What started as a halal coffee-and-pastry counter tucked inside a Narberth restaurant has grown into a full-fledged cafe in Willow Grove, with a bakery operation fueled by a mosaic-tiled oven turning out za’atar-topped flatbreads and pizza. And for good measure, the new Mazaj will have a drive-through.
Mazaj, a Yemeni- and Saudi-inspired cafe, opened earlier this month in the former Grandma’s Grotto Pizza on Route 611 near Blair Mill Road.
Owners Mohammed Tashkandi, Mohammed Aqlan, Yousef Muneer, and Omar Alkahily also operate Malooga, the Yemeni restaurants in Narberth and Old City. Mazaj began in March as the coffee bar and bakery inside the Narberth location, where the partners developed its drinks and pastries while spending more than two years searching for a place where the concept could stand on its own.
They deliberately looked beyond the city limits, Tashkandi said. They wanted parking, easy access, and enough room to create the sort of coffeehouse where customers could settle in — without making a quick coffee run difficult.
Manakish are baked to order in a Forno Picone oven near the front of the cafe at Mazaj. The flatbreads can be spread with za’atar and olive oil or topped with cheese or meat.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The Willow Grove location, at 2700 Easton Rd., just north of the Pennsylvania Turnpike interchange, is designed to do both. There are sofas and upholstered chairs for lingering, tables lining the windows, and — unlike Narberth — a drive-through for customers who have no intention of lingering at all. The drive-through is expected to open at the end of the month with premade pizzas and manakish that can be reheated in two minutes.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” Tashkandi said. “Our homemade food, locally roasted coffee, and crafted drinks are intentionally chosen to elevate your day, whether you want to spend time in our spaces or grab something to go as you move through your day.”
A crowd has already formed at the new Mazaj in Willow Grove, Aug. 4, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
That dual identity is wrapped into the name. Mazaj — also spelled mizaj or mizaaj — is an Arabic word for “mood,” “temperament,” or “state of mind” that is also used in Urdu and Persian. The partners were compelled to choose it because of the idea that what people eat and drink can change how they feel.
The menu crosses borders. Tashkandi is from Saudi Arabia, while his partners are from Yemen, but they don’t describe Mazaj strictly as a Yemeni coffee shop, an increasingly popular cafe format. They see it as a broader Middle Eastern cafe.
Honeycomb, Yemeni pull-apart bread, before it is baked at Mazaj, in Willow Grove, Aug. 4, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
There are Saudi coffees and mutabbaq, the flaky stuffed pastry pockets popular in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, alongside Levantine manakish, honeycomb bread, date cake, and other pastries. The contemporary coffee-shop side of the menu brings espresso drinks, ceremonial-grade matcha, and flavored lattes.
Mazaj’s manakish are baked to order in a Forno Picone oven, a striking, mosaic-covered centerpiece near the front of the cafe. The flatbreads can be spread with za’atar and olive oil or topped with cheese or meat.
And now there’s pizza.
Pizza topped with beef pepperoni coming out of the oven at Mazaj, in Willow Grove, Aug. 4, 2026.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
It is the major menu addition in Willow Grove, baked in the same oven as the manakish. A separate commercial deck oven handles the cafe’s pastries.
The expansion has turned Willow Grove into the baking hub for the partners’ other restaurants. The owners are shifting production from Malooga to the new cafe, which will supply baked goods to both Narberth and Old City. The company has also begun laying the groundwork for a wholesale operation to sell pastries to other coffee shops and supermarkets, and the partners say they are meeting with potential franchisees.
Head baker Samar Alasbahi leads a baking staff with backgrounds in Yemen and Syria. The pastries are made in-house, and Tashkandi said leftovers aren’t put back into the case the next morning. Unsold baked goods instead go to employees, neighbors, and others in the community.
Customers can linger in the comfy upholstered furniture at Mazaj.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The partners have thoroughly remade the former pizzeria. Olive green and cream set the palette, with patterned tile, geometric motifs, Moroccan-style pendant lights, and a long pastry-and-coffee counter. Faux marble tables and caramel-colored chairs dot the narrow, window-lined dining room, while deep-green upholstered chairs and a sofa make up a small lounge. Behind glass near the front sits the new, dark-tiled brick oven.
For all the Yemeni and Saudi influences behind Mazaj, Tashkandi said the idea is deliberately broader: a cafe where Middle Eastern food traditions overlap rather than stay within national boundaries. “We want the menu to reflect that diversity,” he said.
Mazaj, 2700 Easton Rd., Willow Grove, 267-900-3167, mazajpa.com. Hours: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
You can eat quite well at the nearby Pizzeria Beddia, Liguria, Marina’s, Shackamaxon, D’Oliva, Scusi, Rustica, Urban Village, and Bar1010. But no other pizzeria in Fishtown offers pies topped with oxtail and collard greens, Cajun shrimp with broccoli and grits, or jerk chicken with pineapple and mango glaze.
The Bottom (jerk chicken, mozzarella, pineapple, and mango glaze) at In Crust We Trust.Michael Klein / Staff
In Crust We Trust, which opened Aug. 1 in the former Vince’s Pizzeria at Frankford Avenue and Richmond Street, across from the Fillmore, is the first solo restaurant from Anyae Wilson-Worley, 25.
Though she grew up around restaurants and learned the business from her mother, restaurateur Felicia Wilson, Wilson-Worley is emphatic that In Crust We Trust is distinctly her own.
Pizzaiolo Jose Maria worked with Wilson-Worley on intentional menu combinations for the New York-style pies. She said she wanted to bring Black culture into the recipes while creating a dining room that reflects it. “When people walk in, I want them to feel like a story is being told — taking them back to a Harlem Renaissance type of thing,” she said.
Corner store wings, topped with cayenne pepper and peri peri, at In Crust We Trust on Aug. 2.Michael Klein / Staff
The roughly 80-seat restaurant offers table service as well as a takeout counter and delivery. Beyond pizza, the menu includes wings, two salads, cheesy collard greens, and desserts (including a chocolate chip-oatmeal raisin-sugar cookie baked in a cast-iron skillet and topped with vanilla gelato) — all made with halal ingredients.
Wilson-Worley is the oldest of Felicia Wilson’s three children. Her mother owns Amina, Avana, Fia, First Daughter Oyster & Co., and BlackHen. “She’s been much more than a role model,” Wilson-Worley said. “I definitely wouldn’t be in this position without my mother.”
Still, restaurants were not part of Wilson-Worley’s original plan.
She attended the University of Miami, where she majored in health sciences on the pre-med track. She said she was lucky enough to come out of school with no debt. “I took that as an opportunity to seize what was around me,” she said. “At the time [four years ago], my mom was in the height of opening all of her restaurants.”
Anyae Wilson-Worley (right) with her mother, Felicia Wilson, at In Crust We Trust on Aug. 2.Michael Klein / Staff
While finishing school, she regularly flew back to Philadelphia to help with the expanding restaurant group. Eventually, she decided to stay to help her mother run the business.
“Anyone who knows me can tell you that ever since my mom opened the restaurant, I always said, ‘This is not what I want to do. I don’t want to be here,’” Wilson-Worley said. “But now this has become my life.”
Her mother provided the example and the education, but Wilson-Worley said the concept, menu, and identity of In Crust We Trust reflect her own perspective.
Wilson-Worley describes Philadelphia as a city whose Black culture is foundational but not always fully recognized. Through the restaurant, she hopes to celebrate that culture while encouraging others to pursue their own ambitions.
Dining room at In Crust We Trust.Michael Klein / Staff
“I hope to create a pathway for other Black people like myself to get involved,” she said. “Not only through food, but through anything.”
The menu draws from years spent observing professional kitchens.
“I’ve learned a lot from being around the chefs,” she said. “Watching them, listening to them, and working alongside them has expanded my culinary knowledge. I took everything I learned from them and applied it to create a menu that I’m really proud of.”
Wilson-Worley also sees common ground with Down North Pizza, the Black-owned North Philadelphia pizzeria known for hiring formerly incarcerated employees. Both restaurants emphasize community engagement, though she said she does not view them as competitors.
“I’m all about Black empowerment and working with other people like myself in this industry to contribute to the greater good of hospitality,” she said.
Ultimately, she said, her goal is more immediate than making a statement with every slice.
“I want people to feel loved and appreciated,” Wilson-Worley said. “When someone dines here, I want them to walk away thinking, ‘I’ve never had pizza like this before.’”
In Crust We Trust, 965 Frankford Ave. Hours: 11 a.m. to midnight Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday, and noon to 11 p.m. Sunday.
In a country-industrial stretch of Hammonton halfway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City sits a concrete-block maze of machine shops, where workers have built thousands of stainless-steel hot-sandwich and coffee carts and catering trucks.
This is the one-story home of Custom Mobile Food Equipment, which for 74 years has built these customizedportable kitchen-storefronts of varying sizes, and kept them on the road with extra helpings of customer support. They roll onto Jersey Shore boardwalks and Center City street corners, at weeklong public festivals and private events across America, and in fancy resorts and on military bases abroad.
It’s a South Jersey fixture, with Camden roots and deep Philly ties.
“We started small,” with hot dog carts cut to fit, not block, city sidewalks, said Custom vice presidentDavid Kyle. He said his family helped Philadelphia officials write the city’s street vendor ordinances, and made sure the carts fit.
Custom has outlasted food fashions and changes in the ways workers lunch. Kyle said he’s confident the enterprise will outlast recent inflation, global competition, and import tariffs: “A lot of our business is repeat business, and the big names we go after,” he said during a tour of the plant. “People rely on us to turn out a product that will last.”
From pony-cart produce to theme-park fixture
Lehigh Valley-based Wild Bill’s Craft Beverage Co. serves its old-fashioned sodas from kegs mounted in Custom vehicles of several sizes. They sell drinks at crowded motorcycle rallies in Gettysburg and Sturgis, S.D., the Ohio State Fair, the Great State of Maine Air Show in Brunswick, San Diego Comic-Con, and Schuylkill regattas.
