Townsend restaurant in South Philly closes temporarily due to fire
The elegant French restaurant on East Passyunk Ave., is once again temporarily closed for the next few months — this time, due to a fire in a nearby building.
Townsend, the elegant French restaurant on East Passyunk Avenue, is once again temporarily closed for the next few months, this time due to a fire.
A fire that started in the kitchen of the second floor apartment of 1621 East Passyunk — the building directly adjacent to Townsend, at 1623 East Passyunk — occurred on Saturday night. The kitchen staff smelled smoke coming from outside of the kitchen around 8 p.m.and called the fire department, which quickly evacuated Townsend of both staff and diners.
“It got really bad really quick,” said chef-owner Townsend Wentz, who purchased the building about four years ago. “When the fire department came, they couldn’t get to where the fire was so they came through the restaurant, dragging half a dozen hoses onto the second floor, third floor, and onto our roof to let loose on the building next door.”
Firefighters also opened up Townsend’s walls and ceiling to ensure the fire did not spread. “They sprayed water into the joist pockets and walls, which collapsed the drywall and all the work we just did,” said Wentz.
The disaster comes not even three months after the restaurant, which earned three bells when Craig LaBan re-reviewed it in 2020, reopened for Valentine’s Day this year, after a burst pipe prompted extensive renovations.
“Right before Christmas during that cold snap, we burst a pipe in our second floor kitchen — a window was left cracked — and it flooded the kitchen and first floor and damaged the basement,” said Wentz. “We rushed to reopen for Valentine’s Day. We put in new floors, wall repairs, and new fixtures.”
After Saturday’s events, the ceilings in the restaurant have once again collapsed and the new floors have buckled.
“We’re going to be closed at least double what the last one was, and that was two months,” Wentz said. “We’re going to have to replace everything.”
No injuries were reported, and all of Townsend’s employees will be given temporary positions at Wentz’s other restaurants: Caribou Cafe, Oloroso, and Oltremare. “No one is going to be put out,” said Wentz.
“The upside is that the fire didn’t spread, no one got hurt, everything can be fixed.”
Wentz has not yet received the fire report, so a cause of the fire is not yet known.
A survey of the scene by the Inquirer on Wednesday showed reconstruction crews at work in both Townsend’s space and that of T&N fitness center, the front-facing storefront of the building next door. T&N’s windows have been boarded up, and Townsend’s are covered in plastic.
Townsend is Wentz’s first restaurant, which he opened in April 2014 and operated for about eight years before purchasing the building. “We survived the pandemic, we survived a [temporary] move [to Rittenhouse], we survived a burst pipe, and we’ll survive this,” he said.
