Tacconelli’s Just Built the Ultimate Cocktail Oasis

A view of the action at Bar Tacconelli / Photography by Ed Newton

Sitting inside the Art Deco-and-brickwork dining room at Bar Tacconelli in Maple Shade, it’s hard to believe you’re drinking in a New Jersey strip mall. The fact that it’s a self-contained world shut off from the outside, muffled by heavy drapes, the world overwritten by the lure of dim lights, tufted banquette seats, sliding barn doors, and black-and-gold marbled tabletops lit by individual pillar lamps, gives the whole place a submarine quality.

Our plan was to get a couple of pizzas on the way home, but we ended up here instead, at a small table against the wall, eating chicken cutlets buried under a garden of arugula with oil and lemon and sweet shards of roasted cherry tomato, dusted with a snowfall of Parmesan; laughing and fighting over the last arancini on the plate; and sipping lemon drops with charred lemon slices floating like tiny life rafts.

Arancini Basilico

Bar Tacconelli is new, strange, and surprising. It’s a cocktail bar (and boutique bottle shop) with the Tacconelli name attached — a name synonymous on both sides of the river with good pizza, ugly interstate familial rivalries, and a (now settled) federal court case over who, exactly, gets to use the name “Tacconelli Pizzeria” — but it serves no pizza. Tomato pie, sure. As a small plate, cut into finger-sandwich-sized triangles, which would be too precious if it wasn’t also very, very good. And a version of the Tacconelli’s “Old Favorite” on the late-night menu, made with American cheese and pepperoni. But no actual pizzas on the regular menu because this new place is only a five-minute drive from the nearest Tacconelli’s Pizzeria, and Vince Tacconelli (who opened this swank new cocktail bar extension of the family business with his dad, Vince Sr., Stacey Lyons, and Greg Listino back in the grayest days of February) didn’t want to pull business away. Instead, he wanted a place to have a proper drink.

Behind the bar, they do sour cherry–spiked old-fashioneds, pomodoro martinis made with tomato water and basil oil, and bubbling fizzes cut with Aperol and elderflower liqueur. The cocktail list is divided into four sections to separate the cosmos from the blood orange and grappa Sanguinellos, but the section titled “Rustico” is where all the fun is because that’s where the bar crew is let out to play. There are black Manhattans with a splash of amaro; chocolate Negronis with cacao-infused vermouth; and the pale, pinkish Enzoni, served short in a rocks glass, that’s basically a small bucket of gin, angried up with a bitter spike of almost rhubarb-y Bordiga bitter rosso, then smoothed out with muddled green grapes and lemon. I hated the first sip, loved it by the time I saw the bottom of the glass, and want everyone to go try one immediately. It’s worth the drive all on its own.

Hugo Spritz with elderflower at Bar Tacconelli

But really, the kitchen here is just as good. Arancini fried crisp dragged through a ragù sharpened up with Calabrian chilis. Shrimp and ricotta cannelloni in a creamy, pink seafood bisque. Old-school broiled oysters with herb butter. Plates of veal, beef, and pork meatballs sitting in a puddle of chunky, sweet red sauce, capped with melted provolone and served with wedges of perfectly grilled bread. The menu is short and punchy, with rotating sourdough toast happy hour specials, late-night rigatoni poppers, and slabs of Oreo-crusted ice cream cake for dessert. It’s meant for sharing or snacking between rounds — for late dinners after shift and girls’ nights with loud friends. It’s everything you love about casual, fun, Rat-Pack-and-red-sauce Italian, made sleek and quick and intoxicating.

And once you step inside, you might forget you’re in a strip mall off the highway and never, ever want to leave.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

Rating Key
0 stars: stay far away
★: come if there are no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Tacconelli’s Bold New Move” in the June 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.