“These are high-end, unique stands. We have 60 of them. We add a couple a year,” said Wild Bill’s chief executive, Mike Quilty. “One of our franchisees in Utah just drove one of Custom’s self-propelled Ford barrel wagons to Vancouver.”
To make trips like that, the equipment has to be built well, Quilty said, noting Custom’s “unlimited support” for when technical issues arise, which doesn’t require buying a service contract.
Custom’s late founder, William Sikora, developed the catering truck in the early 1950s as a kitchen on wheels installed on a Detroit-made chassis. Sikora as a grade-school kid in Camden had sold vegetables from a pony-drawn cart, then opened a grocery. He bought apartment buildings and diners, and became a top officer of First Peoples Bank.
Walking room to room past heavy presses and cutters on the Hammonton shop floor,Sikora’s grandson Kyle said 40 workers build more than 100 pieces of equipment a year — food trucks, trailers, catering wagons, specialty equipment with kitchen-sized stoves, refrigerators, freezers.
“We’ve sold to Disney World and SeaWorld, Sesame Place, and U.S. bases in Japan,” Kyle said on a muggy midsummer morning as room fans, metal-forming machinery, and new-cart test motors whirred. “We have 18 projects going right now.”
Custom built 32 commercial kitchens on caster wheels for Carnival Cruise Line’s Calypso Lagoon in the Bahamas, which opened last year,with rounded bull-nose counters instead of sharp industrial edges to accommodate peak work flow.
Paul McIlvaine, an electrician, works on the interior of a Chickie & Pete’s food cart at Custom Mobile Food Equipment, in Hammonton, Tuesday, July 21, 2026.Vernon Ogrodnek / For The Inquirer
How much does it cost to launch a kitchen cart?
Today, Custom’sbasic Model 525 carts retail for around $6,500. For that sum, plus storage, food, fuel, and licensing costs, “you’re in business serving food,” said Kyle.
“It’s rewarding, you get to meet so many kinds of people,” he added.
New catering trucks start at more than$125,000, like a high-end camper.
All the carts and trucks are built from stainless steel sides, stamped with Custom’s distinctive elongated-diamond pattern over tubular steel framing. The company uses multiple steel suppliers, including Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp. in Pittsburgh. It was harder to find domestic steel when the U.S. auto industry demand was stronger, Kyle said. But now materials costs are much higher, often in response to higher tariffs.
“We try to use built-in-USA [materials], but some stuff you cannot get here,” Kyle said. Robertshaw Controls, for example, makes the only burner controls that fit Custom’s standards. They moved the operation to Mexico from Texas, so Custom now imports them.
Cart metal is just one inflating cost vendors face, said Christian Subashi, second-generation owner of Loudogs hot-dog carts in Sea Isle City. Refrigerators were 50% cheaper before last year’s new tariffs, he said, and sausage prices have “gone through the roof.”
Kyle said his company’s hot-dog cart price “has gone up $1,000 or $2,000 in 10 years,” lower than the general inflation rate. “We have to absorb some. It’s how you do business,” he said. He’s confident steel prices will stabilize eventually.
The future of food carts
The company has no plans to automate, Kyle said. “All our products are custom built — handmade and hand-fabricated. No two carts are exactly alike,” he said, noting that the company also retrofits and rehabs units as needed. “They can last forever.”
“Our pricing is more, but it lasts longer than assembly-line stuff coming in from Mexico or China at low cost.”
One once-robust market that has all but evaporated is carts for vendors who work construction sites. Custom employed over 100 during the building boom of the late 1990s. The company built a catering truck a day, on average, back then; now it’s closer to one a week.
“Wawa and DoorDash are delivering deli trays to jobs sites now. And Wawa has built out so many stores in their area, guys can just leave the job and run to Wawa. So that business is down for us,” said Kyle.
The focus now is on larger orders that can be built more efficiently. Plus it’s gotten harder, Kyle said, to hire skilled craftsmen.
But Custom is also very much “a national brand,” said James Evans, who runs the food-truck division for Ocean City-based Manco & Manco Pizza, including eight Phillies stadium locations.
Like Custom, Manco is a third-generation South Jersey business, and Evans said he wouldn’t have gone anywhere else to build stadium-ready trailers. The two firms cut a deal last February for Custom to build an initial “food truck you can drive, available for private parties, corporate functions, MLB events, anywhere we can take a truck.”
The first was delivered in July, with four propane-fueled Baker’s Pride deck ovens “to cook our pizzas to Manco standards.”
Custom faces a string of manufacturing challenges with any order, Kyle said.
But from Manco’s perspective the passage of his project from plan to delivery “was seamless,” said Evans.
“As we morph into their larger trucks, we will add wings and tenders,” he said. “If everything in business and life went that easy, it’d be great.”
For more than a year, Giuseppe Tosco tried to get Dave Portnoy’s attention with a giant roadside sign outside his Montgomery County pizzeria that read, “We Want Dave Portnoy.”
Two months ago, Tosco finally took it down to replace it with a sign advertising the new patio at Italian Delite in Trappe.
On Tuesday, Portnoy walked in anyway. “The first thing he asked was, ‘Where’s the sign?’” Tosco said. “I told him we’d taken it down. He said, ‘Oh my God, it’s been that long?’”
The surprise visit was one of at least five stops Portnoy made across Philadelphia and its suburbs Tuesday as the Barstool Sports founder filmed new installments of his influential “One Bite Pizza Reviews,” whose scores can transform the fortunes of a neighborhood pizzeria.
In each review, Portnoy samples a plain cheese slice — often taking much more than one bite — and assigns it a score on a 10-point scale. His ratings have become one of the pizza world’s most sought-after endorsements, often drawing long lines and national attention for top-scoring shops.
Three of Tuesday’s scores became known almost immediately, as onlookers shared them. Johnny’s received an 8.3, Liguria an 8.2, and Marina’s a 7.9. The owners of Pizza Di Vita and Italian Delite said they never heard their scores before Portnoy moved on; they are waiting for the videos to be released.
Lisa and John Paxia of Lillo’s Tomato Pies in Hainesport with Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy (left) in November 2022.Courtesy of Lillo Paxia
If Tosco spent more than a year trying to lure Portnoy to the Collegeville suburbs, John Bisceglie initially refused to believe the reviewer was coming to Johnny’s Pizzeria (which has a spot on The Inquirer’s 76 list).
“Somebody texted me, ‘Dave’s in Philly. Heads up,’” Bisceglie said. “I just laughed it off. I’ve heard that before.”
Still, he was working at his shop in Wayne when he sent a photo of Portnoy to his employees at Johnny’s Bryn Mawr, just in case.
Then, manager Jaison Velásquez called.
“He said, ‘I just got an order for Barstool,’” Bisceglie recalled. “I said, ‘Oh my God. It’s happening.’”
Bisceglie stayed on the phone coaching his staff. “I told them, ‘Wait about 10 minutes so the pizza comes right out of the oven. Make it crispy. Well done.’”
He credited Velásquez and manager Dan Bisceglie, his cousin, with staying calm. “He kept telling me, ‘I got this. Relax. I got this,’” Bisceglie said of Velásquez.
When Portnoy awarded the pie an 8.3 on camera, Bisceglie knew it was significant.
“Those pizza guys don’t hand out scores like that very often,” he said. “An 8.3 is a big deal.”
For Tosco, at Italian Delite in Trappe, the visit was memorable before the review even began.
Tosco said he had tagged Portnoy incessantly on social media. “I told him, ‘If you came, you came. If you didn’t, you didn’t. I just didn’t want to keep bothering you,’” Tosco said.
The day became even stranger when Portnoy reviewed the wrong pizza.
Tosco had been away at a catering meeting when his cousin called to say Portnoy had arrived after placing an order under the name “Austin.” By coincidence, the restaurant’s social media team was filming, and Tosco’s cousin had made workers prepare a practice pizza for the camera. That pie came out of the oven before Portnoy’s order.
“My cousin said, ‘That’s not your pie,’” Tosco recalled. “Dave said, ‘I don’t care. I want that one.’”
As Tosco pulled into the parking lot, Portnoy was already recording the review.
Afterward, Tosco asked Portnoy to hang for five minutes. “I told him, ‘I just want to make you a Philly cheesesteak,’” Tosco said. “He said, ‘You seem like a good dude. I’ll come back in for you.’”
Tosco still doesn’t know what score Portnoy awarded his pizza. “I ended up getting a cheesesteak review, too, which was really cool,” Tosco said.
An eclectic crop of new restaurants has opened over the last several months across the Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Some — like the three sports bars in Camden County alone — are breathing new life into familiar addresses. Others mark ambitious first ventures.
Here are 18 of them, from Phoenixville to Gloucester Township to Wilmington.
Pennsylvania
Academy Grill (424 S. Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington): Michael Sloane and Jay Rosenthal’s group, Fine Line Dining, has transformed the former Cantina Feliz into a polished white-tablecloth destination. Jeffrey Power, longtime chef at the erstwhile Dettera in Ambler, oversees a menu of house-made pasta, seafood, and steaks.
Bluebird Distilling has reopened with a new neo-Neapolitan pizzeria and restaurant.Photos courtesy of Ed Newton
Noah Clifford (left) and Sofia Siano working the pastry case at the Buttery in Bryn Mawr.Allie Ippolito / For The Inquirer
The Buttery Bryn Mawr (836 W. Lancaster Ave., Bryn Mawr): The Malvern bakery-cafe opened its Main Line expansion with 82 indoor seats and daily service from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The menu includes sourdough breads, pastries, Turkish eggs (poached eggs cooked in garlicky yogurt with a drizzle of spicy butter), sandwiches, and seasonal lunch dishes, plus grab-and-go foods after the kitchen closes at 3 p.m.
