“Johnny Cash singing Nine Inch Nails.” That was Fred Mogul’s shorthand for the restaurant he had long wanted to build: familiar but surprising, rooted in tradition, yet willing to scramble expectations.
On Monday, that vision arrived at one of Chestnut Hill’s most prominent corners with the opening of the Blue Warbler at Germantown and Willow Grove Avenues. The all-day operation combines a bakery, café, bar, and restaurant, drawing from Mediterranean, Jewish, Persian, Balkan, and American influences.
Although the menu is entirely vegetarian, vegan, and pescatarian, Mogul does not want the restaurant defined by what it lacks. “I don’t want to be ‘that vegetarian place,’” he said. “There’s so much you can do without meat.”
The Blue Warbler arrives as Chestnut Hill’s dining scene shows fresh signs of life, despite last year’s closing of Iron Hill Brewery. Earlier this year, Lovat Square opened as a wine shop and gathering place on Germantown Avenue; it is a few weeks from starting its full dinner menu and opening its patio. New restaurants are planned for the former Campbell’s Place and Petit Matines spaces, while former employees of Fiesta Pizza III are planning to reopen the neighborhood institution that closed in 2024.
Against that backdrop, the Blue Warbler is arguably the neighborhood’s most ambitious restaurant project in years.
Its day begins at 7 a.m. with house-baked pastries and coffee before expanding into breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner. Dishes include a shakshuka-inspired “shakshukaccia” with labneh and house focaccia, a Turkish breakfast plate, and the Full Emilio — named for the building’s developer, Emilio Lorenzon — featuring eggs, a latke, mushroom bacon or Santorini sausage, salad, and bread.
Dinner offerings include bacalao with green yogurt and lemon relish, halloumi-stuffed dates with hazelnuts, grilled branzino, pan-fried lemon tofu, and smoked eggplant schnitzel over a tomato-Thai basil salad.
Mogul envisioned the Blue Warbler as a place where different influences could coexist comfortably through unexpected combinations that somehow feel natural. Playlists jump between genres and decades, as you can see from its Spotify (Jimmy Cliff, the Roots, the Cranberries, Aretha Franklin). Artwork, poetry, and design elements pull from a range of traditions and references.
“The idea is to constantly surprise people,” he said, “and bring together things that are a little removed from what they’re familiar with.”
That vision required a top-to-bottom renovation of a space that had never before housed a restaurant. Industry veterans repeatedly advised Mogul to take an easier path and retrofit an existing dining room for his first restaurant. His reply: “We fell in love with it,” he said.
The restaurant occupies the century-old Lorenzon Building, which was Foster’s Drugstore for decades. (The gray-beige terrazzo floor is a tipoff.) More recently, it housed the photography gallery of Wendy Concannon. Mogul said landlord Richard Snowden shared his belief that the space could become a neighborhood gathering place.
Inside, Ambit Architecture and In House Studio transformed what Mogul described as a stone- and glass-heavy interior into a warmer environment defined by reclaimed oak floors, quarter-sawn oak tabletops, walnut accents, custom millwork, and locally selected artwork. The restaurant seats 71 guests, including 15 at the bar, and includes a patio and a private-event room known as the Perch.
For Mogul, the opening marks an unlikely second act.
A longtime journalist, he worked at newspapers in Kansas and Nebraska before moving to Philadelphia in 1999. He freelanced for WHYY radio and television, contributed to NPR, worked as a stringer for The New York Times and Time magazine, and produced historical documentaries before later joining WNYC in New York, where he covered public health, politics, education, and government.
His 18-year tenure there ended in 2021, after the newsroom’s new manager accused him of using Associated Press copy without attribution, sparking a station-wide uproar and petition drive. Mogul sued the station for defamation and received a settlement whose terms he would not disclose, except to say that the Warbler rose from the ashes of tumult at WNYC.
The idea of opening a restaurant, however, had been percolating for years.
“I like being a reporter because I like telling people’s stories, schmoozing, having a deadline, and producing something tangible,” Mogul said. “Restaurants felt like another version of that — feeding people, creating a place, making something every day.”
After considering locations in other cities, he settled on Philadelphia. “Opening a restaurant in Brooklyn felt like starting a podcast,” he said. “There are so many, and how do you get heard above the fray?”
Mogul assembled a team of restaurant veterans for the project, which was originally known as AM/FM, a nod to his radio career. After he and his family settled in Chestnut Hill, they were workshopping names of birds to connect with the nearby Wissahickon: “There were two weeks where it was ‘the Purple Finch.’ Then someone said, ‘There’s Spice Finch [restaurant near Rittenhouse Square]. I said, ‘Oh, I think there’s only room for one finch.’” They settled on Blue Warbler. One day, Mogul said, he hopes to see one in the wild.
Executive chef Daniel Berret most recently worked at the Study at University City and previously helped develop the menu at Chestnut Hill Brewing Co. Chef de cuisine Renee Rowlett’s résumé includes Picnic, Society Hill Hotel, and Eva in Kensington. General manager Andy Boyask has worked at Tria, Parc, Johnny Brenda’s, PYT, and Zahav, while restaurant consultant Arthur Cavaliere, a Starr Restaurants alumnus who operated In Riva in East Falls for more than a decade, helped shape the project.
Weekdays begin with walk-up breakfast and lunch service, while dinner is initially offered Wednesday through Sunday. Additional nights will be added. Weekend brunch shifts to full table service. Among the dishes Berret is most excited about are smoked Arctic char served over sourdough bagels, salt-cod fritters, house-made pastries, and a mushroom-focused dinner dish.
The bar program includes a balanced draft and canned-beer list with an emphasis on local breweries, including a dedicated line for nearby Attic Brewing. The wine list was built around the restaurant’s vegetable- and seafood-focused menu, leaning toward acid-forward bottles, lighter reds, island wines, rosés, orange wines, and whites. Cocktails are intended to be approachable rather than fussy, with riffs on classics such as a Mai Tai made with fresh orgeat and a frothy Clover Club. The restaurant also plans to build out its nonalcoholic offerings.
The Blue Warbler, 8001 Germantown Ave. Opening hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
