Philly’s City Tavern Set to Reopen With an Alt-History Menu

Photograph by Jeff Fusco

     Listen to the audio edition here:

For those of you out there looking to get a little bit historical with your pints in this, America’s 250th-birthday year, I’ve got good news. It looks like there’s some new life at the site of the old City Tavern, where Independence National Historical Park, Historic Philadelphia, and Cescaphe are planning to open a new beer garden called “The Garden at City Tavern.”

Curious why this matters? Well, let me tell you a story …

In 1773, when City Tavern opened at the corner of 2nd and Walnut streets, it was the center of the American universe.

It was where you went if you were a somebody in Revolutionary-era Philly. And it was where you aspired to go if you were a nobody. City Tavern was where you went to discuss wheat futures over glasses of tawny port or to argue rebellion with the fellas when you were in your cups. Ladies in ball gowns danced by candlelight while gentlemen drank whiskey and debated the Stamp Act. George Washington met Lafayette for the first time at City Tavern. The Founding Fathers “adjourned” there during the Continental Congress after establishing the scaffolding of governance by and for the people. John Adams once called it “the most genteel tavern in America,” and even though America was quite a bit tinier then, Johnny was a drinking man (who required an eye-opener of hard cider every morning just to get out of bed), so odds are pretty good he knew what he was talking about.

The original building caught fire in 1834. The rest of it was demolished about 20 years later. And for more than 100 years, City Tavern was nothing more than a page out of the history books.

Then, in the early 1970s, someone got the bright idea to rebuild the place in advance of America’s bicentennial. It opened ahead of the nation’s 200th birthday in 1976 and operated for decades — largely under the command of chef, cookbook author, and TV host Walter Staib, who took over as a concessionaire in 1994, focused the menus on 18th-century recipes, and ran the joint until COVID shut it down permanently in 2020.

But now, just in time for America’s 250th, we’re finally seeing some fresh action at 2nd and Walnut. The new Garden at City Tavern will be a “seasonal, outdoor pop-up experience” located in the gardens behind the historic tavern building (which, these days, is only partially open as an occasional museum with no listed public hours). There’ll be “History Maker” events during the day, featuring colonial-era lawn games and historic interpreters portraying real-life people from the past. Later, there’s an “Independence After Hours” program on Saturday evenings which involves a tour (starting at the Independence Visitor Center), a “secret visit” to Independence Hall with re-enactors portraying the writers of the Declaration of Independence, then drinks back at the Garden.

Speaking of drinks, the new operators claim the menu at the new Garden at City Tavern is meant to “recreate the spirit of the historic City Tavern, drawing inspiration from Revolutionary-era recipes and tavern traditions.” But the word “inspiration” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because from what I can see, we’re talking soft pretzels (natch), veggie wraps, charcuterie with gluten-free crackers (just like Betsy Ross used to make), cold turkey sandwiches on brioche buns with chipotle mayo (a favorite of George Washington, obviously), plus canned “Liberty Lemonade” vodka and ginger-yuzu cocktails and “Chili Margarita Mocktails,” the very existence of which would’ve likely given John Adams a stroke.

Seriously, back in the day, chef Staib took his historical accuracy seriously. He used well-sourced 18th-century recipes for things like mallard duck sausage with sour cabbage and salt-cured, applewood-smoked pork chops with imported Hengstenberg sauerkraut. (Staib grew up in the Black Forest city of Pforzheim, Germany.) He partnered with Yards on an “Ales Of The Revolution” series featuring recipes from Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. He served drinks out of pewter mugs, and his dining room was one of the very few places where you could still get West Indies-style pepperpot soup in Philly. But the Garden is also serving wine and bottles of Yuengling, which, for what it’s worth, are probably at least a little closer to being historically accurate than the canned vodka and hibiscus-lime “Patriots Punch.”

And hey, I get that this is meant to appeal to modern visitors and that they’re expecting big crowds, so canned cocktails and a few quick turkey sandwiches make sense, I guess. Would it have been nice to have the old City Tavern still up and running for our 250th birthday? Sure. But for now, we’ve got a brand-new beer garden to welcome visitors with gluten-free crackers and Founding Father-confounding mocktails, and that’s not nothing. Plus, I kinda dig the historical dissonance of being able to eat a soft pretzel and drink a commemoratively canned, vodka-spiked iced tea next to a bunch of British tourists in the back garden of the place where the Revolution was fomented.

The Garden at City Tavern opens to the public this Thursday, June 25th. It’ll be open Thursday through Sunday for the entire summer. And if you’re looking for more information on events, availability, menus or anything else, you can find that right here.