Cleavers (103 Squire Dr., Newtown Square): The Center City cheesesteak shop grand-opened its second location last month at Ellis Preserve, offering cheesesteaks, chicken cheesesteaks, burgers, sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes.
The Coffee Station (1117 Smithbridge Rd., Glen Mills): The Delaware County breakfast-and-lunch operator took over the former Meghan’s Restaurant, which had occupied the building for 27 years. The menu includes omelets, pancakes, breakfast sandwiches, burgers, hoagies, wraps, soups, and salads. Other locations are in Morton and Garnet Valley.
Tabletop and tableside cooking are offered at Ogyu Japanese BBQ.Jose F. Moreno / Staff Photographer
Ogyu Japanese BBQ & Bar (60 Greenfield Ave., Ardmore): Restaurateur Sam Li’s upscale yakiniku restaurant occupies the former Iron Hill Brewery. Customers grill premium Wagyu and other meats on tabletop burners, choosing from fixed-price packages or à la carte selections. The dramatically remodeled space includes black-and-gold finishes, marble-paneled walls, a large bar, and private dining rooms.
Upper Darby’s Tina Fey offers Jimmy Fallon a slice of Pica’s pizza on the “Tonight” show in 2014.Lloyd Bishop / NBC
Pica’s Italian Market (1101 Sussex Blvd., Broomall): After closing its landmark Upper Darby dining room earlier this year, the Pica family soft-opened this mostly takeout shop in a Delco light-industrial park, carrying the restaurant’s signature square pizzas, sandwiches, prepared foods, and other Italian specialties. Pica’s, which hit the national radar in 2014 when locally raised Tina Fey sampled its pizza on the Tonight show, traces its roots to Frank Pica Sr.’s West Philadelphia pizzeria. There’s a West Chester location, too.
P.J. Whelihan’s (2920 S. Eagle Rd., Newtown): The regional sports-bar chain took over the former Iron Hill Brewery at the Village at Newtown with its signature wings, burgers, sandwiches, salads, and American entrees, backed by numerous televisions and a broad draft-beer selection. Most of Iron Hill’s existing layout was retained.
Pomelo Rooftop Terrace at the Brandywine, 165 King of Prussia Rd., King of Prussia.The Brandywine
Pomelo Rooftop Terrace (165 King of Prussia Rd., Radnor): This expansive rooftop bar and lounge atop The Brandywine hotel in Radnor (with 136 seats, inside and out) will grand-open Aug. 8 with chef Michael Davies’ menu of shareable plates (e.g. oysters, scallop crudo, a smash burger, grilled branzino, lion’s mane mushroom cake), raw bar, botanical-focused cocktails, wine, and beer. Weekend brunch begins Aug. 22.
Porter (34 E. Butler Ave., Ambler): This newcomer is in the former Gypsy Blu space on the first floor of Ambler’s historic former Wyndham Hotel, offering contemporary American cooking in a candlelit, vintage-inspired dining room. Menu includes oysters, pasta, risotto, seafood, and meat dishes. Gaslight, a separate craft-cocktail bar with small plates, is upstairs.
Rick’s Tavern (201 W. Seventh Ave., Conshohocken): Chef Derek Davis runs the show at Rick and Gale Mahoney’s modern tavern on the rebuilt site of Pizza Time Saloon and Old Time Saloon. The two-story restaurant honors those neighborhood institutions with wood-fired pizza while adding house-made pasta, cocktails, private-event space, and live music upstairs on Friday and Saturday nights.
The bar at the Scratch Kitchen by Gallo’s, 575 Horsham Rd, Horsham.Michael Klein / Staff
The Scratch Kitchen at Gallo’s (575 Horsham Rd., Horsham): The Harvey family, owners of Gallo’s Seafood in Northeast Philadelphia, is behind this casual, roomy neighborhood restaurant in the former Farm & Fisherman Tavern. Chef Bob DeLange, the owners’ son-in-law, combines seafood dishes from Gallo’s with burgers and bar food inspired by Harv’s Burger Bar, Gallo’s adjoining Northeast Philadelphia tavern.
The exterior of 333 Belrose in Radnor’s St. Davids’ area.Allie Ippolito / For The Inquirer
333 Belrose (333 Belrose Lane, Radnor): The longstanding contemporary American restaurant has reopened under chef Ross Essner after an extensive renovation that flipped the positions of the bar and main dining room.
Yume Sushi in the Shoppes at English Village, 1460 Bethlehem Pike, North Wales.Michael Klein / Staff
Yume Sushi (1460 Bethlehem Pike, North Wales): This Japanese restaurant has opened in the Shoppes at English Village, down the row from Trader Joe’s. Co-owner and head chef Kevin Wan brings about a decade of sushi experience to the venture. The menu centers on sushi, sashimi, rolls, and Japanese-Asian fusion dishes.
New Jersey
Flying Pig Tavern & Tap (1300 Blackwood-Clementon Rd., Gloucester Township): The sprawling former Favorites off-track-betting building has come up as the fifth unit in a growing group. Menu of pizzas, burgers, wings, tacos, and entrees shares billing with live bands, darts, shuffleboard, and a covered tiki bar. A sixth location is planned for the former Andalusia Bar & Grill space in Bensalem.
Home Team Tavern (267 S. Black Horse Pike, Mount Ephraim): Greg D’Alesio has turned the former Mount Ephraim Bar & Grill into a compact, sports-themed neighborhood tavern. Its scratch kitchen serves pizzas, burgers, wings, sandwiches, and elevated bar food, alongside draft cocktails and beer.
Thirsty Turtle Tavern (270 White Horse Pike, Barrington): This new concept from SAS Restaurant Group in the former Chuck Lager space features an open kitchen, burgers, pizza, sushi, cocktails, draft beer, and an outdoor patio behind garage doors. It operates daily; weekday happy hour and weekend brunch are expected to begin in the fall.
Delaware
Ezme (625 N. Market St., Wilmington): Chef Antimo DiMeo and the Bardea Restaurant Group opened this coastal Mediterranean restaurant across from Bardea Food & Drink. Inspired by cuisine from Turkey, Greece, and the Aegean coast, the menu encompasses mezze, raw-bar dishes, handmade breads, grilled seafood, and fire-driven preparations accented with herbs, citrus, and spices. Both à la carte and tasting-menu formats are available.
It’s been a long time since Samantha and Mike Garbose have been able to truly enjoy the same pizza together. Ever since Mike discovered an intolerance to gluten in 2019, their pizza dates have resulted in this married couple ordering a “his” and “hers” situation with separate pies.
Being relegated to the gluten-free alternative is not a fate Mike begrudges: “We both agree that each of us is totally entitled to the food that our diets and preferences warrant.” Then again, the contrast in quality between standard wheat-flour crusts and those made with gluten-free ingredients can be hard to ignore.
“At places that have both gluten [-full] and gluten-free pizza,” says Samantha, “usually I get something that looks phenomenal and Mike gets something that looks like a cardboard circle — and then I feel guilty about that.”
Gluten-free pizza with summer corn at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
But there would be no guilt tonight at Barclay Pies. Not once the first gluten-free pizza arrives at our table, its airy puff of a crust crisped around the edges to a tawny snap that beckons from under a crown of molten mozzarella topped with sweet summer corn, bacon, and chile peppers. Another pie arrives, this one zesty with a layer of red sauce bursting with bright California tomatoes and a whiff of oregano;fistfuls of cup-and-char pepperoni rounds arescattered over the top, then finished with honey and freshly ripped basil.
“Oh wow, that does not even look gluten-free!” says Samantha.
That’s been my exact reaction every time I’ve visited this pizzeria in Cherry Hill, initially with my daughter, Alice, who has celiac disease. Barclay also makes standard pizzas with glutinous flour, but it has generated a serious buzz within the gluten-free community over the course of its first year — for good reason.
Gluten-free pizza with pepperoni at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff PhotographerCo-owners Thomas “TJ” Hunton (left) and Daniel Romero at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Barclay Pies was launched last summer by friends Thomas “TJ” Hunton, a regional director of operations for Shake Shack, and Daniel Romero, a vice president in engineering for Aramark. Its remarkably good pizzas, careful protocols to avoid cross contamination, and outgoing hospitality have helped change the narrative about what’s possible in a fast-casual setting with gluten-free options that go beyond just the pies.
Indeed, a mozzarella stick was the first bite to turn heads at our table. A safe-to-eat mozzarella stick is rare and coveted in the gluten-free community because deep fryers are common culprits for cross contamination. Not only are Barclay’s fryers completely gluten-free, these delicately hand-breaded sticks encrusted in potato starch, rice flour, and gluten-free panko crumbs are perfectly crisped. There is also a hunk of milky fresh mozzarella inside (another rarity: most use standard low-moisture varieties) that offered hot cheese-pull satisfaction from one side of the table to the next.
Gluten-free mozzarella sticks at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
The chicken wings were also superb, tender and juicy from a dry brine and par-bake, sealed inside a sheer crust of egg whites and rice flour, available in several good flavors, from punchy Buffalo sauce shaded with the richness of brown butter to lemon-pepper that sparkled in its craggy breading.
My encounters on previous visits with boneless chicken tenders were far less inspired, including some overly brined meat so rubbery they gave me a refund. But I was heartened by a 360-degree turnaround on this latest visit. The team recently reworked their recipe, and the final results — expertly verified by Hunton’s 6-year-old daughter, Amelia — are stellar: a perfectly tender baton of meat in a flavorful crust ready for various house-made dips. The tangy ranch with buttermilk and fresh herbs was a favorite, though classic honey mustard also did the trick.
