Michael Solomonv’s restaurant group CookNSolo plans to open an Israeli influenced oyster bar in Philadelphia this fall.
Jaffa Bar is slated to open at 1925 N. Howard St., a two-story former firehouse in the city’s Olde Kensington neighborhood. The 5,000 square-foot 120-seat space is being developed by Boxwood Architects, which has also worked on other CookNSolo projects. According to a release from the restaurant company, it’s a romaneqsue revival-style building with plenty of windows for lighting.
It will be headed up by general manager Kailey Jenkins and chef Andrew Henshaw, both CookNSolo veterans who will also be partners in the property. They have already spent five years working together at Laser Wolf, four blocks away from the future Jaffa Bar.
The company’s director of operations, Ryan Mulholland, will also be a partner in the project.
The name refers to Jaffa, also known as Yafo, an ancient port city that is now a trendy section of the greater Tel Aviv area in Israel, and CookNSolo said the upcoming restaurant’s cocktail program is inspired by a fruit grown in the area, the Jaffa orange. It will be overseen by Sean Byrne, who has worked as bar manager at two other restaurants in the group, Dizengoff and Abe Fisher. The Jaffa Orange cocktail is reportedly inspired by the classic of American shopping malls 40 years ago, the Orange Julius.
The menu will combine oyster bar classics and Israeli influenced seafood preparations, including oysters with passion fruit mignonette, yellowtail pastrami, mussels escabeche in pine nut tarator (a Middle Eastern sauce made with nuts or sesame, lemon, and garlic), scallops with merguez sausage and harissa, a tomato-seafood stew called chraime (made with whole sea bream at Jaffa Bar), and Yemenite-style monkfish.
Also on the menu will be fried chicken thighs in a sauce made of honey and the mango pickle condiment called amba, no-doubt influenced by another CookNSolo concept, Federal Donuts and Chicken. The Jaffa Burger will be topped with green chiles and mayonnaise mixed with the spicy Yemenite-Israeli condiment skhug.
The group’s beverage director, Steven McAllister, is curating a seafood-friendly wine list with a focus on natural wines from the Eastern Mediterranean.
CookNSolo was founded in 2008 and is named for its two founders, Michael Solomonov and Steve Cook. Apart from the flagship fine-dining restaurant Zahav, it also includes Federal Donuts & Chicken, Dizengoff, Goldie, K’Far, Laser Wolf, and Lilah Events.
In partnership with the Boka Group, it also operates Laser Wolf, K’Far, and Jaffa Cocktail & Raw Bar at the Hoxton Hotel in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg.
A CookNSolo representative said the new restaurant will be a different concept from the similarly named Williamsburg restaurant.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
