Kensington Quarters Opening in Fishtown
This Wednesday, October 29, Michael and Jeniphur Pasquarello, husband-and-wife owners of three popular restaurants on North 13th street in the city’s Loft District, will partner with butcher Bryan Mayer to open Kensington Quarters, the area’s first full-service restaurant, bar, butcher shop and classroom. Kensington Quarters, located along a bustling strip of Fishtown’s Frankford Avenue, will offer a selection the region’s finest meats in its butcher shop and guests of the restaurant may enjoy drinks and dinner by Executive Chef Damon Menapace.
Here, thoughtful approaches to sourcing, fabricating, cooking and serving sustainable ingredients will align, making it one of the region’s best places to enjoy fresh-from-the-farm food. Kensington Quarters will serve dinner nightly and the butcher shop will be open Tuesday through Sunday; its classroom schedule will be announced shortly after opening.
Mayer, a butcher-instructor, has consulted with existing shops, helped establish others and has trained some of the most respected butchers across the country and around the world. He has lectured at New York’s Culinary Institute of America and continues to run workshops on slaughter and butchering. For this new shop, he willwork closely with regional farmers, making trips out to the farms and staying involved throughout the entire process to ensure the animals are being raised as nature intended – free of chemicals, antibiotics, hormones and GMO feed. He will also ensure that the animals are treated honorably and humanely in the slaughter process. At Kensington Quarters, he will encourage conversations with customers so they may understand the process and learn about what is offered, guiding them towards a cut-to-order personalized selection and fostering conscious consumption.
To create and prepare menus for the restaurant and bar at Kensington Quarters, the Pasquarellos will tap Chef Menapace and his passions for whole-animal cooking, local sourcing and old-world cooking techniques. His background includes cooking at Prohibition Taproom and Bufad, both owned and operated by the Pasquarellos, as well as at Vetri Family restaurants and other local favorites such as Cochon BYOB.
Chef Menapace’s menus will often highlight Mayer’s selection of meats, forging a collaborative bond between Kensington Quarters’ restaurant and butcher shop, as well as the region’s best seasonal ingredients focusing on sustainability and freshness. He will work with small farms and regional suppliers throughout the Delaware Valley, including Greensgrow, Woodland Jewel, Birchrun Hill, Lancaster Farm Fresh and Common Market Philadelphia. For his rustic farmhouse-style cuisine, he will cook using the open flames of wood-burning grills and brick ovens. Many of his dishes will incorporate his impressive list of house-cured charcuterie, including salami and terrines, which will be aged on-site in a glass chamber visible to guests. Small plates as well as starches, grains and greens will range in price from $10 to $14. Entrees will range in price from $20 to $30.
Kensington Quarters’ drink program will be as considered and responsibly sourced as its food menus. From a 20-tap system they will pour 12 beers and eight wines (many of which are organic and biodynamic). A bottle list of 20-25 selections as well as a reserve list of cellared wines and beers will also be available. Cocktails will be made using non-GMO-based cordials and will range in price from $10 to $15.
To help oversee Kensington Quarters’ bar and restaurant, the Pasquarellos will enlist Nicole Sullivan, Director of Operations of their restaurant group 13th Street Kitchens. Sullivan began her career with the Pasquarellos six years ago, starting as a server and bartender at Prohibition Taproom, later managing each of the group’s three restaurants, then taking on the position of Director of Operations as the company grew. Her passion, expertise and the professional front-of-the-house team she has assembled will surely create a memorable experience for all who visit Kensington Quarters.
Driven by the ideals of collaboration and integrity they’ve established for Kensington Quarters, the Pasquarellos, who also designed their other restaurants, will create a space in which energy flows and allows a glimpse into the processes. As guests enter the open space through the main doors, they will see the butcher shop to the right and the 15-seat bar and open kitchen to the left. Beneath custom-built cedar beams, the spaces will be tied together by white subway tiling with black grout, as well as soapstone – a traditional material used in butcher shops – which will accent the bar tops and kitchen windows. Dinner guests may continue back past the kitchen to the 80-seat dining area to enjoy a meal at figured, spalted wood tables that come together for communal dining and pull apart for smaller parties. Along the dining room wall local artist Mike Ski will create a large mural depicting a handshake, a gesture representing the guiding principle of Kensington Quarters.
In homage to Fishtown’s and Kensington’s industrial past, the Pasquarellos will preserve much of the building’s original character, such as whitewashed exposed brick, wooden beams and vaulted ceilings. Skilled carpenter Ben McBrien of Farmhaus will add custom cabinetry, tables and cedar and soapstone accents. Enhancing the room’s airy, spacious feel, skylights and full-length glass doors, both at the entrance and leading out to the back patio, will bring in natural light. In warmer months the glass accordion doors will open onto the back patio where guests will be able to enjoy dining at picnic tables by a shipping container topped with a planted herb garden.
A few months after opening, Kensington Quarters will introduce a classroom and private event space on the second floor. A stairway stretching above the bar will lead to the space with an open kitchen where they will host butchering classes as well as guest chef lectures and cooking demos that will acquaint guests with their farm partners; a class schedule will be announced shortly after opening. When class is not in session, guests may find the loft area as a casual place to socialize around two farmhouse-style communal dining tables and a 15-seat bar. Also, a 10-seat drink rail will overlook the first floor bar and butcher shop, offering views of the neighborhood from the second story panoramic windows.
The Pasquarellos opened their first restaurant, Café Lift, ten years ago and have since opened two others – Prohibition Taproom, a restaurant and bar serving craft beers and pub fare, and Bufad, a Southern Italian-inspired BYOB restaurant – all along a small corridor of North 13th Street in the city’s Loft District. At their fourth establishment, they chose to highlight whole-animal butchery and to continue focusing on sustainability as they have at their other restaurants. Michael, a chef, set out to learn more about the butcher’s trade and consequently became acquainted with Mayer. Soon after meeting, Michael convinced Mayer to visit Philadelphia, and later to partner with him on Kensington Quarters. Together, with Chef Menapace, they will work with local agriculture and purveyors to create one of the best destinations for good, clean food.
Kensington Quarters will be open for dinner seven days a week. The butcher shop will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Sunday until 6 p.m. For more information, please visit www.kensingtonquarters.com and follow Kensington Quarters on Instagram @KensingtonQuarters.