Barclay Pies, located along Route 70 in Cherry Hill, has become known for its gluten-free pizzas.Craig LaBan / StaffJulie Romero (center right), of Cherry Hill, and Claire Ryder, of Collingswood, are enjoying some gluten-free pizza at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill on July 21.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
But pizza, of course, is the restaurant’s prime magnet. The duo decided to tackle the daunting gluten-free genre because Romero’s wife, Julie, has celiac disease. Making a gluten-free pizza worth the trouble is a major challenge. Gluten is a key protein found in certain grains — namely wheat, barley, and rye — that provides the structure to hold gas bubbles during fermentation and fosters a chewy, complex crust. Until recently, most GF versions of pizza I’ve tasted, whether made from alternative flours or cauliflower — and commonly outsourced in restaurants to avoid cross contamination — have been less than exciting, with textures ranging between pressboard and Styrofoam.
Barclay’s gluten-free pies are not that. The Romeros worked for nine months to perfect a high-hydration crust that puffs like a supple focaccia. With a light dusting of cornmeal adding a delicate bottom crunch and the Detroit-style crispy frico cheese band around the edges, the pie achieves textural contrasts this gluten-free dough itself would not otherwise form. The pan-based format is helpful to prevent cross contamination, but having grown up in the Midwest, where deep-crusted pies are common, I found these to be completely satisfying platforms for Barclay’s toppings. I was impressed by the mushroom pie that blends thin-shaved creminis with caramelized onions over a white base of seasoned heavy cream and mozzarella. I also enjoyed the locally inspired combo of fennel sausage, broccoli, and zesty cherry pepper hoagie relish, the addition of Cooper Sharp lending the base of molten mozzarella some extra South Philly flow.
The gluten-free broccoli and sausage pizza at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill also comes topped with hoagie pepper relish.Craig LaBan / Staff
I appreciate that Barclay is continuously tweaking its recipes, increasing the size of its fresh sausage chunks from the dried-out crumbles I found early on to the porky nuggets that dotted the roasted pepper-sausage pie we ordered on a traditional gluten-full round. That pizza had a perfectly fine, well-developed crust that was solid by neighborhood pizzeria standards. But the gluten-free pies are the draw, special enough to merit a regionwide pilgrimage.
Samantha Garbose agreed: “Usually when we get gluten-free food together, I’m pretending it’s good, but I actually thought [Barclay’s] gluten-free pizza was better than the one that had gluten.”
Standard gluten-full pizza with sausage and peppers at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Barclay’s sales numbers are starting to bear this out. Hunton says they initially anticipated selling only 10 gluten-free pies a day to supplement their traditional pizza sales. But gluten-free pies now account for a third of the pizzas they bake.
“By the end of the first month we realized we’d really struck a chord,” says Hunton. “There’s a market need for a pizzeria that was truly inclusive.” Barclay also offers vegan pizzas with a cheese substitute made in-house from oat milk and tofu, deliberately avoiding nuts, an allergen ingredient commonly used in vegan cheese.
There’s still a catch. One reason this dough is so good is because it uses Caputo Fioreglut, an Italian gluten-free flour blend that contains wheat starch whose gluten proteins have been removed. Fioreglut performs closer to wheat flour than most GF blends and is considered safe for most celiacs, but not for those who have an allergy to wheat.
“We need to be pizza for everyone and we’re not fully there quite yet,” concedes Romero. “But that’s our North Star.”
The gluten-free broccoli and sausage pizza at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill also comes topped with hoagie pepper relish.Craig LaBan / Staff
The past few years have been a vibrant era for local experimentation with better gluten-free pizza alternatives, though few compare to Barclay Pies’ crust. Emmy Squared has long made gluten-free versions of its standard Detroit pies in Queen Village. Corio in University City has been working on a potato-based dough for thin-crusted counterparts to its Neapolitan-style pizzas. Gluten-free pasta specialist Settantatré has mastered an airy gluten-free focaccia base for the tomato pies it sells at local farmers market stands and its Berwyn market-cafe. Perhaps the best gluten-free pizza I’ve ever eaten was created by 13th Street Cocktails caterer Aaron Gordon for the exceptional pan pies at his Agricola in Passyunk Square, but this quirky corner pizza atelier is not a reliable source for frequent orders, limited now to only private charity events (but perhaps reopening to the public this fall).
Hunton and Romero have drawn on their professional experiences to quickly build Barclay Pies into the region’s most accessible hub for gluten-free pizza satisfaction. With its 50 indoor seats, 25 on its patio, and a bright pink-and-green makeover for the former Seasons Pizza, they’ve created a pleasant dining space with user-friendly systems for a cheerful and well-trained staff to operate efficiently while the owners, who are frequently there, also retain their day jobs. (Hunton, a Garces alum, still oversees operations at 70 Shake Shacks from New York to Virginia.)
Most importantly, gluten-free customers can take comfort in knowing protocols have been put in place to minimize risks of cross contamination. The gluten-free dough is mixed first thing each morning in a separate GF-only mixer, prepped at a separate station, run through a dedicated conveyor belt oven, and finished at a separate station with color-coded cutters and spatulas. The gluten-free pies are also proofed and cooked in round pans to clearly distinguish them from the gluten-full Detroit pies that are cooked in square pans.
Co-owner Thomas “TJ” Hunton making gluten-free pizza with summer corn at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
While there will never be 0% risk as long as products with gluten are made in-house, and that may not suit those who are especially sensitive, my daughter ate there three times without incident. Hunton and Romero also strongly believe there is a broader community benefit to offering both options, as opposed to being entirely gluten-free. This way groups of diners with diverse needs and preferences can feel seen and safely served together without being singled out.
This works especially well for the Garboses.
“We’d prefer to go to a restaurant that has great options for both of us,” says Mike. “Life is too short for either of us to eat bad food.”
But in the case of Barclay Pies, their “his and hers” pizza night had a different, guilt-free twist: “It’s been so long since Mike and I got to actually enjoy the same pizza,” says Samantha. “This was really a thrill.”
Gluten-free pizza with pepperoni at Barclay Pies in Cherry Hill, N.J., on Tuesday, July 21, 2026.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Barclay Pies
450 Marlton Pike, Cherry Hill Township, N.J. 856-712-1900; barclaypies.com
Open Sunday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, until 9:30 p.m.
Pizzas, $19-$24 (plus $4 for gluten-free crust).
Wheelchair accessible.
Menu is almost entirely gluten-free. Standard pizzas with gluten-full flour are made in the same facility but extreme care and protocols are taken to prevent cross contamination.
BYOB. There are several excellent liquor stores nearby. The restaurant also provides good-quality stemless plastic drinkware.
Menu Highlights: Gluten-free pizzas; mozzarella sticks; wings; chicken tenders.
Barclay Pies boxes in Cherry Hill.Tyger Williams / Staff Photographer
Before it became one of Philadelphia’s busiest bakery pop-ups, Manna Bakery operated out of a Temple University dorm room.
Now, after five years of overnight baking sessions, sold-out farmers markets, and long lines for Levantine and Palestinian pastries, chef-owner Saif Manna is opening his first brick-and-mortar bakery in Kensington — a mile and a half from campus.
Manna Bakery opens Thursday at 110 W. Berks St., the former Essen Bakery. This caps a whirlwind year for Manna, 27, who married his college girlfriend, Stefaniya Surikova, earlier this year. They’re expecting their first child.
Manna’s rise has the familiar outline of a pandemic success story, although the traditions reach back generations. He said his grandfather’s family lived in Yafa (also known as Jaffa) but left in 1948 after their house was bombed during the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli war, when hundreds of thousands fled or were expelled from areas that became part of Israel.
His grandfather headed first to Cyprus and then to Lebanon, studied medicine in England, and made his way to Kuwait to practice.
Manna was born in California and raised in Dubai before moving to the United States to attend Texas A&M University on a Division I tennis scholarship. After transferring to Temple, he began baking cookies during the pandemic while living in a dorm. Encouraged by Surikova — also on Temple’s tennis team — in 2021, he started selling them online before expanding into pop-ups and the Rittenhouse, Headhouse and Clark Park farmers markets.
As demand grew, Manna baked overnight at nearby Char Pizza before outgrowing the space.
Since Manna never lived in the Levant, he describes his business as a third-culture bakery. He said his shop’s logo, a dandelion flower, is a nod to a belief popular in China that equates Palestinians with dandelion seeds that can thrive anywhere they land.
Manna has followed a path blazed by the recent crop of independent bakeries such as Kouklet, Second Daughter, Machine Shop, Copihue, and Majdal, growing from home kitchens, pop-ups, and farmers markets into storefronts. Manna said he would keep his farmers market stops.
Stefaniya Surikova serves customers at Manna Bakery.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
His new bakery’s roomy kitchen includes a window where customers can watch the bakers. Manna is still awaiting his chairs and tables for the 60-seat cafe.
Weekday fare will feature many of Manna’s signatures, including manakeesh, chicken sumac buns, fatayer, cardamom buns, Basque cheesecake, seasonal cakes, and his pistachio chocolate chunk and extra-brown butter chocolate chunk cookies. Weekends will bring an even broader selection.
The coffee program, featuring beans from Seekers Coffee in Princeton, includes drinks flavored with rose, cardamom, tahini, dates and saffron, along with Manna’s grandmother’s orange blossom lemonade.
Jerusalem bagels (ka’ak al-quds) hang on hooks behind the counter at Manna Bakery.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
The shop has been redesigned with warm stone finishes, a small souk stocked with Levantine spices and pantry goods, and a rear room intended for future baking workshops, classes and private events.
For a soft opening last week, Manna and Surikova recreated their farmers market display, laying pastries across sheets of craft paper.
Among them were savory offerings such as the open-faced herby cheese fatayer and the banadoura manakish — a tomato-topped Levantine flatbread. Ka’ak al-Quds, the oblong, sesame-seeded Jerusalem bagels, hung from hooks behind the counter.
