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Restaurant odds and ends

When is Union Trust opening? What's going on at Second and Market? And what's with the Gold Standard?

    by Michael Klein
    Published 

  1. Union Trust, the steakhouse at 717 Chestnut St., is revising its much-revised opening date. Partner Ed Doherty says the plan is to open soft on Friday (2.13) -- walk-ins only, don't fill the dining room, take it easy -- and to go full steam on Saturday -- Valentine's Day.

  2. Luca Sena, owner of the Penn's View Inn and Ristorante Panorama, is awaiting building permits for his plan to transform the humble Snow White diner at Second and Market Streets, smack across from The Continental and next door to Cube Libre, into something new. And something he steadfastly refuses to talk about. (Ah. Snow White. The eighth dwarf must be named Cagey.) All I've heard is that it will have a second floor and outdoor deck. Sena recently ordered the removal of those ugly billboards from the roof (see below). Meanwhile, Sena says that with the economy, business has never been better at the Snow White. So why tinker with it? He chuckled.

  3. Sunday (2/15) will be the last day of Abbraccio (847 S. 47th St.) as Roger Harman and partner Vincent Whittacre have sold to Benny Lai, owner of the Vietnam Cafe and Fu Wah grocery store next door and Vietnam restaurant in Chinatown. Vietnam Cafe's expansion into the rest of the space, which will come with a liquor license, is months out. Harman and Whittacre are opening The Gold Standard Cafe at 4800 Baltimore Ave., hopefully by mid-March. It'll be a BYOB/coffee shop with breakfast/lunch/coffee (in a front room -- real cooked breakfasts, seven days a week) , plus comfort-foot dinners in a rear dining room Wednesdays through Sundays. (The Gold Standard was the name of the popular Penn campus eatery that Harman and his late partner Duane Ball ran for many years.)

    MK
    Michael Klein