Roast Beef Beckons at Meetinghouse, But This Kensington Bar Is so Much More
Neighbors mourned the loss of Memphis Taproom. Its replacement more than makes up for it.
Meetinghouse’s roast beef sandwich / Photograph by Gab Bonghi
Somebody told me that Meetinghouse had the best roast beef sandwich they’d had in a dog’s age, so I went. I’ll drive a while for a great roast beef sandwich, but this place is only in Kensington — right on the corner of Memphis and East Cumberland, where Memphis Taproom sat for 15 remarkable years — so it wasn’t even a bother. Not close to me, but easily within my acceptable roast-beef-sandwich radius.
And the sandwich was good. Bordering on great, even. Not the best I’ve had (that one will remain unnamed here), but not far off, either. Top round, rubbed with herbs, roasted slow, soaked in jus, sliced thick and stacked high enough on a soft kaiser roll that it was almost like bragging. Like, Hey, check us out! You ever seen a fatter sandwich? No, you have not.
The bottom half of the roll soaked up all the juice and got soft fast, just the way I like it. A little brown gravy. Pickle spear. Nothing more. If you do your job right in the kitchen, a plate doesn’t need flags and sparklers to make it special.
Still, the sandwich wasn’t my favorite thing about Meetinghouse. What hooked me was the ease of the place. The comfort of it, and absolute lack of ego. Plates come when they come. On the floor, service is casual, occasionally charmingly clumsy. One weeknight, the bar was slammed, barely room enough to move at 5 p.m. On an Eagles game day, they couldn’t get the TV to work right until, eventually, they did, and everyone cheered like the Birds had already won.
The house beers are excellent — a pale, a dark and a hoppy, all brewed by the Meetinghouse team. Two of the owners are ex of Tired Hands; a third was an art director for Mikkeller, and he designed the lovely blue tiles behind the bar. Drew DiTomo (the fourth co-owner) is running the kitchen. He used to be the chef de cuisine at Amis, so he could have pushed fancy pastas and roasted lamb and $15 octopus. Instead, he’s doing thick-cut fries like you get from a Greek diner, served on a doily, little paper cup of ketchup. He’s got baked clams in garlic butter, dry sausage and manchego, simple turkey cutlets, breadcrumbed and fried golden, served with nothing but a squeeze of lemon.
So Meetinghouse is a brand-new neighborhood bar that feels like an old neighborhood bar, in a space that’s been a neighborhood bar for as long as anyone can remember. Nights are easy here. The beers are good. The fries are hot and salty. The roast beef sandwich is as heavy as a softball in your hand. It’s the local that everyone wants, maybe deserves.
And who could ask for more than that?
2 Stars — Come if you’re in the neighborhood
Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America
Published as “The New Classic” in the December 2023/January 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
