Waltz brings Italian cooking to a far corner of South Philly

Whitman, in deep South Philadelphia near the Walt Whitman Bridge, is a neighborhood long fluent in wings, roast pork sandwiches, and beers. It’s now making room for chicken parm on a silver platter, house-made tortellini with mushroom and sage, plates of crunchy fritto misto for the table, fluffy negroni sours and blackberry-sage margaritas at the bar, and reservations booked on OpenTable.

The two-level dining room and small bar fill up quickly at 5 p.m. at Waltz, which opened in early May at Front and Ritner. It’s part of a small burst of new but casual arrivals nearby: the Angelo’s Pizzeria offshoot around the corner, and Wolf Burger, up the block, where spiked shakes ride shotgun with wings and sandwiches.

Waltz owner Joe Dougherty, 25, knows the neighborhood well. His family’s business, Dougherty Electric, is nearby. In September 2024, he acquired the property, formerly a corner bar called Anthony’s Crab House.

Anthony’s had seen better days. “At first, we thought about keeping it more of a dive bar,” Dougherty said. After poking around, he and his family decided that the place was falling apart. “As it evolved, we realized we wanted to make it more of a restaurant,” he said. “Around here, most places are bars first and restaurants second. We wanted the opposite: to focus on food.”

The result feels like a nostalgic South Philly supper club — Saloon meets Bomb Bomb Bar, perhaps — with dark oak, stained glass, glowing pendant lamps, and a touch of nautical items.

Dougherty, who handles office work, drawings, and CAD for the family company, sketched the rough layout. He had no restaurant experience; his fiancée, Celine Tobin, did. A Temple tourism and hospitality graduate, Tobin worked in food and beverage at the Union League Golf Club in Torresdale.

There’s a crackerjack crew from the fine-dining world in the kitchen, led by chef Sergio Mateo, whose resume includes Ambra and Whetstone. The sous chefs have worked at Lacroix and Enswell, and the kitchen’s discipline shows up in the mozzarella that’s made fresh before service and discarded at the end of the night. Burrata is also made from scratch, as are desserts, like gelato and tiramisu.

The approach is intentionally direct: Italian American food built for the neighborhood, not a concept trying to out-clever itself.

The spaghetti and meatballs recipe began with Dougherty’s father, Gus, before getting tweaks from the kitchen. The chicken parm, a whopping 8 to 10 ounces, comes out on a silver platter, with its spaghetti tucked neatly underneath.

Dougherty is remembering Anthony’s long-ago crab nights. The kitchen uses whole crabs, turning the bodies into a crab ragout for lumache pasta, while lump crab meat is mixed with Ritz crackers, vegetables, and mayo, then topped with butter and more crackers for the 3-ounce stuffed crabs — somewhere between crab imperial and a crab cake. Served two to an order, they seem to hit every table.

The fritto misto grew out of a desire to do something more interesting than standard calamari with marinara. Waltz’s version includes calamari, shrimp, broccolini, squash blossoms, and fried lemon — some breaded traditionally, while others are done tempura-style for a mix of textures. The lemon? Some love it. Some do not.

Pizzas, from a Mario Acunto wood oven, are made from a dough that leans mostly sourdough and ferments for 48 hours.

There’s a whole branzino, roasted in the oven, and topped with tomato and caper vinaigrette for $32. The splurge is a 14-ounce New York strip with smashed fingerling potatoes, roasted garlic, and black pepper jus for $50.

At the small bar, the list is familiar: Besides the fluffy negroni sours and blackberry-sage margaritas, there are espresso martinis, old-fashioneds, and cosmos.

The name, fittingly, took a turn. Dougherty had wanted to call the place Walt’s, a nod to the neighborhood and the bridge, but old-timers he had consulted thought it seemed too reminiscent of Walt’s King of Crabs, the long-ago Queen Village destination. Tobin suggested swapping the S for a Z.

“As the renovation got nicer and classier, Waltz made sense,” Dougherty said. “Like the ballroom dance.”

Waltz, 2531 S. Front St. Hours: 5 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday.