Vernick Alums Unite to Open Italian-Inspired Corio in University City

A rendering of the bar at Corio / Rendering by Eimer Design

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. We’ve got a bunch of big news happening this week — including (but not limited to) new openings in University City, Rittenhouse, South Philly, and two in Fishtown, plus the end of a 10-year run for a classic in Mount Airy. So let’s get right into it and kick things off this week with …

Three Vernick Veterans Walk Into a Bar …

David Feola used to be chef at Ember & Ash. James Smith has spent nearly 15 years working at bars and restaurants around Philly. Ryan Mulholland is currently director of ops for CookNSolo.

Know what all three of these guys have in common? They all came up through Greg Vernick’s first restaurant, Vernick Food & Drink — one of those foundational restaurants of Philly’s second-wave food-splosion. Vernick was one of those restaurants you just had to go to back in 2012 or 2015. A place where things were happening all the time. Even now, it remains one of the best restaurants in a city full of great restaurants, but an entire generation of front and back-of-house staff cut their teeth at Vernick — and Feola, Smith and Mulholland were just three of them.

And now, all three of them are throwing in together to open a restaurant of their own.

Corio is what it’s going to be called — a restaurant inspired by Italian modernism, serving pizza, pasta and chicken riggies, and named after the “Corio Lounge” at Eastern Standard which is where Mulholland and his wife Dani first met back in the day.

It’s opening at 3675 Market Street, in the uCity Square development, with lunch and dinner services, private dining, a full wine and cocktail program, and a menu meant for capturing the maximum number of eyeballs right from the start.

“We chose to open the restaurant in uCity Square to welcome folks grabbing dinner on the way home from work, ordering takeout on a Tuesday night, celebrating a special occasion in our private dining room, enjoying a fun weekend out, or cheering on Philly sports at the bar with an elevated menu. We hope Corio becomes a go-to spot for every kind of night,” according to Mulholland. And the menu is scaled for that — offering everything from sandwiches at lunch to handmade pastas from Feola, pizzas, small plates, and a custom cocktail list from Smith focusing on seasonal and approachable drinks, plus a curated selection of amaro.

There’ll be counter-ordering, mobile pickups, a 42-seat dining room, and 14 more at the bar. Hours will be 11 a.m. until 9 p.m., seven days a week, and though there’s no hard opening date yet, word is the team is still targeting this spring, so it’ll have to be pretty soon.

That’s just one of the openings I’ve got for you this week.

Meanwhile, Over in Fishtown…

The bar at Percy / Photograph by Mike Prince

First, we heard about the team from Forîn (Seth Kligerman, Kyle Horne, and Will Landicho) hitting us with a big surprise opening at the Urby apartments this week. Then there was a tease from the crew at Ambler’s Forest & Main Brewing, who are looking to partner up with someone on a new Fishtown project they’ve got in the works. So let’s take these one at a time.

To start, there’s Percy: a 4,000-square-foot, 110-seat combination restaurant, bar, lounge, and listening room that’s opening this Friday on the ground floor of the Urby apartments at 1700 North Front Street.

Yeah, I said this Friday. As in three days from now.

Three things I like about Percy right off the bat? One, it’s named after a soundtrack album done by The Kinks, and The Kinks are one of Horne and Kligerman’s favorite bands. Respect. Two, they’ve got Jack Smith (ex of a.kitchen) running the kitchen. And three, Smith is putting together a killer brunch and dinner menu that’s all ricotta pancakes with cinnamon sugar compound butter, a chopped cheese burger with giardiniera and house-made hot sauce, his own Philly version of a croque monsieur assembled from roast pork, broccoli rabe, provolone and an egg, crab croquettes, duck fat fries, and dulce de leche beignets. Seriously, I’ve seen the whole list and there’s nothing on it I don’t want to eat right now.

Babka French toast at Percy / Photograph by Mike Prince

So we’re talking a rock-and-roll pedigree, some vintage ’70s inspiration, interior design by the team (Shawn Hausman Design) that worked with Starr on Parc and Dandelion, and brunch every day. Nice, right?

But that’s not all.

Because it sometimes seems like nothing can just be one thing anymore, Percy isn’t just a brunch-and-dinner restaurant set in the base of a luxury apartment building. No, in keeping with those ’70s vibes, it’s also got a full-on “Sound Lounge” with a fireplace, a circular DJ booth, a top-of-the-line sound system and its own food and cocktail menu for late-night vinyl parties.

Service will be seven days a week, with the brunch menu served from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day, dinner on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., and the sound lounge open on those same nights until midnight. Reservations are open now. Opening night is this Friday.

Meanwhile, it looks like the crew from Forest & Main in Ambler is looking for someone to partner up with on a new mystery project in Fishtown. I saw this on their Instagram yesterday:

“Hey! We are looking to partner up with someone to run the food side of a really exciting new space in Fishtown.

So, I guess that’s an announcement of sorts. Surprise!

Anyway, are you an existing restaurant that wants to expand? Are you a fan of ours with a favorite restaurant, food truck, or ghost kitchen you’d like to see us share a space with? Let us know.

Either way, see you soon, Philly!”

So yes, the F&M team has a space in Fishtown, too. They’ve obviously got the beer side handled, but are looking for someone to get a kitchen up and running. Which, to me, sounds pretty obviously like a Forest & Main brewpub coming to Fishtown.

That’s all I know at the moment. But as always, you’ll know more as soon as I know more.

