Greg Vernick spent fourteen years building a career entirely inside Center City. Three restaurants, all under his name, all within a few blocks of Rittenhouse. Then in January, he opened a fourth, and for the first time it wasn't in Center City and it wasn't called Vernick. It's called Emilia, and it's on Frankford Avenue in Fishtown.
A few blocks away, a guy who quit pizza-making for electrical engineering just went back to pizza. A married couple who spent fifteen years working hotel jobs and liquor marketing gigs in other cities finally opened the restaurant they'd been nicknamed for since their twenties. Neither of them has a James Beard Award. Neither of them is trying to get one. And they picked the same stretch of the same avenue as Vernick, within months of each other.
That's not one restaurant boom. That's two, running in parallel on the same half mile of pavement, and if you live here, the distinction actually matters for how you plan a week of eating.
The Fourteen-Year Streak Just Broke
Vernick opened his flagship, Vernick Food & Drink, in 2012, not long after leaving Jean-Georges Vongerichten's kitchens in New York. He won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2017, and the restaurant recently landed on Michelin's Recommended list. He doesn't move fast. He waited six years before adding anything else, then debuted Vernick Coffee Bar and Vernick Fish together, followed by Vernick Wine. Every addition stayed inside Center City.
Emilia breaks that pattern twice over. It's his first project in a new neighborhood, and the first without his name on the door. The kitchen belongs to Meri Medoway, his longtime chef de cuisine at Vernick Food & Drink and a fellow Cherry Hill native, who worked every station there before helping open Hearthside in Collingswood and cooking abroad. The move wasn't Vernick shopping for real estate. Regulars Michael Dinan, Ryan Kalili and Henry Siebert, who were building a new apartment development on Frankford Avenue, approached him directly about opening an Italian restaurant in the space. Vernick's own explanation for why he said yes after passing on so much else:
"There's value in patience and taking your time."
That a chef with his track record picked Fishtown for his first expansion outside Center City in over a decade isn't a small detail. Restaurant trade coverage has started calling the Frankford Avenue and Front Street corridor one of the densest restaurant stretches in the city, and Emilia is a big part of why that claim holds up. When someone with Vernick's options chooses your street, it tells you something about where the city's dining attention is actually pointed this year, not just where the openings are happening.
Three Blocks Down, Three First-Timers Bet on the Same Street
Here's where it gets interesting. The same corridor that just landed a James Beard winner's first neighborhood move is also where three sets of first-time restaurant owners chose to plant their flag, all in 2026, all with none of Vernick's institutional backing.
LeoFigs opened at 2201 Frankford Avenue on June 10, after a soft opening that ran through April and May. Justice and Shannon Leocata Figueras had been nicknamed "the LeoFigs" by friends fifteen years ago, back when they were hosting themed dinner parties in tiny apartments in Manhattan and Queens. Both spent their careers in wine sales, hotels and liquor marketing, but never owned a restaurant until now. Getting there took patience of a different kind. Making the in-house wine alone takes at least a year, and the couple worked through delays that stretched their timeline well past what they'd planned. The space is decorated with repurposed church pews. Shannon has described the choice as landing on "a place where we could open our own space for the community."
Down at 1826 Frankford Avenue, brothers Sherif and Amro Nagud opened Liguria Pizzeria, a return to pizza for Amro after 14 years running Stella's Pizza in Northeast Philly and an early stint at the suburban favorite Verona Pizza in Maple Glen. Sherif had actually left pizza kitchens behind for a career in electrical engineering before coming back for this. Their storefront sits next to Ham & Bone, a pet supply shop, which tells you something about how ordinary this stretch of Frankford still feels even with a Michelin-recommended chef newly on the same avenue.
At 965 Frankford, Anyae Wilson-Worley runs In Crust We Trust, a pizza spot built around Black empowerment and community engagement as much as the food itself, with pies topped in oxtail and collard greens alongside cayenne and peri peri wings. This Saturday, August 22, the shop is hosting a Back to School Pizza Party with DJ sets from the Scratch Brothers, giveaways and school supplies for kids in the neighborhood.
And Stella's, the ice cream chain, chose Fishtown for its first location anywhere on the East Coast.
None of these four are chasing a Michelin star. All four opened within walking distance of a restaurant that already has one chef's full attention and reputation behind it. That's the actual story here: Frankford Avenue isn't just gentrifying upward, and it isn't just staying scrappy. Both things are happening on the same block, at the same time, aimed at completely different customers who happen to live on the same street.
What Two Booms at Once Actually Changes About Your Week
If you already live here, this matters less as a curiosity and more as a planning problem. The avenue you've been walking for years now has an unusual range packed into a short stretch, from a chef's tasting-driven Italian menu to a slice shop next to the pet store to a wine you can watch get made downstairs.
The neighborhood already has rituals built for exactly this kind of density. Every Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m., Fishtown Taps runs through late September, with more than two dozen restaurants and bars, including Barcade and LMNO, offering discounted beers, wines, cocktails and apps. It's the easiest way to sample a few of these new spots in one evening without committing to a full dinner at any single one. On the first Friday of the month, the Frankford Avenue Arts Corridor turns into a free gallery walk, with local studios opening their doors alongside the restaurants and boutiques that already line the street, which pairs naturally with an early dinner reservation before the galleries open.
Even the bars that were here before this wave are reacting to the same moment. R&D Cocktail Bar rolled out a new themed drink menu built around the city's America250 anniversary year, proof that the corridor's existing spots are adjusting their own offerings alongside the new arrivals, not just watching them open next door.
A few ways to actually use this month:
- Catch the Back to School Pizza Party at In Crust We Trust on Saturday, August 22, with DJ sets, giveaways and school supplies.
- Work Fishtown Taps into a Tuesday routine through September 29, using it to sample new openings a few dollars at a time.
- Time a First Friday gallery walk on the Frankford Avenue Arts Corridor around dinner at one of this year's new spots.
The Real Takeaway
The generic version of this story is "Fishtown has a lot of new restaurants." The more useful version is that the avenue is currently proving it can hold a James Beard winner's first move outside Center City and four first-time owners' entire life savings at the same time, on the same blocks, without either one crowding the other out. That's not a sign of a neighborhood picking a lane. It's a sign of one street wide enough for both.
Michael Prince has lived in Fishtown for more than fifteen years, long enough to remember when a stretch like this would have picked a single direction and stuck with it. If you're curious what a street this layered does to property values, foot traffic patterns, or your own sense of what's walking distance from home, that's a conversation worth having with someone who eats on this avenue as often as he sells on it. Reach out to Michael Prince anytime you want a local read that goes beyond the roundup.
