7 New Restaurants To Watch in 2025

Photograph courtesy of dancerobot

To me, the New Year has always been an introspective time.

I get that not everyone feels that way. I know plenty of healthier, more well-adjusted people don’t see it solely as the end of the old year but the beginning of the new one. They make resolutions — promises to themselves to be better in the future — and look forward, all bright-eyed and optimistic, seeing nothing but 365 fresh calendar pages just waiting to be filled up with yoga classes, probiotics, regular flossing, and whatever else it is that healthy, well-adjusted people do that makes them more healthy and well-adjusted than me.

Because me? I always see NYE as an ending. I look backward at the absolute mess I’ve made of the past year and wonder how I managed to spend so many hours upright and conscious and, you know, doing things while still somehow managing to accomplish so little. I ask myself hard questions like, What have you learned about yourself and the world in the past 8,760 hours? or Why does any human being need to consume THAT MUCH CHEESE in a year? and I have no good answers.

But I’m trying. I’m trying to be more positive, more forward-looking, more committed to living not just in this moment, but in the ones to come. I don’t believe in resolutions (because I don’t really believe that people can fundamentally change themselves by making a midnight wish on the day their calendars run out), but I know that having something to look forward to is always nice. And me being me, mostly what I’m looking ahead toward are the openings of a handful of new restaurants. Because seriously, what’s better than that? A new restaurant is excitement and adventure and history and biography all at the same time. It’s an excuse to go out in the world, meet some friends, and try something new.

Also, a lot of the time there is cheese there.

So while this certainly isn’t a complete list of all the MANY new restaurants hitting the scene in the coming months — or even a particularly exhaustive one — it is an accounting of the places that I’m excited about personally. And that list, of course, starts with …

Dancerobot: Jesse Ito’s new Izakaya in Rittenhouse

Of all the upcoming restaurants that I’ve written about lately, Jesse’s encore to the already brilliant Royal Izakaya & Sushi is the one that has me most looking forward to 2025. Why? Several reasons, actually.

1. It’s called dancerobot, and that is just an undeniably awesome name.
2. The design inspiration is ’80s Japan.
3. The food is going to be modern interpretations of Japanese comfort foods, all done in an izakaya atmosphere.
4. No one in Philly can do an izakaya like Jesse can do an izakaya.
5. It’ll also serve brunch, making it one of the only restaurants in Philly doing Japanese breakfast foods.

A spring opening is what they’re aiming for. But I’m fine with them taking as long as is necessary to get this one right.

Honestly, that’s all I need to know to get me psyched for this place: khachapuri in a restaurant made by the guys who already have a restaurant where I spent one of the weirdest nights of my life. Kino will be opening at 1144 Frankford Avenue in Fishtown…eventually.

Amá: Mexican Food on the Fishtown-Kensington Border

Plans for Amá / Image courtesy of Amá

“Elevated Mexican” is what chef Frankie Ramirez thinks about when he thinks about the restaurant he’s building out with his wife, Veronica, and partners Roberto Medina and Crisalida Mata. “Old flavors, new hands, timeless recipes, and new traditions.” Most recently, Frankie ran the kitchen at Stephen Starr’s LMNO, but now — after years spent working his way through some of the most famous kitchens in the city — he’s doing his own thing with Amá. The space is large (120 seats, easy), the cuisine is based around the six major culinary regions of Mexico, and as far as I know, they’re barreling toward a January opening. So even though this one is coming soon, it still can’t get here fast enough for me.

Mecha and Space Smash: Burgers, Tacos, Spiked Boba, and Pho

Mecha Noodle Bar is a small chain of ramen shops opening its 11th location at the corner of Front and Palmer in Fishtown. Space Smash is a freaked-up burger joint with a weirdo space vibe with one location in the ‘burbs and another moving into the for Alma Del Mar location at 1007 9th Street in the Italian Market.

Neither of these places might seem like spots that I’d be psyched about — but only if you didn’t know that I was a super nerd who can get totally geeked out over cheeseburger bao, scorpion bowls, and chili dogs. I love it when a place leans hard into deconstructing the ideas of traditional cuisines and re-making them in whatever modern image they think best suits the moment. And that’s what both of these places are doing. Not artfully. Not subtly. And not necessarily intellectually. But with a kind of joyous abandon and reflexive bend toward satisfying people’s messiest, junkiest cravings.

I’m excited for both these spots. And both of them are coming soon(ish).

Roxanne: Stability Is Not the Enemy of Creativity

Dessert at Roxanne (house-made chocolate with hazelnut, mandarinquat and edible money) is chef Alexandra Holt’s comment on the ethics of the chocolate industry. / Photograph by Rebecca McAlpin

The original Roxanne was never a restaurant that was built to last. It was brilliant. It was revolutionary in the truest sense of the word. It was also a kind of performance art where part of the fascination was in simply seeing how long chef Alexandra Holt (who ran the place essentially by herself) could keep it going before the whole thing collapsed around her.

The new Roxanne? It’s a more stable situation. There’s a whole new space at 607 South 2nd Street, complete with some of the basic things a more traditional restaurant needs to function — like a menu, functional kitchen equipment, and a staff. She’s been going through a soft opening for a couple of weeks, has a New Year’s Eve party on the books, and, come the new year, will be officially opening for full-on dinner service.

It’s a whole new Roxanne, essentially. And I’m very curious to see what Alex does with a place where any given night’s service is defined less by what might go wrong, and more by what she and her team can accomplish when everything is going right.

Every time that happened, there’d be a spike in articles all asking some version of, “What the fuck is happening in Philly?” And a few months after that, like clockwork, there’d be a rumor of some big-time, fancy-pants celebrity chef looking to come to town and show all us rubes how things were done in the Big City. And around Foobooz World HQ, the joke was always that we’d know we’d truly made it as a food city only when Eataly finally got around to opening one of its massive foodie Disneylands here.

Thing is, it was only funny because we knew it was never going to happen. Because there’s nothing that an Eataly can offer that we don’t already have — probably made better, cheaper, and right here in town. But now, there’s an actual Eataly coming to the King of Prussia mall in 2025, and I am thrilled simply because the number of jokes I’m going to be able to tell at its expense is almost limitless — even without Mario Batali being involved.