High Street Hospitality Opens the Bread Room With Pastries, Classes, and More

Inside The Bread Room / Photograph by Stu Goldenberg

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the weekly Foobooz food news round-up. Just a few quick things to get through this week, including (but not limited to) hoagie martinis, a big move for Amma’s, opening details on The Bread Room, and pizza night at The Bakery. So let’s get right into it, shall we? We’ll kick things off this week with …

Ellen Yin Soft Opens The Bread Room

So here’s some surprising news: Ellen Yin and her team at High Street Hospitality are launching The Bread Room, an “innovative new bakery, workshop, and event space showcasing the next chapter of baking expertise,” and they’re opening today.

Well, technically yesterday. But today is the official start of the soft-launch, with limited hours (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and service, with a grand opening (and normal hours) set to begin on October 20th. Oh, and also they’ll be giving away tote bags to the first 100 customers on the 20th. But that’s less interesting to me than what The Bread Room is planning for regular service.

This new project is being hyped as a “bakery and community workshop” with daytime menus full of fresh baked goods and sandwiches and a nighttime schedule of baking classes, a visiting baker series, holiday baking experiences, and private events.

“Bakeries are historically a gathering place for communities,” says Yin. “Whether it’s grabbing a cup of coffee on your way to work, a place to randomly run into your neighbors, saying hello to the barista who remembers your order, or even a place where like-minded individuals might meet — bakeries connect people. We’re all craving a little connection these days. Our workshops and classes further this sentiment, and we’re eager to share our expertise with our community.”

The Bread Room will be under the command of High Street’s exec chef Christina McKeough and head baker Kyle Wood. There’s seating for 19 at a communal table, and the whole place will basically operate on a split schedule. During the day, drop by for 20 different handmade viennoiseries and baked goods, fresh bread, whole-grain sourdough loaves, and stacked sandwiches like ham and pickle butter on a demi-baguette or pastrami on a rye croissant.

And the pastry menu looks even better, with tahini-honeycomb crullers, shakshuka danish, S-shaped croissants with matcha pastry cream, smoked vanilla and rosemary cream tartlets, and scratch-made riffs on Pop-Tarts, beginning with “Last Summer’s Blueberry and Blue Basil” on the opening board.

In the evenings, they’re promising a full schedule of classes covering everything from basic baking to pizza making, bagels, pastry, kids’ baking classes, holiday baking, and more.

Altogether, it looks like a very cool project that’s just getting started. And that bakery menu is killer. So if you want to keep up with everything that’s going on at The Bread Room, you can do that here, or over on their Instagram.

Amma’s Makes a Small Jump Into a Big New Space

Amma’s Photograph by Mike Prince

Partners Sathish Varadhan and Balakrishnan Duraisamy opened the first Amma’s South Indian Cuisine location almost 10 years ago in Voorhees. The first spot was small, with seating for maybe 25 people, and had a menu to match.

Two years later, they came to Philly, snapped up a space at 15th and Chestnut and doubled their footprint: 60 seats now, and a liquor license but no bar. I reviewed that place back in the spring of 2019 and loved it. And in the following years, Amma’s continued expanding, adding a UCity location in 2022, another in Maple Shade in 2024 (which would later become their commissary kitchen), and a new one in Mount Laurel this past February.

But for the past couple years (since November of 2023, actually), Varadhan and Duraisamy have been quietly working to turn the old Max Brenner space at 1500 Walnut Street into the new Rittenhouse home for Amma’s. And now it looks like they’re just about done.

Friday, October 24th is going to be the big day. The 15th and Chestnut location will shut down, and operations will move right around the corner to the new Amma’s at 15th and Walnut. The new space will add 80 seats, including 30 at an actual bar, bringing the total capacity up to 140 — more than double the size of the former spot. There’s also a brand-new kitchen centered around a big charcoal grill and tandoori oven, new menu items, and a seven-day-a-week schedule with lunch and dinner services running from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. all week and service ’til midnight on Friday and Saturday nights.

“This is a move we’ve been excited about for nearly two years,” according to Varadhan. “Our Chestnut Street location has been really busy since we opened, and we’ve always dreamed about increasing our size and being able to not only serve more guests, but to do so in a more refined, formal space. We’ve gone through quite an expansion this past year, and there’s still more to come, but this is the biggest move we’ve made since launching. We are very excited about our future at 15th and Walnut streets.”

Speaking of the future, this little jump into a big, new space isn’t the end of the news coming out of the Amma’s group because they’ve still got another opening planned. Since early last year, the partners have been working on getting something up and running in Newtown, out in Bucks County, possibly in the space formerly occupied by Zoe’s Corner at 280 North Sycamore Street. Allegedly, that opening is currently planned for “later this year,” though, honestly, with the new space opening in a couple days, an entire staff to move around the corner, a new kitchen to break in, and all the complications that can come with launching a new restaurant (even one that’s essentially a clone of an existing one), there just ain’t a lot of year left.

Still, I’ll be keeping an eye on Amma’s. You’ll know more when I know more.

