A neighborhood bar with Delaware River views and a ‘top-tier Guinness pour’ is on the way from the group behind Libertee Grounds
Lucky Duck, on the Delaware at the new Rivermark Northern Liberties, will be more communal place than cocktail lounge, its founders say.
The partners behind the popular Libertee Grounds in the city’s Francisville section are preparing to open a new bar on the burgeoning Delaware River waterfront early next year.
Childhood friends Pri Rambhia, Sanil Shah, and Kanay Patel have teamed with Mike Metzger, an owner of Sidecar Bar & Grill, to launch Lucky Duck on the ground floor of the new, 470-unit Rivermark Northern Liberties, at Columbus Boulevard at Spring Garden Street, at what was Festival Pier. A Sprouts Farmers Market opened there in June.
“Given the location, we’re looking to create a concept that acts as a year-round neighborhood bar, not just a seasonal getaway or destination,” Rambhia said. He said it would be a tavern with both classic and waterfront-inspired cocktails, a wine list, and what he called a “top-tier Guinness pour.”
Libertee Grounds opened in 2021 at 16th Street and Girard Avenue as a bar/restaurant with 18 holes of miniature golf.
Rambhia said Lucky Duck, which will not offer golf, will be a communal place more than a cocktail lounge. “Right now, the waterfront has amazing spaces to have drinks, but at night it turns into a younger crowd,” he said. “We want to build a space that people in their late 20s and 30s, 40s, and 50s can hang out all day and night and not feel like they’re out of place.”
Lucky Duck will seat about 135 indoors, with total capacity for 250 including a large outdoor space and floor-to-ceiling bay windows overlooking the river and Ben Franklin Bridge. The doors will be open in warm weather. In the winter, Rambhia said, “it’ll feel almost like a snow globe, where you can still be very comfortable while enjoying the views of the waterfront and the bridge, even in the dead of winter.”
Design plans call for a rustic look with dark wood and warm colors accented by modern art.
Metzger and Shah will run the food program, highlighting tavern classics and small plates, along with a North Jersey-style bar pizza (described by Rambhia as “somewhere between New York-style and a cracker-thin pie, with very little flop”). A late-night window inside the bar will serve pizza by the slice after dinner.
Rambhia said the bar is inspired by the corner-bar culture he experienced while living in New York, citing Bar Americano, Le Dive, Mister Paradise, and the Spaniard as influences, as well as Bar Leone in Hong Kong, which the partners visited last year.
Lucky Duck will be part of an emerging social scene along the river north of Penn’s Landing. Next month, at the Battery, a former PECO plant near Penn Treaty Park, local entrepreneurs will open Ballers, a $10 million facility offering a full bar and restaurant along with a dozen courts for racket sports.