Prime Stache is a quirky and tasteful, American bistro style restaurant founded by Brent Celek of the Philadelphia Eagles. Celek and his partner/head chef Hee Chang have designed a classy, comfortable and fun atmosphere that is centered around friendly service, quality comfort food and out-of-this-world cocktails. We spoke with Michael Wayne, event coordinator and general manager of Prime Stache, about exactly what sets this restaurant apart from the rest. He immediately won us over with his enthusiasm and excitement for the one-of-a-kind Prime Stache brand and the City of Philadelphia. Read up on all of the amazing things going on at Prime Stache and then head down to Old City (110 Chestnut St.) and experience it for yourself!
The Style
“Prime Stache is an American style bistro specializing in well prepared comfort food, craft beer, and cocktails. The style is designed in a vintage, brick and distressed wood fashion and the dimly lit atmosphere provides a comfortable setting for all guests. An open window to the kitchen allows guests to view the talent behind the scenes.
Our Prohibition Lounge has a speakeasy feel to it. It fits up to 125 people standing, 65 people seated, and has a large bar that is perfect for any event. The space also includes three large flat screen televisions around the room that can be used at your disposal, a surround sound system that is compatible with your personal iPod or a DJ, and a pool table.”
The Food
“Our number one seller is definitely a sandwich that we call the Ron Burgundy, rolling with that mustache theme, it is a long roll sandwich with three different types of pork in it. You get a pulled pork, roast pork and pork belly. We have a house made coleslaw that we mixed with our own chipotle, white cheddar cheese and apple cider barbeque sauce to top it off. Our other top seller is Brent’s favorite dish, our bacon wrapped meatloaf which comes with with Brussel sprouts and mashed potato puree. We also do a couple of assortments of mac and cheese, one that is stopped with the pork belly, a white cheddar and a three cheese mac. We actually just changed up the menu a bit for the summertime and added this really awesome fried green tomato BLT.”
The Service
“The staff is the most important part of the restaurant. I know a lot of people would say that it is all about the food, the beer or the cocktails but we really focused on having a strong, friendly staff that is hardworking and really takes time to do the job correctly and make sure that the customers are happy. Our staff is always at the top of their game. I would definitely say that staff is number one! You can’t beat an award winning staff! We are very social with our guests and our small space allows us to consider each guest individually. We like to make friends, learn about them, have good conversations and just make it a really accepting atmosphere.”
Special Features
“We have some really amazing cocktails! Basically, when you come 
in you see a bunch of mason jars and large glass jars that have fruit soaking with alcohol in them. We fresh squeeze all of the juices and then we infuse them with the alcohol so that it molds the flavor together to make it a very cohesive cocktail. We put a lot of thought and manual labor into our cocktails. It takes a lot to put them together. Our number one infusion cocktail is the strawberry pineapple and vanilla bean infusion with vodka. We also do a bourbon black cherry cocktail now with a little bit of hickory smoke to it. We have a martini with fresh, infused oranges, grapefruit and Vodka in it. That is definitely a customer favorite. The Prime Collins and our version o the Old Fashioned, the Old Stachion’ed, are definitely crowd pleasers. The cocktail list is just really cool.
We also designed a new signature beer for the restaurant with our friends at the Roy Pitz Brewing Company. We teamed up with them and they developed a light style, German lager for us. It is delicious and makes for really easy drinking,.
We have a food truck that is available for catering, private events and festivals. It is kind of like a mobile billboard that we use it just to get our name out there, get people interested in the food and have them come out to the restaurant and try out the rest.
We really want to let people know about our private lounge area, the Prohibition Lounge. It is a large private bar space that holds about 100 people. If you want to put together an event or party with a mid-range, casual feel to it, it is really a great space.”
Wayne States that the entire Prime Stache staff loves working in Philly because there is “so much going on in the city and so many talented people to work with.” He explained the joys of working with a “wide array of clientele” and discussed all of the fun events held at Prime Stache with a sense of contagious enthusiasm. He explained that he appreciates being a part of Philly’s passionate food and beer scenes. He urges all Philadelphians and Philadelphia visitors to stop in, check out the atmosphere and enjoy some good food. Hey, you may even see a few Philly sports stars while you are there!
