Royal Cracovia opens
After nearly two years and $3.5 million, developer Stanislaw "Stosh" Stachowski has opened Royal Cracovia, his Eastern Euro restaurant/bakery/banquet hall in Magnolia, Camden County (510 S. White Horse Pike, Magnolia, 856-282-3300; www.royalcracovia.com). It's across from Magnolia Garden Village.
After nearly two years and $3.5 million, developer Stanislaw "Stosh" Stachowski has opened Royal Cracovia, his Eastern Euro restaurant/bakery/banquet hall in Magnolia, Camden County (510 S. White Horse Pike, Magnolia, 856-282-3300; www.royalcracovia.com). It's across from Magnolia Garden Village.
Dinner is served from a menu roughly as large as a phone book; breakfast and lunch are to debut Friday.
One of the most intriguing aspects is something the public won't see: a pierogi lab in the basement.
It's electric
The Shake Shack that opened Monday at Goddard and Mall Boulevards in King of Prussia is the burger chain's second to have a solar-paneled roof. Company officials say it will provide 10 percent of the shop's electricity.
Empire building
Steve Cook and Michael Solomonov, slinging fried chicken and doughnuts on the 1600 block of Sansom Street with Federal Donuts, are opening two restaurants side by side across the street. Dizengoff, named after the Tel Aviv boulevard, will be a casual, 25-seat hummusiya. (Think Zahav Ultra-Light.) It will offer varieties of hummus with fresh-baked pita bread, condiments, and pickles. In addition to nonalcoholic drinks, it will serve a small beer list and be open seven days a week for lunch, early dinner, and takeout.
Abe Fisher will be a modest, 50-seat dinner house serving the cuisine of the Jewish diaspora - in short, the non-Israeli Jewish cooking found in such places as Montreal, New York, France, Hungary, and Italy, along with a full bar. The menu will be set up with small plates or as a tayim (tasting) menu.
The restaurants, due in early 2014, will take the space at the Sansom (1605-27 Sansom St.) that had been earmarked for the D.C.-based steak chain Medium Rare. That deal now sits in Common Pleas Court.
Pie guys
North Wayne Avenue in Wayne may be in for a pizza duel. Frank Nattle of Phoenixville's Vecchia Pizzeria Napoletana signed a letter of intent for a second spot at 134 N. Wayne Ave. just as Pino DiMeo and Scott Stein inked an deal at 133 N. Wayne Ave. DiMeo and his son, Antimo, run Pizzeria DiMeo in Andorra Shopping Center. With Stein, a restaurateur and associate who had been planning a restaurant of his own in Chestnut Hill, they have earmarked the retail space as Mozzeria. It will be an osteria, Stein says, so the pizza will be only part of the show. Vecchia, by contrast, limits the menu to pizza. There's no timeline for either project.