A smaller version of those bagels will eventually become Manna’s egg, cheese and za’atar breakfast sandwich. “That’s something I grew up eating,” Manna said. “My mom used to make me that before school.”
Dillon Assfalg, a line cook at Char who watched Manna’s overnight baking sessions firsthand, said the quality of his pastries stood out from the beginning. He describes himself as a cheesecake fan and ranks Manna’s lemon-and-orange-blossom Basque cheesecake among his favorites.
Saif Manna working on a pavlova for a customer at Manna Bakery.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
“Whenever he’d leave fillings at Char after his middle-of-the-night baking sessions, I’d eat them all the time,” Assfalg said. “They were always super good.”
Manna isn’t rushing to turn it into a full-service café. He hopes to add options such as slow-roasted lamb sandwiches for brunch, followed by baking workshops, cooking classes and supper clubs before introducing several nights of dinner featuring the Palestinian dishes he grew up with. But those plans can wait until the bakery is firmly established.
“Long term, I definitely have aspirations. I love cooking as much as baking, so I think people will see more of that from me,” Manna said. “Would I like to have a restaurant one day? Absolutely. But right now my focus is making this bakery the best it can be and continuing to deliver the quality people expect. We’ll go from there.”
Manna Bakery, 110 W. Berks St. Hours: 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday to Sunday.
Manna Bakery is about a half-block from the Berks Station of the Market-Frankford Line.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Manna’s tip for home bread bakers
Saif Manna shared one of his favorite tips for home bread bakers: use an autolyse. The technique calls for mixing only the flour and water for about a minute, then letting the shaggy dough rest for an hour or two before adding the remaining ingredients.
“When you come back, it’ll almost look like someone kneaded it for you,” he said. “It’s like magic. During that rest, the flour hydrates and the gluten begins to develop naturally.”
Only then does he add the salt, yeast, sugar and, if needed, oil before kneading. “You’ll end up with a much smoother, more beautiful dough, and you’ll never want to skip that step again,” he said.
The method also reduces mixing time. “People ask, ‘Why do you do it if you have these beautiful mixers?’” Manna said. “If you mix dough too long in a machine, you can overwork it. Bakers sometimes call it ‘bleaching’ the dough. We let it rest through the autolyse, then add the rest of the ingredients and finish the mixing in the machine. Because the gluten has already started developing, we can reduce the machine mixing time and preserve more of the flavor.”
My Uber driver could be forgiven for becoming a tad disoriented as we gingerly approached Terra Grill. After all, this newly cobbled stretch of Germantown Avenue in Northern Liberties has not appeared on a Philadelphia map since the 19th century, when the massive Schmidt’s Brewery rose here in 1860 on 14-plus acres east of North Second Street.
The legendary brewery is long gone, closed in 1987, demolished in 2000, and replaced in 2007 by developer Bart Blatstein’s original Piazza project, which supercharged gentrification of this once-industrial neighborhood. The mixed-use development quickly sputtered after an ownership change in 2013, just as nearby Fishtown and Kensington began to thrive.
Can Terra Grill help revive the Piazza dream? I’m not convinced a steakhouse alone will do the trick, even if it’s something different for Northern Liberties. (Remember the short-lived “vibe dining” of meat-forward SIN?)
But the development’s current owners, Post Brothers, clearly hope this modern American grill will help restore at least some of the neighborhood’s shine. It’s a $6 million anchor for the Piazza Alta, a new 1,100-unit high-rise complex targeted to families, not just the “frat boys in backwards trucker hats” that Post CEO Michael Pestronk said occupied the Piazza during its decline under their predecessor, Kushner Cos., whose tenure saw falling rents and shuttered retail storefronts.
The exterior of Terra Grill on July 9 in Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
The fact that there are people blithely wandering across our car’s path as we approach Terra Grill’s landscaped facade is both confusing and deliberate. Post Brothers has resisted adding road striping to the avenue (a technically private stretch now open to the public) to “prevent it from becoming a speedway.” The unmarked stones are meant to foster a street-facing, Euro-style pedestrian plaza.
Recruiting a nationally known chef for this project in Laurent Tourondel is also part of the strategy to give the neighborhood an upscale, Center City-esque aura — signaling that this once-edgy neighborhood has a new polish on top of its existing gastropubs (Standard Tap, North Third), cutting-edge vegan cooking (Pietramala), brunch spots (Honey’s Sit ‘N Eat, Cafe La Maude) and standout BYOBs (Pera, Apricot Stone). With an apartment boom bringing thousands of new residents and median incomes skyrocketing over the last decade, the affluence and density is suddenly there to potentially support something fancy like Terra Grill, whose entrees hover in the mid-$30s before you even touch the $50-plus prime steaks.
The interior of Terra Grill on July 9 in Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Is it a particularly adventurous place to dine? Not especially. But that may not matter. The restaurant exudes a textbook chophouse vibe, with circular booths clad in cushy black leather, a marble-topped bar, dark wood accents, walls of wine bottles, and hot pans of fresh, salt-speckled Parker House rolls served with little crocks of whipped miso-garlic butter.
There are culinary twists on classic cocktails to spark the meal, like the Quick & Dirty, an entry-level dirty martini washed with tzatziki yogurt and piqued with giardiniera brine, or the Golden Hour white Negroni, infused with red and golden raspberries as a nod to Philly’s Clover Club.
The Crazy Bird and Quick & Dirty cocktails at Terra Grill on July 9.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
It’s the bar program’s nod to the kitchen ethos of the French-born Tourondel, a respected chef based out of New York best known for BLT Steak (which he no longer owns) and BLT Fish, which briefly held one Michelin star and is now closed. Tourondel has since evolved into a management chef for hire, having opened 58 restaurants, from Kazakhstan to Panama, over the course of his career. He now operates 12 locations under his company, from Manhattan (L’Amico) to South Beach, where we recently dined on a delicious and stylish rendition of steak and eggs for brunch at LT Steak & Seafood.
Terra Grill is large, with 139 seats inside and 50 on the patio, alongside the chef’s cozier and more casual Roman-inspired Scusi Pizza. But the menu is essentially straight off the Tourondel rack: quality ingredients in familiar dishes treated with a thoughtful flourish or a seasonal touch. In other words, something for everyone.
The grilled octopus at Terra Grill.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
I especially enjoyed Tourondel’s octopus starter, coiled into a thick ring with its tentacles pointing out over a hash of crushed fingerling potatoes bright with lemon, olive oil, espelette aioli, and black dots of cured-olive purée. A baked crab cake is meaty and fresh, and fun to eat from the shell that it’s been stuffed back into.
Beside such successes, though, there are some fusion dishes that felt off-key, like the fried calamari with sweet chili dip, or the chimichurri-dabbedshort ribs wrapped in bao buns whose puffy hinges had gone stale. A luxe hot dog encasedin puff pastry with Gruyère and sauerkraut would have been delicious had its Wagyu dog not been so dense and rubbery. (Just as with burgers, a Wagyu pedigree does not make a hot dog better.) A tuna tartare stuffed into a flower-like bloom of shaved watermelon radishes beneath an avocado dome was flavorful and satisfying. But a mizuna salad draped with yuzu-dipped slices of yellowtail was awkward to eat and a waste of good fish.
The prime rib eye with dauphine potato puffs and grilled asparagus at Terra Grill.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
The entrees are naturally headlined by the steaks — all high-quality prime grade (except for the Angus filet mignon) and properly cooked over the live flames of a hardwood grill, served simply with the sauce and side of your choice. The 22-ounce rib eye was the ultimate beefy cut of the four options, and also the most expensive at $98. The entry-level skirt steak wasn’t huge for $52 (and oddly, more expensive than the signature dish at Tourondel’s Skirt Steak in Midtown Manhattan), but the 10-ounce flap of black garlic-marinated beef glazed in hoisin was delicious, especially with crispy croquettes of dauphine potato puffs on the side.
The bar at Terra Grill restaurant, 1099 Germantown Ave.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Considering designer Olya Volkova’s attention to fostering the clubby comforts of a swank dining room, it’s a shame the mood is so often squashed by the glaring flash of big TVs behind the central bar. It speaks to a personality conflict this fledgling restaurant is still trying to resolve: Is Terra Grill a special-occasion destination, or a chic weekly hangout for neighbors to watch the Phillies over a $28 burger?
I’d actually come back for that prime beef burger encrusted with seven different kinds of peppercorns and topped with molten raclette cheese — if only they manage not to overcook it next time.
I can also see returning for the excellent branzino, which gets butterflied and crisped skin-side down over the wood fire and served with a seasonal garnish — a lemon-soy salsa verde in spring, and now a summery puttanesca of blistered tomatoes with capers and olives. That fish is a fair deal at $36. However, even the chef conceded the entree of head-on red shrimp was “a little small” when I sent him a picture of my plate with three crustaceans for $36.
The grilled branzino puttanesca at Terra Grill.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
The rigatoni in lamb Bolognese is understandably popular with Terra’s regulars, both hearty and flavorful for $28. But it also feels random on a menu that has few other Italian flourishes — even if Tourondel’s adjacent pizzeria, Scusi, is right next door.
With its blond wood, aperitivo hour, and appealing menu of salads and pies (many available by the slice), Scusi could very well be just the affordable counterpart Terra needs. But its thin-crusted Roman pies were so strangely heavy from a blend of grains, including bran, that the dough was leaden and tough. My weighty slice of sausage and pepperoni was also incinerated.
Two slices of pizza at Scusi, located in the Piazza Alta in Northern Liberties.Craig LaBan / StaffScusi Pizza next door to Terra Grill.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Having previously enjoyed Tourondel’s Neapolitan-style Sag Pizza in the Hamptons, I know he’s capable of good pies. But Scusi’s troubled crusts reflect one of the perils of having a remote-control chef conducting from out of state.
