Philly’s Most Exciting New Bars and Restaurants to Watch in 2026

Happy Monday Hospitality’s Susan Freeman, Heather Annechiarico, and Chris Fetfatzes plan to open Liquorette, a new “luxury, European-style cocktail bar” in the space above WineDive in Rittenhouse. / Photograph by Mike Prince

This past year hasn’t been easy. Not for anyone. But you wanna know the absolute best thing about 2025? It’s finally over.

It’s a brand new year now. And one of the great things about the new year is that right now — in this rare and quiet moment — everything about 2026 is pure potential. Anything is possible. Sitting here, looking nowhere but forward, we can make plans, concoct schemes, dream about a million different possibilities. And for me, those plans always seem to involve restaurants.

And I know that to some people dreaming about dining out might seem small and insignificant. I mean, it’s just dinner, right? But I would argue that food is all-encompassing. That the restaurant industry, the people in it, the comfort it offers, and the joy it creates are all vital to both our sense of community and the actual communities where we live and eat. That dining out, however and wherever you choose to do it, is self-care. It is willfully slowing down and disconnecting from the Matrix for a couple hours to experience something that requires all your senses and, in the best cases, demands your complete and undivided attention. Sometimes it means sharing space with people and practicing our good manners out in public. Sometimes it’s about sitting with ourselves and being comfortable in our own company. It is saying that art matters and craft matters, and whether it’s burgers at the bar or caviar bumps among the swells, the artists and craftspeople around you matter, too. Also, usually there are drinks. And that’s always nice.

So happy 2026 to everyone. Here’s a look at some of the places where we might all be sharing meals together in the months to come.

Greg Vernick’s Third Act — Emilia

Chefs Meri Medoway and Greg Vernick making pasta. / Photograph by Liz Barclay

Greg Vernick hasn’t opened a new restaurant in Philly since 2019, when he first unlocked the doors at Vernick Fish — a kind of dreamy mash-up of grown-up dining and Shore vibes. But now, inspired by the energy and vitality of the booming Kensington/Fishtown corridor that reminded him of his early days in New York’s East Village (plus a few research trips to Italy), he’s coming back strong in a new neighborhood with this entirely new Italian concept that’s going to have “the energy and everydayness of a neighborhood destination and the spirit of a trattoria.”

There’ll be handmade pastas and a complimentary bread service, 80 seats, and space in the lounge for neighborhood walk-ins. It’s a restaurant that is both traditional (there are recipes inspired by dishes he’s eaten all over Italy) and of-the-moment. Both identifiably Vernick-ian (there’ll be a wood-fired grill in the kitchen, from which so many of his best ideas have sprung), and done in collaboration with his long-time chef de cuisine, Meri Medoway, who’ll be handling the day-to-day.

Seeing a big name like Vernick’s attached to a Kensington address is definitely a sign that 2026 is going to be another big year in one of the city’s most interesting neighborhoods.

Food for (and by) The Common Man — Recipe

This is the new 175-seat restaurant coming to Broad and Arch where the menu is being determined by a reality competition show/docuseries and is executed by a guy who designed menus for Bennigan’s. The pitch involves people submitting their family recipes and competing for a slot on the final menu, and there is literally nothing about this concept that I don’t hate.

But am I gonna go? Oh, absolutely. Because there’s a chance that I’m 100 percent wrong and the whole thing will be just as charming and moving and wholesome as the owners want us to believe it is rather than a completely contrived and reality-adjacent Real Home Cooks of Philadelphia stunt restaurant.

The Out-of-Towners — Pig & Khao and Ayat

Pig & Khao will be taking over the old Martha space while Ayat will occupy the former Roxy Theater. / Photographs by Ted Nghiem and C. Smyth for Visit Philadelphia

One of them is a pork-tastic Thai/Filipino/Mexican/Chinese restaurant from a former Top Chef star. The other is a Palestinian soul-food restaurant with modern inspirations and wood-fired pizzas. Both are New York transplants who have learned over the past year (or two) how complicated opening restaurants in Philly can be for those not steeped from birth in the particular nuances of doing business in this city.

Still, both spots are promising 2026 openings — Pig & Khao in the former Martha space in Kensington, and Ayat at the old Roxy Theater in Rittenhouse — and both of them already have a jump on what I believe is going to be a land rush of out-of-market operators trying to make a nickel off of Philly’s sudden culinary darling status.

Will it work? Who knows. But both of these places are solid operations with really interesting menus, so I’m excited to see how it plays out. Philly is not always kind to carpetbaggers, but we’ve seen a couple recent successes with out-of-town talent putting down roots here (notably Ogawa), and I believe 2026 is going to be a huge year for these kinds of announcements.

The Next Chapter — Three Unnamed Concepts From Michael Schulson

At this point, Michael Schulson is basically the Taylor Swift of Philly’s restaurant scene. He has a million restaurants. Some of them are excellent. Even the non-excellent ones can still be fun if you’re in a crowd. Every one of them is unique, yet, at the same time, kinda hauntingly similar. And no matter how long he’s been on the scene, dude just cannot stop making new ones.

