Bastia, Fishtown’s Highly Anticipated Hotel Restaurant, Has an Opening Date

Dishes featured on Bastia’s dinner menu. / Photograph by Birch Thomas

Howdy, buckaroos! Welcome to the dog days of August. Things really slow down in Restaurant World in the run-up to Labor Day, so there’s just a few quick things you need to know to get up to speed — notably some drink specials to keep you cool, taco news in Fishtown, and an all-corn menu re-vamp from a somewhat unlikely place. But let’s get things started with the week’s biggest news, which is …

Tyler Akin’s Bastia is Ready for the Spotlight

We’ve talked about this place before.

Bastia is chef Tyler Akin’s new Mediterranean restaurant concept that he’s been working on for a while now over at the Hotel Anna & Bel in Fishtown. Originally in the books as a late-winter opening, it is scheduled to open to the public on Thursday, August 15th. It’s a solid 70 seats between the bar and the floor, with an Italian-leaning beverage program being run by ex-Mulherin’s beverage manager, Benjamin Kirk, and a kitchen that, like a Transformer, switches between daytime cafe offerings and nighttime dinner service.

And while some of you might read the Fishtown address and see the former golden boy of Stock (the tiny Fishtown pho shop Akin opened in the neighborhood back in 2014) returning to his roots, or look at the hotel location and recall that this is actually Akin’s second hotel restaurant (he’ll also continue to operate Le Cavalier at the Hotel Du Pont in Wilmington), Bastia actually reminds me of something else from Akin’s resume.

Back in spring of 2017, one of the most remarkable restaurants in the entire city was Res Ipsa. The partnership between Akin and the team from ReAnimator Coffee resulted in a Walnut Street all-day cafe with a weird name and terrible street frontage that served some of the most revelatory food anywhere. It had Michael Vincent Ferreri in the kitchen, a killer cafe vibe (and menu) during the daylight hours, and, come dinner time, shifted gears and started serving octopus tentacles, spaghetti a la vongole, a brilliant raviolo and Sardinian gnocchi with eggplant. I reviewed the place, would’ve given it 11 stars if I could (though I only gave it three in the moment because I was a real bastard back then), and told everyone who would listen that it was one of those restaurants that would define Philly’s scene for more than a little while.

Which it did. All-day cafes are everywhere now. That gearshift of going from one thing in daylight to another at night? Happens all the time. And MVF went on to make a name for himself at Irwin’s after the pandemic killed Res Ipsa (and Stock, too) a couple years later.

Bastia / Photograph by Birch Thomas

Anyway, Res Ipsa was good. And Akin, I think, has long wanted to recapture a bit of that magic, but with himself in the kitchen and running the line. Thus, we have Bastia, which, in daylight, will serve cafe and breakfast staples (starting August 28th) and, at dinner, a Corsican/Sardinian menu full of sea urchin butter tartine with stuffed squash blossoms, skate cheeks in bonito beurre blanc, grilled lobster, entrecôte with bean and sweet pepper salad and porceddu with Sardinian flatbread and new potatoes. So, essentially, French-y-Italian seafood; seasonal, coastal menus with Cote d’Azur vibes long-gone from the Italian rusticity that has informed so much of Philly’s Italian food for decades. And even if the daytime hours of the all-day cafe won’t kick in for a couple weeks, the feel of the place has Res Ipsa written all over it.

And that’s good news.

Oh, one other thing, too. Once Bastia gets open, gets its schedule set, and settles into the whole breakfast/lunch/brunch/dinner groove, Akin will then pull the trigger on his other concept at Anna & Bel — a smaller, sister operation to Bastia called Caletta, which will operate as a cocktail bar and lounge with bar and poolside seating, a menu of Italian bar snacks, and an opening currently set for sometime in September.

More news on that place when I get it. But in the meantime …

The Combination Vintage Store and Taco Shop No One Asked For

There comes a point in the lifecycle of any neighborhood when it stops being the scrappy, up-and-coming hotspot. It turns the corner and becomes just another over-gentrified, corporatized shadow of its former self, trading coolness for the celebrity and reality for Zillow-coded fantasy.

But it is a rare neighborhood that gets to take that extra step to become a parody of itself. Williamsburg, Haight-Ashbury, most of Florida. These are the places that made the leap. And there are days when I believe that Fishtown is approaching that line.

Days like today, after reading the news that the newest out-of-town transplant coming to snarf up another parcel of our diminishing real estate is Garage Sale Vintage — a Colorado-based retailer that is a combination vintage clothing store, vinyl reseller, bar and taco shop.