Even more difficult than executing recipes, though, is finding the soul of a cookie-cutter concept, such that it feels like it fits the fabric of a place. Of course, in a literal blank slate like the Piazza Alta, the right restaurant can help set that tone. I did enjoy much of my food here, including the whimsical finale of a caramel popcorn sundae with a tableside chocolate sauce drizzle.
There are good ingredients in place. And the service is friendly enough (despite some rushed pacing with the starters). But there is still a paint-by-numbers corporate energy to Terra Grill.
The caramel popcorn sundae at Terra Grill.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Maybe its stride will come with more customers: The restaurant was less than half full during my visits. Perhaps they will materialize if the neighborhood gains the kind of momentum its developers hope to conjure — including the promise of an undisclosed local star chef slated to take a prime space across from Terra. Tourondel’s restaurants alonedo not carry the gravity to fully animate this recently revived stretch of Germantown Avenue, but Terra could complement a broaderscene. Just like the chaotic, slow-motion traffic patternsoutside the restaurant’s doors, it feels like a work in progress.
Dinner 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday; until 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Brunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m Saturday and Sunday.
Entrees, $28-$98.
Wheelchair accessible.
A little over half the menu items are gluten-free, with several others being easily modified with care to avoid cross contamination. Fried items are not available.
Menu Highlights: Parker House rolls; fried calamari; lemon chicken parm sandos; grilled octopus; stuffed crab cake; grilled branzino; Terra burger; prime steaks (skirt; strip, rib eye); potato puff dauphine; caramel popcorn sundae.
Drinks: Creative takes on classic cocktails with culinary twists are front and center, including a tzatziki-washed riff on a dirty martini and the rummy Crazy Bird tinged with bitter Campari. The sub-50 label wine list covers multiple styles with a balance of big names (Whispering Angel, Jordan) and lesser-known options (Decibel, Txakoli rosé). There are solid choices by the glass at $20 and under.
The interior of Terra Grill on Thursday, July 9, 2026 in Philadelphia.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Even on 100-degree days, Philly’s chefs and cooks are still in the kitchen. For the most part, they only call it quits when the food they’re making can’t take the heat.
How do theymake it through their stifling shifts? The answer comes down to preparedness, hydration, and lots of icy treats to lower body temps and boost morale.
The planning for heat waves starts long before the mercury rises. At Pizzata Pizzeria‘s South Philly location, recently added split-unit air conditioners and commercial kitchen fans have kept temperatures moderate. “They have been tremendously beneficial and helpful to our staff,” said owner Davide Lubrano Lavadera. “For our Rittenhouse spot, we didn’t have a chance to install these units, so we added an evaporative air cooler there.”
Pizzata Pizzeria co-owners and chefs Vinny Gallagher and Davide Lubrano Lavadera pose in the kitchen of their original pizzeria location on 22nd Street near Fitler Square.Craig LaBan / Staff
Two weeks ago, when temperatures spiked over 100 degrees three days in a row, Gilda chef-owner Brian Mattera warned customers on social media that the cafe would close if the heat tipped above 120 degrees in the kitchen — besides being uncomfortable, it would compromise the cooking. The flaky, laminated dough for Gilda’s signature pastéis de nata is notoriously temperamental, Mattera said.
“Our pastry chef, Sophia Fiorenza, is the star of the show. When she comes to me and says the temperature is one or two degrees up, she’s not being dramatic,” Mattera said. “The dough is tacky and difficult to work with. It’s unfortified and it can feel like papier mache.”
When the kitchen temperature is too high, the dough expands and falls off the sheeter, the machine that folds the dough into its many layers. “We say the dough is angry with us,” Mattera said.
The pastéis de nata at Gilda get harder to make in hot weather. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Even in Gilda’s diminutive space,with just six gas burners and a flat-top, Mattera needs five separate HVAC units to maintain the perfect temperature for the dough, around 70 degrees. They weren’t enough to keep the kitchen open during early July’s heat waves: Gilda’s crew called it a day when the temperature behind the line reached 137 degrees.
When the heat’s that intense, Mattera has a trick. “I’ll get a deli container of ice water, bring it into the bathroom, pour it over my head, and go back on the line.”
Chefs in nontraditional kitchens also battle the heat. Josh Broder owns Root to Fruit, a vegan meal-delivery service that operates out of the Culinary Collective commissary space in the Bridesburg neighborhood.“We’ve basically become professional heat dodgers. We start cooking earlier, pack our delivery bags like they’re headed to the Arctic with insulated bags and extra ice packs, and everyone’s usually carrying a water bottle in one hand and a spatula in the other,” he said.
Shiho Utsonomiya, the chef operator of Haha’s Kitchen, rarely closes the tiny food cart she has operated at the corner of Seventh and Spring Garden Streets since 2018. But she was forced to break for a few days leading up to July 4 this year, when the heat became unbearable. She closed the cart Wednesday for the same reason.
Shiho Utsunomiya in her food cart during a heat wave.Kiki Aranita / Staff
“It’s been getting hotter every year,” she said. “Winter, I don’t mind! Minus 17 degrees, no problem. But the heat just kills me.” She’s surrounded by a burner, steam tables, a fryer, and rice cooker. She’s enhanced her setup this year with a rechargeable fan with a mister.
Utsonomiya’s location has a significant benefit: free ice from her best customer. United Refrigeration’s offices are nearby and her cart is popular with their workers.
Extreme heat also prompted Little Walter’s — where the wood-fired grill casts off 120-degree heat, according to chef-owner Michael Brenfleck — to close in early July. Brenfleck said reservations were light during the holiday weekend, but the same could not be said of the following Friday, when the restaurant was nearly fully booked. That presents a challenge in itself: The busier the restaurant, the hotter it is inside.
Chef Michael Brenfleck cooks pierogi at Little Walter’s in Philadelphia on Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
“Every person’s body radiates a certain number of BTUs, both in the kitchen and in the dining room,” said Brenfleck. His solution:“We’re going to put some cold specials on the menu, like a chilled pickle soup.”
Brenfleck and Phila Lorn, the chef-owner of Sao and Mawn, were both amazed their respective staff endured the heat without complaint.
“The real ones plan for these times and problem-solve,” Lorn said. “It amazes me to see my chefs in the kitchen crushing it. They’re eating popsicles,[mopping themselves with]cold wet towels, using Gatorade powder, but I swear to you, not one complaint from the back of house.”
Liberty Kitchen staff trades tomato pie for soft serve on hot days. Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
Heat waves tend to foster community among restaurants — especially when there’s an ice cream shop involved. On the hottest days, the staff at Liberty Kitchen trades boxes of tomato pie with 1-900-ICE-CREAM, according to Liberty Kitchen chef Beau Neidhardt. “They’ll give us individual cups of soft serve for our staff. It’s very neighborly.”
For many restaurant workers, it’s just part of the job.
“We aren’t doing anything that needs to be applauded,” said Mattera. “At the end of the day, we’re all professionals. This is what we do. We can handle the heat.”
Hidden deep in the Orange Crush heart of the Jersey Shore, there’s a beloved dive bar near West Wildwood’s bay that ignores all the common rules of commerce and good cooking. And yet its ceiling is covered in money and its unlikely hit sandwich is a Reuben made with … scallops?!
Not far away in Cape May, a new Italian restaurant is also doing things differently, crafting extraordinary meals from the highest quality ingredients ― with eye-popping prices to match. At the other end of the dining spectrum, there’s a destination-worthy cutlet sandwich in Sea Isle City and a hot new cheesesteak stand on the Wildwood boardwalk where the crowds come in hopes of glimpsing the owner, an alleged former mob boss who’s refashioned himself as a South Philly sandwich king. A very different kind of celebrity in the making — a giant seagull mascot — is aiming to energize a lively new outdoor restaurant and bar in Avalon and give fresh meaning to “Go Birds!”
Such eating adventures across the southern end of the Jersey Shore this summer were an exploration of dining culture extremes, but never dull and frequently delicious.
These 11 places from Cape May to Ocean City are the ones I’ll remember most.
Dollars hanging from the ceiling at Westside Saloon in West Wildwood, N.J. Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
WEST WILDWOOD
Westside Saloon
Everyone talks about the dollar bills tacked to the ceiling of the Westside Saloon like Monopoly money confetti, the result of a barroom challenge that’s added a distinctive dive bar quirkiness to this venerable tavern on the tiny isle of West Wildwood. To me, however, those bills are the least intriguing aspect of the Westside Saloon, as this watering hole — which dates to Prohibition and was once known as the Bridge Cafe — was renamed in 2003. My eyes are drawn to the crates of ripe fruit stacked near the front door, set to be juiced daily for the lineup of dangerously smooth crush cocktails made with all-natural ingredients — orange, grapefruit, pineapple, watermelon — shaken with vodka (or tequila) and seltzer. “My mother always told me that drinking would get me nowhere,” says the bar’s manager and chef, Billy Scott, 52. “But it’s worked out pretty well for me here. These drinks are my babies. They make people smile, and I’m definitely the King of the Crush now.”
The saloon is owned by the McCoy and Keating families, but Scott, a family friend, is also the culinary mind responsible for the strokes of whimsy — or cheese crimes against seafood, depending on your perspective — that have prompted the Westside Saloon to tout itself as a “five-star dive bar” that’s booming despite an independent streak with its hours (“We open when we feel like it; we close when we feel like it”) and a published phone number that’s never answered because they ripped the phone off the wall 15 years ago. (“It wouldn’t stop ringing.”)
