Liberty Kitchen is leaving Two Locals in University City and the team from Corio is moving in with new food ideas

Changes are coming to the taproom food menu at Two Locals Brewing Co. in University City as Liberty Kitchen has announced that its last service will be Saturday.

Two Locals owners Richard and Mengistu Koilor, who opened the city’s first Black-owned brewery a little over two years ago at 37th and Market Streets, have found a new food collaborator, and it is assuredly local: chef David Feola and his partners James Smith and Ryan Mulholland, who run Corio, the Italian restaurant next door.

Feola will not offer a Corio menu, however. They are developing a new slate — dubbed Two Locals Kitchen — that will include wings, hand pies, and skewers that reflect the Koilors’ Liberian and Jamaican backgrounds. (Mengistu was born in Liberia, while Richard was born in Philadelphia after the family moved.)

“We want to be more intentional about the food we’re offering in our space — food that feels more connected to who we are,” said Richard Koilor. “One item we’re really excited about is Jamaican codfish fritters. It’s my great-aunt’s handwritten recipe. My mom makes them — she’s really the only one in our family who still does. The recipe doesn’t even have measurements.”

Liberty Kitchen, whose menu at Two Locals included some West African flavors, has chosen to focus its operations on its Fishtown and Chestnut Hill locations, said co-owner PJ Hopkins. One shortcoming of the kitchen at Two Locals is the lack of a ventilation hood, so Liberty Kitchen West — as the location is known — could not offer its signature cutlets, such as in the kale Caesar that went viral in late 2024.

Corio’s involvement is not new. For months, it has been filling a gap on Sundays and Mondays, when Liberty Kitchen was closed. The Corio team saw it as a way to pick up extra business and introduce brewery customers to Feola’s cooking.

Because the arrangement was limited to two days a week, Corio did not bring over its full menu. Instead, it devised a few brewery-friendly items, such as a meatball hoagie.

Two Locals and the Corio team also worked together while Corio was awaiting its liquor license last year. Two Locals allowed Corio to sell Pennsylvania wines, beers, and spirits through its brewery license. Corio now has its own full license.

Two Locals Kitchen’s developing menu is centered on wings, hand pies, and skewers. Dishes under discussion include dry-rubbed wings, Cameroonian-style wings, beef patties, curry chicken patties, vegetable and callaloo patties, shrimp skewers, chicken skewers inspired by the peanut-marinated meats often served at Liberian cookouts, and suya-spiced beef skewers.

Corio expects to keep serving food at Two Locals on Sundays and Mondays after Liberty moves out, then expand to seven-day service once the kitchen is fully operational. Mulholland said the goal is to be up and running in early April.

For the Koilors, the change is less about replacing one food partner with another than about bringing the brewery’s own culinary point of view into clearer focus. “It’ll be a menu that’s a little more us,” Richard Koilor said.