With summer's end, the fall season kicks off with a series of new restaurant openings in Philadelphia, the suburbs and the tri-state area.
The long-anticipated Amada (217 Chestnut St., 215.625.2450) in Old City, will open this month from Jose Garces, recognized as one of the nation's leading Latin-American chefs.
The chef/owner will establish the city's only authentic Spanish tapas bar and restaurant with a menu of traditional tapas offerings with Garces' own contemporary interpretations of classic Spanish cuisine that he previously perfected at two of Stephen Starr's restaurants, Alma de Cuba and El Vez.
Garces hired designer Jun Aizaki of Creme, the New York based firm, to create a genuine European-bohemian ambience, with a distinctive Spanish twist.
Highlights of Garces' tapas menu will include crab with toasted almonds, San Simon cheese, paprika sabayon and parsley oil; smoked tuna belly with tomato bread; and slow roasted beef filet with Catalan spinach, raisins, apples, pine nuts, cabrales demi and foie gras.
The Pop Shop (729 Haddon Ave., 856.869. 0111) in Collingswood, NJ, recently opened.
Owned and operated by husband-wife team, professional actor Bill Fisher ("The Invincible" and remake of "The Longest Yard") and area food media mogul Connie Correia Fisher's new café and creamery was inspired by the 1940s soda fountain restaurants that places like their adopted hometown of Collingswood were known for local meeting spot.
The Fishers say that the menu features quirky diner-inspired comfort cuisine as well as a large selection of hand-dipped Bassett's ice cream, milkshakes and desserts. Diners will have the opportunity to build-their-own-burgers and sandwiches, and the menu also has vegetarian dishes, salads, fries and snack foods plus blue plate platters, including vegetarian and special dietary requirements, with most items priced between $6 to $10, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Housed in the former Purple Iris store, The Pop Shop seats 83 people, making it a perfect addition to Collingswood's vintage downtown, with a 1952 Seeburg juke box, a mirrored soda fountain from a 1950s Five & Dime from Ohio and staff wearing period hats and bowling shirts.
Slate Bleu (100 South Main St., 215.348.0222) in Doylestown will open at the end of September.
Chef/owner Mark Matyas will feature casual European cuisine with a French influence in the dramatic setting in the restored Rhodes Livery section in the landmark Doylestown Agricultural Works, circa 1864, a National Register of Historic Places.
Matyas, a native Pennsylvanian, is a graduate of both Waynesburg College in Pennsylvania and McGill University in Montreal, who began his restaurant career as early as his teenage years working in the professional kitchens of Doylestown Inn and the Warrington Country Club, followed by stints at Le Cordon Bleu, Le Recamier and Le Vivarois in France and La Grenouille in New York.
Highlights of the menu that will change daily include: pike quenelle with crayfish sauce; steak au poivre with pommes soufflés; various tartars; stuffed saddle of veal; and terrine of goat cheese and tomato
The restaurant will feature a wide variety of wines by the glass, a collection of French, American, and international wines by the bottle, bottled European and American beer, aperitifs, and cordials.
Slate Bleu's dessert menu will feature soufflés, crème brûlées, profiteroles, and homemade ice creams.
