None of the three most closely watched projects on East Passyunk Avenue is open yet. EMei is still renovating the black-and-white-tiled building at 1734 that Marra's left last winter. Habibi Supper Club and Santé Social are still listed as plans at 1515 and 1546. All three have already appeared on the Avenue anyway. Habibi has served food, Santé Social has lit up its own building, and EMei's renovation sits on the block where Fall Fest's trick-or-treaters will be walking this Saturday.
The Avenue is meeting its next tenants before their doors open. This fall, the East Passyunk Avenue Business Improvement District's event calendar has served as a preview stage, and Halloween Saturday is its biggest remaining street event of the season.
| Address | What's coming | Who's behind it | Latest published timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1734 E. Passyunk Ave. | EMei, a new branch of the Chinatown Sichuan restaurant | Dan Tsao | "Late fall," per Eater Philly, Sept. 10 |
| 1515 E. Passyunk Ave. | Habibi Supper Club, permanent Lebanese restaurant | Miled Finianos | Possibly by year-end, per the Inquirer, Sept. 9 |
| 1546 E. Passyunk Ave. | Santé Social, wine and events room | Daniel Solway | No opening date given, per the Inquirer, Sept. 9 |
The tiled building needs the longest rebuild
The slowest of the three projects is also the one with the most history. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Marra's, widely considered Philadelphia's oldest pizzeria, closed after 98 years, one day before its building at 1734 E. Passyunk Ave. was sold. The property had been on the market for several years.
The Marra family bought the building, a former butcher shop, in 1927. They moved in the pizza oven built for their first pizzeria, which had opened in 1924 at Eighth and Christian, and family members lived on the third floor. The Inquirer reported that the family named parking as the business's main challenge, and that the founding Marra and D'Adamo families were looking at a new location.
The buyer, Chinatown restaurateur and publisher Dan Tsao, planned to keep the building in use as a restaurant. The renovation has taken a while because the kitchen is being rebuilt from scratch. Eater Philly's fall preview described a major renovation and noted that pizza and mapo tofu need very different kitchens. As of Sept. 10, the goal was to open EMei before the end of the year.
EMei won't simply copy the Chinatown restaurant. The Inquirer's report on the move said the East Passyunk menu would draw on the original while trying lighter, seasonal, ingredient-led Sichuan dishes. Roast duck and possibly Shanghai soup dumplings were under consideration, and the gluten-free program would continue. That was the plan as of last December, and the menu that opens could look different.
The 1500 block went first
EMei is introducing itself through construction. The two 1500-block projects took a different route and appeared on the BID calendar before their opening dates were set.
On Oct. 1, the BID listed a pop-up by Habibi and Philly Hummus Girl at 1515 E. Passyunk, the address where Miled Finianos plans to open the permanent Habibi Supper Club. The Inquirer's fall openings roundup describes a two-part format: late breakfast and lunch during the day, then ticketed multicourse Lebanese suppers. It said the restaurant might open by year-end, without a firm date. So the pop-up served food at the permanent address while the permanent restaurant was still in the works.
The next night was Illuminate Passyunk, the BID's Oct. 2 event of projections, lighting, interactive installations and music along the Avenue. One of the projections came from Santé Social, which beamed from its own building at 1546. Sommelier Daniel Solway's project, as the Inquirer describes it, is a room of about 30 seats across from the Singing Fountain. It will host wine events, classes, private functions and collaborations, with some space for walk-ins. The Inquirer gave no opening date, so Illuminate Passyunk was the first public use of the space before regular service.
Two projects introduced themselves on back-to-back nights. Neither had announced an opening date, and both appeared through the business district's own programming. Each is built around events and collaborations as much as walk-in dining, which makes a festival a natural first appearance.
Halloween Saturday covers the same blocks
The last big street event on the BID's posted calendar is Fall Fest this Saturday, Oct. 31, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on East Passyunk Avenue between Morris and Dickinson. Nice Things Handmade and the BID are presenting an 80-plus-vendor market, along with food and drink, pumpkin carving, a costume contest and live music. Creepy Crawl trick-or-treating runs the same hours. Kids look for spiders or critters in business windows, which mark the shops handing out candy.
The festival runs on the Avenue, so a Saturday walk passes through the blocks where the next wave is taking shape. Here's a weekend route built around the Avenue's own calendar:
- Friday, Oct. 30, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Passyunk Pilates at 1748 E. Passyunk holds Mat + Mischief, a mat Pilates class set to a darkwave playlist, followed by a Halloween happy hour with drinks, including nonalcoholic options. The studio is on the same block as the EMei site.
- Saturday, Oct. 31, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fall Fest between Morris and Dickinson, with Creepy Crawl trick-or-treating along the Avenue.
- Saturday, on foot. Walk past 1515, 1546 and 1734 to check on the three projects in the table above.
- Sunday, Nov. 1, 6 to 7 p.m. Passyunk Pilates hosts an Ancestral Connection + Breathwork Workshop with breathwork, ritual, sound and reflection, timed to a season many cultures set aside for remembering ancestors.
After that the BID calendar goes quiet. Its posted listings run through Nov. 1, and the tree-lighting and Small Business Saturday pages still show last year's dates. The next public look at these addresses may be on opening day.
Off the Avenue, the openings already happened
East Passyunk's pipeline is still in preview, but several nearby South Philly projects opened this summer and early fall without the lead-up:
- Vons Chicken, 1714 Washington Ave. opened in Point Breeze in early August with Korean fried chicken and roasted chicken. The shop is run by local franchisee Thao Le, the Inquirer reported.
- Anh Em, 1252 S. 21st St. was open by mid-August, according to Philly Grub. Husband and wife Victor Nguyen and Anna Huynh run the Vietnamese bar-restaurant, which has a 20-seat bar and stays open late, according to the Inquirer's summer roundup.
- Panco, 2300 S. Croskey St. is chef Ryo Igarashi's Japanese takeout shop built around katsu. It soft-opened in West Passyunk in September, per the Inquirer.
One Bella Vista address is going through its own changeover. The Lodge by Two Robbers at 738 S. 11th St. ended regular service on Aug. 9 and kept the space available for private events and pop-ups. PhillyVoice reported that Florin and Marco Matranxhi, the owners of Adoro, plan to open Ravello there, an Italian BYOB focused on seafood, with chef Marco Passante. As of Sept. 29 the owners estimated an opening "within a month or two" but had not set a date.
The changes off the Avenue happened fast and quietly, while the bigger East Passyunk projects have been slower and more visible. On Saturday, 1734 will most likely still be behind construction paper, and 1515 and 1546 will still be waiting on opening dates.
At McCann Team LLC, we keep track of what's moving into South Philly's storefronts because a block's restaurants are part of what living on it is like. If you're wondering what's coming to your corner, or what the next few months on the Avenue could mean for your street, let's talk. Let's Build Your Next Chapter.
