Philly’s Coolest Wine Bar Is Inside a Vintage Shop

Bar Mish Mish is hosted at Ace Vintage every first Friday of the month. / Photography by Anthony Carney

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A little after 6 p.m. on a Friday night last September, I’m sitting amid a sea of mid-century furniture, drinking a Beer Beer Italian Pilsner and snacking on cubes of marinated cheddar flecked with pink peppercorns. Around me, people are sipping glasses of pét-nat or chilled red, chatting in snug corners, or picking through racks of perfectly worn sweatshirts and sherpa-lined denim jackets. It may be the most singular wine bar experience in Philadelphia, and it’s happening inside a coffee and vintage shop on 4th Street only once a month.

Bar Mish Mish is a pop-up born from an unlikely partnership between Alex Tewfik, behind South Philly Mediterranean restaurant Mish Mish, and Julian van der Steur, co-owner of Ace Outpost, the coffee and vintage shop that opened in Queen Village in November 2024. On the first Friday of every month, van der Steur, Tewfik, and Tewfik’s wife Bree Saya throw what has become, over the past year, a joyful, rollicking party. And since my first visit last fall, it’s only gotten more so. At the most recent, in early April, the line snaked out the front door and down 4th Street; a crowd of twenty-somethings clad in crusting leather jackets and the miniest miniskirts spilled onto the sidewalk and into the night.

Van der Steur is a mechanical engineer by trade — a Maryland transplant who spent time making surfboards before pivoting to vintage. He opened Ace Outpost Philly with Brian Lentini, who runs Ace Coffee Outpost, the wholesale roasting operation and cafe side of the shop. The two sides of the space reflect the founders’ sensibility: a surfboard hangs on the wall, the coffee is serious, the vintage is expertly curated.

Scenes from Bar Mish Mish

Shortly after Ace opened, Tewfik and Saya visited. “I looked around — at the time the space was really clean and minimal, they didn’t have anything on the walls yet — and I said to Bree, ‘If this was in Copenhagen, this would have a wine bar,'” he recalls. “I’ve been to places like this in Copenhagen that are exactly this, but with wine.” He remembered that the PLCB now allows a liquor license holder to extend to a catering license for a relatively small fee, enabling up to 365 events a year — and sent the Ace Instagram account a cold DM. They met, Tewfik pitched the idea, and van der Steur and Lentini said yes.

“I thought it was just going to be a casual transformation of a coffee shop to a wine bar,” van der Steur says. “And now it’s turned into hundreds of people.”

Bar Mish Mish launched on the first Friday in February 2025. On my visit last September, I came early with my teenage daughter Benny, who sifted through a bin of concert tees while I nursed that pilsner brewed for Mish Mish by South Philly neighbor Cartesian Brewing, chatted with fellow early arrivals, and eventually offered feedback on Benny’s haul. It was relaxed and easy, like a house party hosted by your breeziest — but most discerning — friend.

But since then, Bar Mish Mish has evolved into something else.

“It went from a really casual, nice, elegant thing to — we’re throwing a party now, and our job is to make it feel like a party,” says Tewfik.

Now, the lights are turned way down. Sitting atop the room’s vintage furniture, dripping candles set a soft glow. The standing-room-only crowd has to talk a little louder and lean in a little closer to hear over the thrum of ‘90s hip hop. People line up at the register to order from a short list of natural wines — by the bottle or glass — while the team pulls them out of massive buckets of ice and pours as fast as they can to keep things moving. Pay as you go, no tabs.

It’s no longer a place you can sit with your wine and tapas. The snacks, in fact, are gone — the menu streamlined to serve the swell of customers, and honestly, there’s no place to set down those plates of marinated cheese and sliced soppressata and tiny bowls of olives served with tiny bowls of toothpicks. Instead, guests can order a regular hot dog, served in aluminum foil with rotating toppings — house-made fennel relish one month, spicy mustard and onions the next. Paired with $15 glasses of crisp French white or Georgian rosé, it’s a nice high-low harmony.

The crowd has shifted, too, skewing a little younger (though aptly still donning carefully layered vintage looks), huddled together sharing pours while taking selfies in low-lit corners. “It’s just snowballed into this thing — it’s the place to be on a First Friday,” says Tewfik. “They’re trying to fit themselves into a space that can no longer fit them. And it’s just crazy to see what it turned into.”

Photographer Elizabeth Blanco has been going to Bar Mish Mish since the beginning, drawn by a good vibe she attributes to two businesses that are each, independently, obsessive about curation. “It’s become a standing calendar appointment for me and my friends, so much so that I genuinely try not to schedule shoots for the first Friday of every month,” she says. “There’s an ease to the space. It’s intimate without being insular. I’ve run into neighbors, friends, clients — it’s like a Philly equivalent to a European plaza, for one night a month.”

Of course, Philly is home to excellent wine bars. And there are monthly pop-ups all over the city, all the time. But Bar Mish Mish has something harder to name — the quality of a thing that exists somewhere it shouldn’t. It’s similar to the alchemy of the one-time Underwest Donuts, tucked into the waiting room of a 24-hour West Side Highway car wash in New York, or yes, any number of Copenhagen bars that happen to be inside something else entirely. The ephemeral, once-a-month cadence only adds to the appeal.

“The constraints of it are what make it so interesting,” Tewfik says. “It feels fleeting. And I think that’s kind of the magic of it. But I don’t really know what the magic is — we’re still trying to figure it out.”