The Best Pub in Montco Is Overlooking a Wawa

Braised pork jowl over grits and a beer at Concordance Ferments in Hatboro. / Photograph by Gene Smirnov

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Back when I was cooking food for a living rather than writing about it, a chef told me that everything you need to know about a kitchen can be assessed by its soup.

On a rainy night at Concordance Ferments in Hatboro, I was reminded of these words of wisdom by a bowl of tomato soup. It tasted of nothing but that which was essential for its making: fire-roasted tomatoes, vegetable stock, roasted red peppers to give it a little depth, a little roughness around the ­edges. You could taste the char, the sweetness, the thinness of a broth not clouded with fists of butter or too much cream or nine different spices.

And this soup (with an excellent grilled cheese sandwich beside it) told me everything I needed to know. Concordance is a place where the thing itself matters — not variations on the thing, or the presentation of the thing, but the actual thing.

In a centuries-old mill next to Pennypack Creek, longtime beer buds Dave Sakolsky (a brewer with over 10 years in the game) and Abe Goldstein (a software nerd with a thing for homebrewing) built the kind of brewpub they’d always wanted but couldn’t find. Downstairs, there are comfortable leather couches and a fireplace. Upstairs, the stone walls, exposed beams, and view of the Wawa across the street make it feel like a hobbit’s tavern if Tolkien had set his tales in Montco.

The food is done without frills or ego: a bowl of olives; a shepherd’s pie; a cutting board laid with sliced chorizo, grilled bread, and folds of prosciutto that are cut too thick but offered in generous portions. There are handmade tortellini stuffed with mushrooms and a sweet and funky goat cheese, white grits laid with slabs of Lancaster pork jowl cured like bacon. And the beer is outstanding. Not heavy, not complicated, not aggressive, but … soft. Which is a weird description, but try the sharp and almost floral Bavarian pilsner that vanishes from your tongue as soon as you swallow, or the white tea–infused Nordic farmhouse ale with its faint sweetness, and you’ll understand what I mean. There’s a brilliance for understatement at work here. A subtlety that’s missing from so many of the shouty, pugnacious, high-ABV beers on the market right now.

Because the team at Concordance understands that simplicity is not the same as dullness. That boldness doesn’t have to be loud. And that sometimes a good bowl of soup and a quiet beer overlooking a Wawa is exactly what a hobbit needs.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

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 “The Brilliance of Simplicity” in the May 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.