A bartender making crush cocktails at the Westside Saloon in West Wildwood.Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
That reclusive attitude hasn’t slowed the crowds that wander into this trapezoid-shaped building for one of the 28 seats at the trapezoid-shaped bar (or 40 outdoor seats) to listen to live music and indulge in one of the Shore’s most unusual seafood menus, headlined by the iconic scallop Reuben. It’s an odd combination that by most conventions should not work, but Scott has access to some of the best ingredients on the East Coast through nearby Dock Street Seafood. The plump Jersey scallops offer a meaty alternative to corned beef, with a briny sweetness that harmonizes with the tangy sauerkraut, piquant Swiss cheese, and butter-toasted rye. It’s not Scott’s only seafood and dairy gambit. The stuffed long hot pepper is exploding with fresh crab and provolone, a prosciutto wrap, and a Gorgonzola finish. There’s so much crustacean in the she-crab soup that our spoon nearly stood up straight. (If it had been hotter, it would have been perfect.) Sesame-seared local tuna comes piled over crisped wonton chips for Asian nachos. But Scott’s most audacious creation is the option to order your seafood “blue,” a marinara sauce blended with Gorgonzola that added an unexpectedly appealing cave-aged funk to our bountiful seafood pasta.
Seared tuna nachos at the Westside Saloon in West Wildwood, N.J.Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
For those averse to seafood spectacles, the Westside’s chicken wings and “volcanic eruption” burger (a cheese-stuffed patty topped with bacon and long hots) also have fans. But what surprised me most was that the saloon makes its own desserts, including a towering key lime pie and an Oreo-encrusted cheesecake we could not stop eating. This won’t be news to anyone who knows how much passion Scott and his crew, who also recently bought a bakery, have put into making this iconoclastic institution so much more than a random dive bar.
“The only thing artificial here are my initials — B.S.,” says Scott. “When you come to the Westside Saloon, everything else is real.”
Westside Saloon, 770 W. Glenwood Ave., West Wildwood, N.J. 08260, no phone; on Facebook
Chef Alfredo Dapi rolls out pasta for pistachio gnocchi in the kitchen at Il Riccio in Cape May, N.J. Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
CAPE MAY
Il Riccio
There are so many Italian restaurants at the Jersey Shore, I was not particularly excited about the prospect of yet another, especially considering the newcomer most recommended to me this offseason by my local sources was located in a turnstile Cape May address where I’ve reviewed three different restaurants since 2003.
Chef Alfredo Dapi pauses while making pistachio gnocchi in the kitchen at Il Riccio in Cape May.Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
Number four — Il Riccio — turns out to be anything but ordinary, and not simply because the lofty prices, with dinner entrees ranging from $38 to triple digits, will make you wonder if the food is gilded. In fact, it is. But the shimmering stamps of 24-karat gold hovering above the cacio e pepe risotto are not the prime reason this showstopper dinner indulgence costs $99. That would be the quarter-pound of meltingly rich A5 Wagyu tenderloin from Hokkaido that comes seared on top, as well as the raisiny sweet swirls of reduced Amarone wine, not to mention the coveted seven-year-old aged Acquerello rice that’s cooked to al dente perfection by chef Alfredo Dapi for 19 minutes on the dot, adding the imported butter from Parma and pecorino cheese only at the end to keep it light.
“We wanted a dish that touched all the senses — sweet, salty, sour, and bitter,” says Il Riccio’s gregarious co-owner Luca Cimmarotta, 52, a Tuscan winemaker, olive oil producer, and importer who, since his earlier days as a sommelier for both Aldo Lamberti and Georges Perrier, has always wanted to open an Italian restaurant that made no compromises when it came to quality.
Il Riccio in Cape May, N.J.Ted Nghiem / For The InquirerPistachio gnocchi at Il Riccio in Cape May, N.J. Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
That is exactly what he’s done at Il Riccio (“the sea urchin” in Italian), the posh 50-seat BYOB he opened a year ago in a Victorian bungalow beside Collier’s Liquors with his wife, Stefania Chiaro, 46, who works in the kitchen, and their son, Michele Cimmarotta, 21, who charms the dining room as lead server.
Our night, he was offering a wild fresh Holland Dover sole whose beguilingly firm texture, delicate flavor, and roe sack (a bonus!) were expertly deboned tableside, and tasted clearly superior to the more common farm-raised and prefrozen sole found elsewhere for a third of Il Riccio’s $135 price. That includes a side of spaghetti alla chitarra laced with Cimmarotta’s own olive oil and colatura di Alici (Italian fish sauce), and easily feeds two.
Cured ham aficionados will also find rare treasures here, from the acorn-fed Spanish Ibérico ham Cimmarotta slices from a rolling cart in the dining room to the multiple varieties of Italian culatello available with truffled sottocenere cheese. The lunch menu is slightly more affordable, when you can order that risotto minus the Wagyu for $39. You can also still taste the restaurant’s signature baby octopus, a pom-pom of grilled tentacles posed over spicy broccoli rabe. I’d also suggest the soulfully stewed beef braciole stuffed with pecorino. One dish that should not be missed is Dapi’s amazing gnocchi, ethereal dumpling clouds floated across a pool of a creamy Gorgonzola turned pastel green with blended pistachios.
Nutella gelato affogato at Il Riccio in Cape May, N.J.Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
For dessert, ignore the more ubiquitous options and head straight for the affogato. A silky Nutella gelato is topped tableside with dark and roasty Caffé Toraldo espresso from Naples poured from a gorgeous little red moka pot designed by Dolce & Gabbana. Like everything else at Il Riccio, it brings luxury, design, quality, and flavor all together into a special fine-dining experience that actually delivers exactly what you pay for.
Il Riccio, 311 Mansion St., Cape May, N.J. 08204, 609-554-3165; ilricciocapemay.com
Mediterrano
The demise of the Exit Zero Filling Station has left a kraken squid curry-sized hole in Cape May’s funky fusion dining scene. But its unique location — a soaring dining hall fronted by a former gas station pump turned breezy al fresco patio — has been salvaged and retransformed into a vision of Greece. Cue the potted palms, painted faux-cobblestones, and cerulean blue paint job for the old filling station portico that is now a BYOB called Mediterrano. New owner Florian Furxhiu has used his playbook from Santorini, the popular Greek haunt he owns in Wildwood.
Exterior view of Mediterrano in Cape May, N.J.Ted Nghiem / For The Inquirer
A statue of Hebe, the daughter of Zeus, presides over the columned fireplace of this handsomely renovated dining room lined with blooming fake bougainvillea vines, while Santorini’s former co-chef, Caesar Jeromino, and Alban Presheva, newly arrived from Albania, turn out one Greek standard after the next.
Considering their experience, my meal was more inconsistent than I’d hoped for. The Greek meatballs in tomato sauce were unyieldingly dense. The single-serving moussaka built à la minute over a solo eggplant lacked the satisfaction of the traditional large-format casserole.
The big lamb shank, however, was impressively tender, and the butterflied whole branzino, a favorite at Santorini, was as good as ever, its flaky white flesh glazed in lemony butter sauce and capers. I have little doubt Furxhiu’s time-tested team will level up to fine-tune the rest of these dishes as summer progresses. With Ionian-like breezes whistling off the nearby Atlantic through this unique patio and the goddess Hebe casting her magic powers, one can only hope.
The remarkable reinvention of Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino from infamous wiseguy to cheesesteak mogul has been well-documented by my colleague Michael Klein. But the arrival of his popular South Philly sandwich stand at a satellite on the Wildwood boardwalk still begs a clear-eyed review, especially with his partner Joe “Lil Snuff” Perri Jr. perpetually hyping the project on social media. It’s a great story, but does that mean it’s also a tasty lunch?
Cheessteak and pizza at Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino’s new Skinny Joey’s Cheesesteaks during a soft opening of his new location on the boardwalk in Wildwood.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
I admit an initial pause of disappointment that the best sandwich from OG Skinny Joey’s — the roast pork sandwich — did not make it to the beach. But the marquee cheesesteaks are consistent with the original, bountifully portioned and ever-cheesy with molten Cooper Sharp on a seeded roll. It’s overall better than I anticipated given the marketing bluster, but not quite elite (I worked through a clump of gristle amid the otherwise tender chopped meat; the coarse-cut, barely cooked onions also need more love).
The gloriously messy Buffalo chicken is the true steak star here. Skinny Joey’s also does pizza in Wildwood, unlike the original, and while the round pies are average, the strombolis are fantastic. They take extra time to make, because they’re baked to order. They’re also perfectly sized to fit into the slender holster of a cardboard cheesesteak box to go. Or, eat it on-site in Skinny Joey’s pleasantly cool indoor dining room, which has the rare boardwalk perk of a private bathroom, plus the opportunity to buy lots of branded merch.
You can get pierogi and all sorts of other Eastern European treats on the boardwalk at Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach, famed for its Slavic community. A notable counterpart to be found at the Jersey Shore is the Pierogie Place, which has two separate stands on the Wildwood boardwalk. It has such a loyal following that a customer who sidled up to the register beside my family swore it was always her first stop when she arrived at the Jersey Shore (“we actually come daily”), not to mention when she visits Lincoln Financial Field, where Pierogie Place founders Liz and Bohdan Kulchyckyj also operate a location of their six-year-old comfort food tribute to Ukraine, where they lived for two decades as expats.
The Pierogie Place has two storefronts on the boardwalk in Wildwood. Pictured behind the counter at the 3116 Boardwalk location are employee Anastasiia Oleska (left) and co-owner Liz Kulchyckyj.Craig LaBan / Staff
The draw are the pierogi (or “vareniki,” as they’re called in Ukraine) offered in a variety of fillings and served with deeply caramelized onions and a dollop of sour cream. I enjoyed the potato and farmer’s cheese filling best, with the jalapeño-cheddar stuffing following close behind — even better crowned with a snappy link of kielbasa. The tortellini-like dumplings filled with pork and veal known as pelmeni are also irresistible. But don’t miss dessert of sweet cheese dumplings topped with strawberries, blueberries, or both and a cloud of whipped cream. Mingling with the aroma of salty sea air, this Slavic carnival in a box tastes particularly sweet.