Honestly, I don’t know exactly why this is the thing that pushed me over the edge. I mean, a vintage clothing store? No problem. A record store? I like record stores. A taco joint with a liquor license? Cool! But for whatever reason, mashing all three of these things together into some kind of cringe-y nexus of (literally) recycled cool-kid tropes and jamming it into a former Wells Fargo bank location right at Frankford and Girard just seems like a lot.

But hey, I guess if you’re looking for Nevermind on vinyl, a pair of parachute pants, an “I Survived The Y2K Bug t-shirt” and a margarita all in one place, with a vibe that’s arguably more authentic than your local Hot Topic, then this is your spot.

They’re looking to open some time next year, and my prediction is that at the moment of Garage Sale’s opening, all of Fishtown will collapse in on itself, forming a kind of super-dense cultural black hole that smells vaguely of mustache wax. The gravity will be so powerful that not even the light of an Edison bulb can escape.

Or maybe it’ll just be super popular and make parking even more of a nightmare. I dunno. The world’s a strange place. Anything can happen.

Here Are Some Things to Keep You Cool

Lód Wodny at Little Walter’s / Photograph by Gab Bonghi

The end of summer can be murder on the restaurant industry. People are traveling, squeezing in last-minute vacations, worrying about kids going back to school. Plus, it’s just oppressively hot out there most of the time, and the last thing most people are thinking about when it’s 90 degrees at 8 p.m. is sitting down to a big, heavy meal.

So what do restaurateurs do? They get creative. And they turn to the one thing that’s always a guaranteed moneymaker no matter the weather: liquor.

The Twisted Tail is serving champagne pops again this summer — a pour of champagne plus an all-fruit popsicle. They’re rotating the flavors, but pineapple, strawberry, lemon and blueberry look to be the most common. They’re available at the bar from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily and will run you $13.

Do you like piña coladas? Or getting caught in the rain? Because Bluebird Distilling can help you with the first one. They’re doing a frozen piña colada for $12, made using their own sugarcane rum, pineapple and coconut cream. You can also have the bar hit it with a shot of strawberry purée if you want to turn it pink. Or, if you’re like me and don’t like piña coladas, they’ve also got frozen Juniperus gin and tonics, which are both tastier, less likely to make your tongue feel all weird, and can prevent malaria.

Meanwhile, for some less boozy options, Oltremare now has a rotating list of fresh gelatos and sorbets on their summer menu. The current lineup is morello cherry, hazelnut, and pistachio, but they change every few days.

And at Little Walter’s, chef Michael Brenfleck has one of the most unique cocktail menus in the city — a board completely given over to Eastern European-inspired drinks named after various professions, all written in Polish. It’s the only place in town where you can get a “Thumasz” made with plum brandy, lime juice and salt, or a Citywide (“Urbanista”) composed of a 16-ounce Zubr and a shot of Zubrowka. Also, the pierogi are amazing.

But anyway, for the rest of the summer, Little Walter’s is also serving Lód Wodny, which is kinda like a blueberry Polish water ice with sour cherries and rye berries on top. Pair it with a shot of the cherry nalewka from the bar, and then just sit back, chill out and you’ll barely even remember that it’s a billion percent humidity outside.

Now who has room for some leftovers?

The Leftovers

Corn and blueberry cupcakes from Cake Life. / Photograph courtesy of Cake Life Bake Shop

Last week, I told y’all about Chubby Nori — the new handroll specialist that just opened above Chubby Cattle Shabu in Chinatown.

Well, guess what? The place is already expanding their hours. Apparently, those dozen-odd seats the place has have become something of a hot commodity, so they’ve essentially added an entire extra seating to their daily churn. Now you can just walk in anytime between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., seven nights a week. No reservations required.

Finally this week, one thing (besides humidity and mosquitoes) that August in Pennsylvania will always provide? An absolute wealth of corn-based special menus. We’ve talked about a few of them in the past couple weeks, but now I’ve got another one for you — coming from a somewhat unexpected place.

Cake Life Bake Shop is rolling with a double-barreled, sweet/savory, end-of-summer, all-corn special menu. On the sweet side, blueberry corn cupcakes made with sweet corn cakes brushed with sweet corn syrup, filled with blueberry compote, topped with blueberry buttercream, and a blueberry corn layer cake done in roughly the same way but, you know, as an entire cake. For savory options, we’re talking elote croissants (which sound amazing) filled with elote creamed corn and topped with cotija, and poblano corn quiche with chorizo.

Bonus: All the corn Cake Life is using is local, grown right in Lancaster, PA. Though, really, living here has always been kind of a cheat code for anyone doing anything with corn because all of it is pretty amazing — even if we’re talking about ears from some neighborhood corn freak with ten stalks growing in his backyard.

Anyway, this stuff will be on the menu until corn season is done. So get there soon. Because it’s gonna be pumpkin spice latte season before you know it.