Rooster’s Brings New Life to the Old Keswick Tavern

The wings at Rooster’s Glenside / Photograph courtesy of Rooster’s Glenside

Step into Rooster’s — the new Stove & Co. restaurant that opened in the former home of the beloved Keswick Tavern — and the first thing you notice is the TV.

It is massive, sharp, nearly the length of the entire back wall. It’s so big that when the brightness of whatever’s on screen changes, the light levels in the bar change with it. It’s so big, it can turn night to day.

Outside, it was gray, ugly, and damp, but at Rooster’s, early on a weeknight, they had that big TV tuned to a Premier League game, sound low, men in red and men in white playing on a field so green you almost felt like you could jump right through the screen and roll around on it.

But Rooster’s isn’t a sports bar. Not really. Not any more than it is an English pub (even though it serves a decent shepherd’s pie) or a cocktail bar (even though they make their own ginger soda for the Dark & Stormy and sling dirty freezer martinis with blue-cheese-stuffed olives). It is, from the bones out, a Stove & Co. restaurant, which means that it isn’t any one thing entirely but is actually everything, all at the same time, which has long been Stove & Co.’s best trick for attracting fans.

So the kitchen does deviled eggs and baked clams; deep-fried cheese curds in a lacy, light, and salty batter that I could eat all day long; and a gussied-up cheesesteak smeared with long hot mayo. While the broadcast switched to a sunny spring training game in Florida, I ate shrimp and round slices of andouille sausage over smooth and creamy grits, topped with a spicy hash of shredded and chile-fried Brussels sprouts that added little to the plate but texture and a sense that this was something more than just shrimp and grits. More than the same old thing you’d find on 20 other menus in 20 other cities.

Rooster’s was fun, friendly, loud, crowded. It was a quintessential neighborhood bar, at least in the time I spent there. And I didn’t love everything. The burger was uninspired — a double patty with yellow American, too little burger sauce, brioche that tasted like chewy air, pickles I threw away — and the honey-sriracha wings were tasteless, just heat and no flavor. But I liked the intent of the place. Because Rooster’s is the clean, well-lighted place for a neighborhood that lost an iconic one, stepping into shoes it knows may take years to grow into.

And Stove & Co. knows exactly how that game goes, what’s required of them, and how to be a little bit of everything for everyone who drops by.

2 Stars — Come if you’re in the neighborhood

Rating Key

0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Stepping Into Big Shoes” in the May 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.