Now for some sad news …

Jansen Is Shutting Down

Photograph courtesy of Jansen

The review I wrote of Jansen back when it first opened back in 2016 will always be one of my favorites. It exists like a flag marking a certain point in my history, chef-owner David Jansen’s history, and the history of Philly’s food scene in general.

“That habit of verticality. The urge to give food a clean frame and the drama of height that, to a certain generation of cooks and chefs, screams siren-loud of a certain time and place along the developmental spectrum of American cuisine. A simpler and more innocent time when all most of us knew how to do was steal and run endless, looping riffs on dishes we’d already cooked a million times. Before fluid gels and reverse-sphericalization. Before modernism and the (flawed) notion that every schoolboy cook is a budding Thomas Keller whose genius must be coddled and allowed to flourish in tasting menus and televised cooking contests. Before tweezers.

David Jansen has, apparently, never left that place. And to me, that’s awesome, because someone has to stay behind to defend that turf—to labor on as a disciple of a cuisine that was vanishing from the scene even before he did.”

What Jansen was doing way-back-when was not a riff or an homage, but a continuation of a style of American cooking that’d come straight from where I was born as a cook. And I loved it.

As the years passed, Jansen evolved. Menus changed, tastes shifted, and his kitchen (slowly) shifted with them without ever giving up that bone-deep sense of having carried forward all the best lessons of decades spent as an astute observer of the industry. The duck confit now came attended by Mission figs and hazelnut, the halibut and asparagus tips with a crab and brie arancini; but there was still this love for architectural plating and melded sauces, for classic technique and stacked ingredients.

Anyway, Jansen lasted 10 years. It deserves 20 more.

But it looks like the chef (and some of his crew) are heading to take over the kitchen at the Whitemarsh Valley Country Club — which has a sting of irony to it because, in that same review, I quoted my wife, Laura, as saying she’d already eaten enough country club food in her life and didn’t understand why I was taking her to go eat more.

Still, for those of you (like me) who are sad to see the place wind down, there’s at least some silver lining here. Jansen won’t be closing until after the summer is done (likely sometime in September), so we’ll all have a chance to get there one more time before the lights go out for good.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

La Jefa’s sign / Photograph by Kae Lani Palmisano

In case y’all missed it, Maddy got to hang out with Dan Suro and talk to him about the legacy of Tequilas and the new addition, La Jefa, Philly’s newest “Guadaladelphia” cafe and agave bar.

Back in March, I talked with Dan about the reopening of Tequilas two years after it was shut down by a fire. Back then, he was only willing to make a kind of glancing reference to the concept that was going to be taking up half of the old Tequilas space. He talked about a brunch place that turned into a cocktail bar at night. About Mexican hoagies and Guadalajaran flavors. He knew he was going to call it La Jefa, but didn’t want to say too much because, back then, he wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be yet.

But now he knows. And now, La Jefa is almost ready to open. You can read all about it right here.

Over in Headhouse Square, chef Nich Bazik is switching things up a little bit at Provenance, the ambitious (and highly personal) he opened last year. See, he’s changing reservation platforms, moving exclusively to OpenTable as of June 1st. And he’s offering an exclusive prix-fixe option during the transition — essentially $175 for Wednesday and Thursday night dinners through the end of May, with seating at the chef’s counter, and options available for second and third courses.

Then, beginning in June, Bazik will be starting a Tuesday night dinner series called “Nich at Night” (lol), which will basically be him alone in the kitchen, cooking for a single seating, serving five courses (plus one of pastry chef Abby Dahan’s desserts) all heavily influenced by his Sunday shopping trips to the Headhouse Square Farmers Market. What you’re basically looking at is a non-sushi omakase menu, served at the counter, solely by the chef responsible for it. Dinner will start at 7 p.m. and run you $150.

Reservations are available here.

Ange Branca has an incredible way of keeping Kampar kicking. Last week, the Kampar team took over the kitchen at Middle Child Clubhouse, and next week, they’re doing it again at Oyster House. On Monday, May 12th from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., they’re hosting Mamak Monday at Oyster House and will be serving up nasi lemak with assorted lauk and cocktails. Tickets are $30 per person and you can grab them here. In addition to Mamak Monday, the Kampar team is putting together another Muhibbah dinner on June 2nd, this time at Sor Ynéz. The dinner will feature dishes from chefs Alex Tellez of Sor Ynéz, Dionicio Jiménez of Cantina La Martina and La Baja in Ambler, Amy Rivera-Nassa of Amy’s Pastelillos, Jason Okdeh of Farina Di Vita, and Chad Durkin of Porco’s Porchetteria, Small Oven Pastry, and Breezy’s Deli. Proceeds from the event will go toward The Welcoming Center which helps create economic opportunity and build agency for immigrants of all backgrounds. Seats for this sell out fast, so if you want to spend an evening with all of these chefs and support a great cause, get your tickets now. They’re $160 per person and you can snag them here.

And finally, if you’re looking for something to do pre-Mother’s Day, this Saturday, May 10th, will be the combined Roxborough Spring Fest and Rockin’ the Ridge Car Show. So there’ll be beer, live music, circus performers, an art show, local vendors, shiny cars, mini-golf — it’s a huge deal. And the food? There’ll be BBQ, tacos, momo, fried chicken and waffles, gourmet popsicles, cheesesteaks, funnel cakes, and everything else you need to make it feel like almost-summer.

The festival is promising three dozen food trucks, restaurants and breweries to keep everyone well-fed and hydrated during the festivities. The Spring Fest/Car Show starts at noon and runs until 6 p.m. All the details you need can be found right here.