Another Philly supper club is putting down brick-and-mortar roots
Daniel Solway’s Santé has signed a lease for a home on East Passyunk Avenue as it expands its scope.
When Daniel Solway began hosting dinner parties in his South Philadelphia apartment during the pandemic, he hid extra furniture behind hanging bedsheets, borrowed folding chairs from his father’s house, and bought mismatched dishware at a thrift shop. Guests squeezed into a makeshift dining room for tasting menus paired with wines.
Now, Solway is putting down roots.
The founder of Santé, the roving supper club and events company known for wine dinners, tastings, and collaborations, has signed a lease for his first permanent space: He’s calling it Santé Social and hopes to open this fall at 1546 E. Passyunk Ave., across from the Singing Fountain and opposite the recently announced home of Habibi Supper Club.
The space, which will accommodate about 30, marks the latest evolution of a dining movement that once thrived in apartments, borrowed kitchens, and one-off pop-ups. Santé and Habibi are only the newest underground-style supper clubs formalizing their ambitions in brick-and-mortar settings, following Amanda Shulman’s Her Place Supper Club, Liz Grothe’s Couch Cafe (now Scampi), and RJ Smith’s Ocho Supper Club, in residence through July 26 at the Rittenhouse Hotel.
“We’re in the events business, and my background is in wine, so we do a lot of wine tastings, classes, dinners, events and collaborations,” Solway said. “This space is a natural evolution of that.”
For Solway, the timing finally aligned: “The opportunity to get a liquor license, and to find a great space in a neighborhood that I love.”
Santé Social will function less like a conventional restaurant and more like a hybrid hospitality space. Solway envisions weekly programming focused on beverages, art and community, alongside a small bar, classes, tastings, private events, and some walk-in service. The business also plans to expand its off-premise offerings, particularly wine, cocktail and beverage catering.
“For us, the timing feels right to refine the best of our programming: classes, workshops, tastings and private parties,” Solway said. “That’s what this space is really for.”
The room itself will be intimate, designed to shift easily between tastings, classes and dinner formats. “It will be conducive to a class format if needed — a very fluid space, and intimate,” Solway said.
The beverage program will lean heavily into wine, with cocktails developed alongside consultant Danny Childs of Slow Drinks. Food programming remains in development and may include collaborators, something Santé has leaned on throughout its nomadic years. (Solway moved it out of his apartment several years ago.)
The new storefront will also have an arts component. Next door, Fountain Studios plans a rotating artist residency, and Solway said Santé Social expects to collaborate on exhibitions and creative programming. “We want it to be playful and inviting,” Solway said. “For me, that comes with good lighting and fun, eclectic art on the walls.”
If Santé’s new home sounds polished, its beginnings were decidedly DIY.
Solway, who grew up in Mount Airy, moved back to Philadelphia from New York in August 2020, looking to be closer to family during the isolation of COVID. Santé started as a side project: $10 Zoom wine-and-cheese tastings, complete with PowerPoint presentations and participants drinking whatever happened to be in their refrigerators.
Soon after, inspired by apartment-based dinners he had seen friends host in Brooklyn, Solway and a roommate started inviting strangers into their apartment for tasting menus with beverage pairings. “I quickly saw that if there was room to do that in New York, there was definitely room to do it in Philly,” he said.
Interest grew steadily as diners gravitated toward communal experiences. Santé spent nearly 2½ years hosting apartment dinners before expanding into private catering, tastings, and corporate events.
“At some point, when you’re nomadic, you either have to put down roots, open a space, level up and challenge yourself — or move on,” Solway said.
What, exactly, people are seeking from dining experiences has become clearer to him over time.
“Sometimes when I go out to eat, I don’t even really pay attention to the food,” Solway said. “I pay attention to how I feel.”
“For me, a large part of Santé is having people feel seen,” he added. “I want people to walk in and feel like, even if they haven’t met me, we’ve known each other a long time.”
The challenge with pop-ups, he said, is their fleeting nature.
“Sometimes it’s like capturing lightning,” Solway said. “This is a way to capture it.”