Now what else is happening this week …

The Bakery Makes Friday Pizza Night a Regular Thing

Pizza from The Bakery / Photograph by Gab Bonghi

I’ve already told y’all about The Bakery — chef Rocco Weiss’s combination cafe/doughnut shop/weekly pizza party in South Philly. And I’ve told you about his after-hours blind-tasting dinners, too. But now it looks like Weiss is formalizing his whole “Friday Pizza Night” take-out idea and turning it into a regular, dependable service with dine-in and take-out available every week.

It works like this: Every week, Weiss does four different focaccia-based, Sicilian-style pies and one starter. He’ll do no more than 40 pizzas total, and the new menu will drop every Thursday at noon on The Bakery’s Instagram. At that point, you — the pizza-eating public — gets to call dibs. Weiss does two signature pies (a plain with mozzarella, parm, basil, and his grandmother’s red gravy instead of traditional sauce; and a white with ricotta-garlic crema, mozzarella and Zanzibar peppercorn) and a bunch of specials.

The 40 pies sell out fast, and are then available for pick-up or dine-in starting at 6:30 p.m. every Friday. So you can grab your pizza and run, or you can hang out, bring a bottle and eat right there. The Bakery can only seat 16 inside currently, so plan accordingly.

What started as a pandemic-era side-hustle slinging pizzas out of his house in South Philly turned into a kind of recurring take-out experiment as Weiss settled into his cafe space and taught himself how to make doughnuts. Making Friday Pizza Nights a regular thing with dine-in? That’s all just part of his plan. Plus, The Bakery is also doing tomato pies every Sunday, so keep that in mind, too.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Art in the Age’s Hoagie Martini will make an appearance at Liberty Kitchen on October 25th. / Photograph by Quaker City Mercantile

We already talked about pizza this week, so it seems only right that we also slide in some hoagie news, too. And I’ve got two different stories that are both … cool?

First, if you’ve ever thought to yourself. Sure, hoagies are great and all, but what if they were alcoholic? then I have some very good news for you because the crew from Art In The Age is partnering with Liberty Kitchen for a one-day-only hoagie martini collab. Yes, you read that right: a hoagie martini.

Basically, AITA is doing a martini made with their own vodka washed in Genoa salami fat, Cinzano vermouth, and drops of olive oil, garnished with a skewered slice of Liberty Kitchen’s Italian Salumeria hoagie (cured meats, creamy balsamic dressing, mild provolone, lettuce, tomato, onion, and hellish pepper relish). It’s insane, sure. But in a very Philly kind of way, so I dig it.

The Hoagie Martini will run you $13 and will only be available at Liberty Kitchen on October 25th, from noon to 5 p.m. After that, it’ll only be a memory. A weird, oily memory.

Hoagie News Item #2: It looks like South Philly-born Primo Hoagies will officially be getting a slot on the “Founded In Philly” roster at the airport’s PHL Food & Shops. Joining locals like FedNuts, Middle Child, Elixr, and Oyster House, the opening of the airport location is scheduled for sometime in winter 2026.

Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of Pennsylvania wines, the crew at Pray Tell Winery are hosting an all-PA wine event they’re calling “Rising Tides” in celebration of Pennsylvania Wine Month (which is October, in case you didn’t know). On Sunday, October 26th, from 2 to 5 p.m., they’ll be pouring 20-plus PA wines, with accompanying cheese and charcuterie, and talking about the local wine scene. Tickets are $30 and you can get more information right here.

On the same day, Ange Branca and Kampar will be hosting an Ikan Bakar Grilled Fish Market pop-up at Jet Wine Bar from 4 to 9 p.m. The Kampar crew will be transforming the garden at Jet into a whole fish-market experience and letting people wander through, pick out fish and sambal from “market stands,” and then have it cooked whole and served right there in the garden.

If that feels too interactive for you, there’ll also be a more formal tasting a several different market fish inside, at the bar, with two seatings of 10 people each, at 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.

Either way you want to do it, you’re going to need reservations. You can get ’em right here.

And then, later that week, chef Nich Bazik has two collab dinners on the books at Provenance. First, he’s got chef Ron McKinlay coming in for a special, multi-course prix-fixe dinner on October 28th that’ll be just Bazik, McKinlay, and pastry chef Abby Dahan.

Then McKinlay is sticking around for a second event on the 29th — a “Fourteen Hand Dinner” honoring late chef Jim Burke and benefiting the foundation his wife is working with: Twist Out Cancer. They’re calling it “Fourteen Hand” because they’ve got seven chefs all working together on a single, multi-course dinner: McKinlay, Bazik, Alex Kemp (My Loup), Eli Collins (a.kitchen), Evan Snyder (Emmett), Tim Dearing (Ūle), and Greg Heitzig (The Fountain Inn; former CDC of Pineapple and Pearls in Washington D.C.), with Dahan stepping in once again to handle the pastry.

The price tag on the Fourteen Hand dinner is steep ($395 per person, not counting tax, tip, or drinks), but all profits are going to the foundation, so it’s for a good cause. Reservations for both nights are available here if you’re down.