The Jaffa Paradox: A Buzzy, Bright Space That Feels Surprisingly Hollow
Kensington's towering new restaurant gives diners high hopes, but those lofty aspirations fall short.
Scene from Jaffa’s bar / Photography by Ed Newton
Under the tall ceilings at an old firehouse in Kensington near where Front meets Cecil B. Moore is Michael Solomonov’s second attempt at an oyster house inspired by the Israeli city of Jaffa.
His first was in Brooklyn — the rough draft of this big project at the Hoxton in Williamsburg. Cool, sure, but not Kensington-firehouse cool. Not Solomonov-in-the-town-where-he-made-his-name cool. The Brooklyn version is a little thing. Short menu. Oysters and cocktails. But on Howard Street in Philly, when you roll up to the barely marked door, the place has a presence. You feel it before you step inside. You hear it even through the heavy curtains keeping out the cold.
A seafood tower at Jaffa
On any night, it’s packed, the crowd young, moneyed, chilled out by a smart, creative cocktail menu and funk and soul thumping from hidden speakers. It has the sweaty energy of a place still in the first blush of its romance with the neighborhood. A sense of being in the right place, at the right time, exactly where something is happening.
But I look at the menu, and the whole reach of it is 37 items long, including two desserts (chocolate mousse and a Key lime bar that’s basically pie but not triangular) and six varieties of oyster. It’s a safe menu, largely. Uncomplicated. Crudo and ceviche, delicious yellowtail sliced thin and edged in pastrami spice, three different salads served in clunky earthenware bowls, fried chicken thighs crusted in matzo. There are bowls of Yemenite clam chowder, followed by little bowls of fried calamari — crispy as anything, with a thoroughly nonthreatening boom boom sauce for dipping — and a shrimp cocktail that’s excellent, even if the “Jaffa cocktail sauce” tastes like someone accidentally added taco seasoning.
The swordfish is tasty, artfully jumbled on the plate, but dried out on the plancha, having none of that luxurious softness that comes only from pulling it at precisely the right second. The muhammara, with its baharat heat and chopped walnuts, helps, but not enough. The burger, though, is a killer: fat and messy, dripping with green chiles and a smear of shabazi-spiced mayo that’s a nice complement. It isn’t as good as the green chile cheeseburgers I lived on when I was still out West, but might be one of the best I’ve had on this side of the country.
Jaffa burger
So there’s this dissonance. A hollowness to Jaffa that is off-putting no matter how many bodies they squeeze onto the floor. It feels like there’s something going on, but Jaffa is, at its heart, an oyster bar — casual, simple, occasionally clumsy, maybe too big for what it wants to be, maybe too bright and shiny an object for the simplicity in its design. It is all shrimp curled onto beds of cracked ice and oysters dripping schug mignonette, Instagram-ready seafood towers and composed endive salads set beside a tall amaro spritz. You can get lost in this crowd. Forgotten by the service if you end up in the back of the room, away from the churn of the cocktail bar. It’s a big place with a big name behind it, and everything about it is bright and loud and shouts LOOK AT ME! But the restaurant it is wears the space like an ill-fitting suit. A disconnect between form and function. You can order and eat and, at the end of it, feel fed, sure, but not moved, which is a weird thing to say about a restaurant. The curse, I suppose, of expectations.
Michael Solomonov and his whole CookNSolo crew already have restaurants that’ll make you swoon (Laser Wolf). They operate places that aren’t just destinations today but have been for years (Zahav). They know how to write a menu that’ll get talked about and run a kitchen that’ll win awards. They’ve proven they can do that. And they’ve proven they can go the other way too: cool, easy, casual, low-commitment (Federal Donuts & Chicken). So the question becomes this: Was Jaffa deliberately conceived as the latter? Or is it failing as the former simply by a quirk of size — both physical and, you know, psychological?
Shabazi shrimp at Jaffa
Because if you set aside the incongruity and projection, Jaffa is fine. You come here for the bar, to put your elbows down, crammed in shoulder to shoulder, for a Frozen Jaffa Orange or a martini or Canadian whiskey and Fernet over ice, a shrimp cocktail or some oysters, maybe a burger if you’re making a night of it. You come with friends and camp out at a back table, act loud enough to catch a server’s attention, eat oysters and salad and some shabazi-spiced shrimp with white beans and a sting of arak, then pick at the pastrami yellowtail until you can all decide where to go next. It’s not a destination, just a place — one with a really good burger, lots of oysters, a crowded bar, and enough space to comfortably hold everyone who’s looking for exactly that on a Thursday night.
But nothing more.
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 “Great Expectations” in the April 2025 issue of Philadelphia magazine.