The Pierogie Place, 3116 Boardwalk and 4302 Boardwalk, Wildwood; thepierogieplace.com
STONE HARBOR
Mother’s Market & Bakery
Mother’s Market & Bakery in Stone Harbor is a family affair, operated by Jennie Mopsik (center), her father, Eugene Mopsik (left) and mother, Helen Mopsik.Courtesy Mother's Market & Bakery / Eugene Mopsik
This charming new prepared foods shop in Stone Harbor checks a longtime bucket list wish for Jennie Mopsik to work alongside her parents in the Shore town where they’ve long summered together, and where she now lives year-round. This storefront market with patio seating was inspired by the home entertaining she saw her parents, Eugene and Helen Mopsik, refine over the years. So, while the shelves are stocked with well-chosen products, from top-notch pasta to Samaki smoked fish and frozen pierogi brought in from Port Richmond’s Czerw’s Polish Kielbasa, the real gems here are the specials cooked daily by her dad, a retired photographer who became known as the “Philly Loxsmith” in his tenure at Biederman’s, where he rediscovered a love of cooking. At Mother’s you’ll find him whipping up homey daily soups (cream of asparagus, gazpacho, matzo ball), fresh quiches, muffins, and excellent grab-and-go salads, including his legendary whitefish salad and a farmer’s cheese spread blended with labneh, shallots, and dill that’s my new favorite bagel schmear (not to mention Helen’s favorite happy hour snack). Jennie Mopsik is involved with the baking, too, but her talent and former business for flower arranging is also on display with custom hand-tied bouquets and orchid arrangements that she says will bloom all summer long.
Mother’s Market & Bakery, 8307 Third Ave., 1st Flr., Stone Harbor, N.J. 08247; on Instagram
Hanging candied bacon served over grits and Gully’s Blooming Potato at Gully’s in Avalon, N.J.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
AVALON
Gully’s
When I was little, the notion of a human-size seagull flapping its wings at my table might have scared me right out of my swim trunks. But the team behind Gully’s is betting on the “sassy but good-natured” energy of its friendly weekend-only mascot, Gully, along with competitive Monday minnow races and updated American pub fare to bring some “old-school beachy vibes” to their makeover of the pergola-wrapped al fresco resto-bar in Avalon that was previously Black Cactus. And … it just might work?
Gully’s is more affordable than its predecessor and the diner-plus menu has a lower success bar to clear. But the food is also a notch better than it has to be, with fresh figs scattered over balsamic and a creamy hunk of burrata with prosciutto, a well-built chicken Caesar wrap, plump shrimp for the feta-dusted Mediterranean salad, and “skinny” crushes made with fresh juice and seltzer (not soda) to wash it down.
The Orange Crush and Super Spritz cocktails at Gully’s in Avalon, N.J.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
A bland and creamy “peri peri” chicken entree was one disappointment for a sauce that should have been spicy. But stick with the menu’s less challenging top half and you should be fine, especially with a tray of spiralized “blooming potato” chips and a clothesline of candied bacon that dangles over a tasty plate of grits — not an original idea, but delicious. They’re so good, I was thinking Gully’s mascot should actually be a human-size piece of bacon just as our outdoor table was suddenly attacked by a relentless swarm of dune gnats. The service team stepped up when a cheerful manager appeared to offer guests some bug spray. (“BYO-bug spray next time?” he joked.) Of course, seagulls eat bugs, too, so Gully the mascot may, in fact, be just the hero we’ve been waiting for. Go Birds!
The exterior of Johnny Cutlets in Sea Isle City, N.J.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
SEA ISLE CITY
Johnny Cutlets
The old Steve’s Grilled Cheese is out. The crispy new swagger of Johnny Cutlets is in. And this smartly revamped Sea Isle City shop is already making a serious bid to join the elite ranks of the Jersey Shore’s sandwich derby. The cutlets are the main event, hand-breaded with two kinds of crumbs, Parmesan and herbes de Provence for a soft herbal note, then fried daily at a lower-than-usual temperature to try to maintain the juicy tenderness of a home-cooked cutlet. I was impressed, especially with its South Philly-style signature served with sharp provolone, broccoli rabe, and a long hot pepper draped over the top of a seeded Aversa’s roll. The Drunken Johnny with vodka sauce and the MJ with fresh mozz and balsamic are also popular cutlet options, but don’t sleep on Johnny’s steaks. They’re more manageably portioned than the overstuffed, overly cheesed steaks currently trending on social media, but I admired the balance of quality ingredients here.
Chef Shawn (no last name given), fries cutlets at Johnny Cutlets in Sea Isle City, NJ.Monica Herndon / Staff PhotographerThe MJ features a chicken cutlet with mozzarella, arugula, cherry tomatoes, hot honey, and balsamic glaze at Johnny Cutlets in Sea Isle City, N.J.Monica Herndon / Staff Photographer
This project is a collaboration between Steve’s former owners, twins Stephen and Fred Freda, and their new partner, “Johnny Cutlets” Markulics, who concluded that fried chicken and cheesesteaks have more “healthy living” appeal than grilled cheese. That’s probably not a scientific conclusion. But if early sales are an indication — selling up to 400 sandwiches a day — the theory wins a popularity contest. It’s just as likely that rebranding with Markulics front and center was also key. An AI-generated portrait of the vividly tattooed body shop owner, whose look Stephen Freda affectionately characterizes as “a friendly, semiscary face,” became the shop’s logo and sign, along with the bold catch phrase, “famous ‘cause I say so.” It’s a bravado this feisty little sandwich shop might actually live up to.
Johnny Cutlets, 27 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Sea Isle City, N.J. 08243, 609-486-6003; johnnycutletssic.com
Dylan Bear, owner of Alex’s Pizza, at 1214 Boardwalk, Ocean City, N.J.Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer
OCEAN CITY
Alex’s Pizza
A smash burger with onions and cheese is one of the specialties at the new boardwalk location in Ocean City for Alex’s Pizza from Roxborough.Craig LaBan / Staff
The best part of opening a Jersey Shore branch of a classic Philly pizzeria is that you have a built-in loyal clientele. The bad news is that loyal clientele. They know your pies better than anyone, and if it doesn’t measure up then … well, meet Michele B., a lifelong Roxborough resident seated beside me who grew up eating at Alex’s Pizza, a standby at Pechin and Leverington since the 1960s. She traveled to the Ocean City location specifically to taste a slice of her youth, and while these thin-crusted rounds looked the part, with a signature swirl of red sauce spiraled across the top, there wasn’t nearly enough of it: “It’s too dry!” said Michele bluntly. “Not enough sauce.” To his credit, the manager of this new boardwalk venture was eager for feedback, since he’d never eaten at the Roxborough original himself. An experimental pie with sauerkraut and hot dogs had more pizzazz, albeit a niche audience (me). But Alex’s does one thing especially well: smash burgers. The patties on my double stack were swiftly griddled to an impressively crisp and lacy skirt, then layered with onions and oozy cheese that trapped all of its juices. While Alex’s may indeed one day offer an upgrade to the multitude of boardwalk pizza mediocrity, the local burger competition is considerably more scarce. And this one’s worth the trip.
Alex’s Pizza, 1214 Boardwalk, Ocean City, N.J. 08226; 609-862-0062; alexspizzaocnj.com
Kyma
The Beach Baklava yogurt topped with chunks of the Greek pastry, chocolate sauce, and pistachios is one of the highlights at Kyma, a new Greek yogurt cafe in Ocean City.Craig LaBan / Staff
When it comes to island refreshments, Greece has a historic head start of a few thousand years on the Jersey Shore. So I was excited that the Siganos family behind Ocean City’s classic Greek diner, Yianni’s Cafe, opened a frozen treat destination nearby on Asbury Avenue with something different from the norm. Kyma serves Greek-style frozen yogurt that carries a refreshing tartness absent in most standard soft-serve, but its elaborately composed bowls are what caught my eye, especially the “Beach Baklava,” a swirling tower of frozen yogurt drizzled with chocolate, pistachios, berries, and flaky hunks of baklava pastry. There’s another bowl scattered with crunchy kataifi, almonds, and honey and another trendy Dubai-themed bowl drenched in green pistachio sauce and chocolate. There are some more familiar offerings — smoothies, açaí bowls — for maximum audience appeal. But the other prime bonus for me is the bold punch of one of the world’s original iced coffees: frappé, a Greek specialty invented in 1957 that whips instant Nescafé with sugar, water, and milk into a stiff peak that gets shaken with ice into a powerfully caffeinated foam.
Kyma, 838 B Asbury Ave., Ocean City, N.J. 08226, 609-545-2290; kymaoc.com
Island Grill
Crab imperial is one of the classic standards at Island Grill in Ocean City.Craig LaBan / Staff
The last time I visited Island Grill in 2021, the chowder and coconut shrimp were being delivered by Peanut the robot, on lease by the restaurant’s owners to cope with a severe pandemic labor shortage. Peanut is gone from Island Grill now, even if food service robots are now everywhere else. But this standby on the island’s northern end is once again humming full steam ahead for walk-in crowds that pack the nautical-themed space, now in its 30th year cooking fresh seafood from its retail market. The vast menu offers classics like fried or broiled fish platters from its extensive fresh catch board, fish tacos, and a broiled crab imperial glazed in zesty sauce that showcased the bounty of sweet meat. What’s also laudable about Island Grill is an extensive selection of gluten-free offerings that are carefully made to avoid cross contamination, from the pecan-crusted salmon to a gf key lime pie and twin crab cakes that were so good my celiac daughter questioned whether she’d received the wrong order. She had not. The kitchen also offers traditional crab cakes, but the gluten-free variety is convincingly bound with rice.
Island Grill, 100 Atlantic Ave., Ocean City, N.J. 08226, 609-391-9616; ocnjislandgrill.com