Last year, he promised three (or maybe four) new restaurants down the Shore. Those all fell through.

But now, in 2026, he claims he’s got three new concepts he’s working on in Philly. One of them may (or may not) be a speakeasy. Another may (or may not) be an oyster bar. But I’m honestly curious about all three of them because, say what you will about the Schulson Collective (which currently operates more than a dozen concepts, both in and outside Philly), but the man knows how to make hits. He understands drama. No one is better at set-dressing a dining experience than him and his team. And he’s got some kind of freaky, lizard-brain understanding of boiling a concept down to its most primal elements so that you can understand everything about it at a glance. He’s no master of nuance, but not everything demands nuance. You walk into a Schulson restaurant, and you know exactly where you are — which is a very particular skill.

I have no idea if all (or any) of these restaurants will open in 2026. I think the odds are pretty good that Schulson doesn’t know either. But, as always, I curious what he might be bringing to the scene next. Because again, like Taylor, they might not all be hits, but every one of them makes some noise.

A Third Place for the Surprise Hang Outs— Lucky Duck

Okay, so this one’s kinda unusual. It’s a new restaurant from the folks behind Libertee Grounds — the combo bar/restaurant/mini-golf spot in Francisville — set to open in 2026 on the ground floor of the Rivermark apartments, overlooking the Delaware River in NoLibs. And I’m not particularly interested in the food (American, bar food, pizzas), the drinks, the vibe (deliberately millennial-coded), or anything else. All of that? Pretty standard issue, at least this far out from the actual opening.

But what I do like about the pitch for the place is that it’s being purpose-built as a third place. No reservations, no demands, just a place to drop in, hang out, and relax with friends. And while you’d think that would be a pretty common business model in the hospitality industry, these days you’d be very wrong. Small, crowded, and boutique was what everyone wanted over the past few years. Or very large and so overhyped that no one could get in. Monthly reservation drops that sold out in minutes — waitlists and lines down the block were kinda becoming this defining thing among Philly’s most successful restaurants — but just recently there’s been some pushback from new places like Emilia and Pine Street Grill, which have been designed to include space for neighbors and walk-ins.

Because if you really want to be a part of the neighborhood, you have to make space for the neighbors, right? And that’s Lucky Duck’s raison d’être, more or less. Which, being both a professional eater and seemingly constitutionally incapable of making plans in advance, I really appreciate.

The Comeback — Banshee

From left: Banshee’s bar and a plate of Barnstable oysters with dill mignonette / Photograph courtesy of Banshee

Partners Ben Puchowitz and Shawn Darragh helped to define (and bookend) an entire era of Philly’s modern restaurant history. The original Cheu Noodle Bar? It showed what a couple of guys with a small space, big ideas, and no filter could do at a moment when Philly’s restaurant scene didn’t really know what it wanted to become.

They would go on to open more restaurants (another Cheu, Bing Bing Dim Sum, Nunu), then close all of them and move on with their post-industry lives. They’d done great work, they’d made their mark, and they’d both moved on.

But …

Restaurants can be a hard habit to quit. And now Puchowitz and Darragh, along with new partners Kyle and Bryan Donovan (brothers, and both of them former Cheu/Bing Bing employees), are back with Banshee, which is interesting to me mostly for all the ways it isn’t like anything they’ve done before. The design is clean, Scandinavian simplicity. The menu is Spanish and French and a little bit North African and a little bit Japanese. There are patatas bravas, house-baked sourdough, grilled Kyoto carrot — and baked Alaska on the dessert menu. It is an oddity. Globally inspired as a whole rather than embracing a plate-by-plate fusion ethos. And it seems to be reaching toward a warm, calm, and welcoming adulthood that places like Cheu and Bing Bing existed in complete refutation of. All of which is, of course, completely fascinating to me.

Banshee opened a couple weeks ago, but I haven’t been yet, so I’m counting it as one of those places that I’m looking forward to checking out in 2026. You should, too.

Bonus Round — A Few Other Spots to Look Forward to

Chris Kearse of Forsythia is allegedly working on a new spot with a 2026 opening date. Not a lot of details on this one yet, but Kearse is a big enough name in town that I’m curious to see what he’s working on.

In other out-of-town developments, Washington, D.C.-based Knead Hospitality is coming to Philly with two new spots in the new year: Mi Vida, set to open soon on 11th Street in Center City, and Mi Casa in University City in the fall.

And finally, Heather Annechiarico and Chris Fetfatzes (of Sonny’s, WineDive, etc.) have a bunch of new things planned. The one that seems most likely to open in 2026? Liquorette, their “luxury, European-style cocktail bar” in the space above WineDive in Rittenhouse. But they’ve also got some secret concept that was supposed to open before the end of 2025, two South Philly projects, and another in Kensington — none of which have any details yet. In any case, 2026 sounds like it’s going to be a very busy year for them. I can’t wait to see what they do.