper Club. First outing will be 6 p.m. Feb. 8 at Stina Pizzeria in South Philadelphia, and it brings chef Phila Lorn (soon opening a noodle soup called MAWN) to work with Stina’s Bobby Saritsoglou. The concept: The Silk Road, linking Saritsoglou’s Eastern Mediterranean roots with Lorn’s Asian heritage. Tickets ($150 a pop) are here, and a portion of sales will go to the Share Food Program.

Vegan alert: Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby of Center City’s Vedge just launched Ground Provisions, a plant-based market in the former Innkeeper’s Kitchen at Dilworthtown (1388 Old Wilmington Pike, West Chester). “Basically, it’s fancy picnic fare, like wine, prepared foods, some produce,” Landau said. Hours now are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday. An accompanying restaurant is expected to debut in about two weeks.

Critic Craig LaBan recommends the Ethiopian-inspired fried chicken at Doro Bet in West Philadelphia, available in spicy Berbere (top) and milder turmeric and lemon (bottom). The batter is made from teff flour, so this chicken is also gluten-free. Fried chicken isn’t really a thing in her native Ethiopia, chef Mebruka Kane said. She and her husband, Brian, were cooking fried chicken, “playing around with different spices, and our two kids really loved it.” 🔑

Honeybees are a crucial key to farming. Colleague Tom Avril recently wrote about researchers trying to identify early warning signs that a bee is under stress, so that keepers can try to rescue threatened hives before it’s too late. What part of the bees are they examining?

A) wings

B) brains

C) antennae

D) stinger

Know the answer? Read this fascinating article and bee informed.

🍲 Keep reading more food news.

📱 Follow me on Twitter. Or follow me on instagram.