Fishtown's 2026 Restaurant Wave: What's Opening on Frankford Avenue

Walk the six blocks between Girard and Susquehanna today and you can count more first-year restaurants than you could name a year ago. The corridor did not sprawl outward. It thickened. New kitchens are landing inside newly built apartment ground floors, tucked next to pet-supply shops, and stacked above basement wineries. For anyone who already lives here, the practical shift is simple: the dinner map is getting shorter, not longer.

That compression is the story of 2026. Below is what has actually opened, who is running it, and how the pieces fit against the corridor you already know.

The Frankford Avenue cluster, block by block

The densest stretch of new activity sits between roughly 1800 and 2300 Frankford. A quick reference before the details:

Each of these deserves more than a table row.

Emilia: the Vernick project that broke a six-year pause

The most watched opening of the year came from a chef who is famously slow to open anything. Emilia is Vernick's first restaurant in a new neighborhood, and the first without his name on the door. The pause before it was long. Vernick waited six years before opening another restaurant. When he did, he debuted two projects.

The Fishtown location is not an accident. Longtime regulars Michael Dinan, Ryan Kalili, and Henry Siebert approached Greg and his wife Julie about opening an Italian restaurant in their new apartment development on Frankford Avenue in Fishtown. That detail matters for anyone reading the street: the kitchen sits inside a residential building, not a converted storefront. The dining room is a ground-floor amenity for the neighbors upstairs before it is a destination for anyone else.

Running the pass is chef de cuisine Meredith "Meri" Medoway, a longtime Vernick collaborator who leads the kitchen. Vernick's own credentials are worth stating plainly. The Cherry Hill, N.J., native won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2017 and his flagship just landed on Michelin's Recommended list.

LeoFigs: a restaurant with a winery in the basement

Two blocks north at 2201 Frankford, Justice and Shannon Leocata Figueras spent years assembling something more unusual than a wine bar. Justice and Shannon Figueras say they are (finally) delivering their long-delayed bar/restaurant, serving what they call "comfort-leaning small plates" and wines from their basement winery at Frankford and Susquehanna in Fishtown.

Making the wine themselves came with a real constraint. "That's one of the challenges we've really had. To open a winery, you've gotta make wine first," Figueras laughs, adding that it takes at least a year to make something.

For planning purposes, the schedule is worth knowing. LeoFigs will officially open on June 10, following a soft opening in April and May, serving up a modern American menu and wines made in-house. LeoFigs will initially be open from Wednesday to Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 to 7 p.m. A Sunday-through-Wednesday afternoon slot is intentionally left open. If you have been trying to book, that gap is the one to watch.

The room itself is small and specific: a true mom-and-pop from a couple with years of industry experience and a genuine devotion to Fishtown. Plus, wine made in-house and an interior decorated with repurposed church pews never hurt anyone.

Liguria Pizzeria: the slice shop next to the pet store

Down at 1826 Frankford, the newest pizza on the strip came from operators who already know how to run one. Brothers Sherif and Amro Nagud are returning to the pizza game with a slice shop dispensing New York-style pies plus cheesesteaks and fries next to Ham & Bone pet supply. Amro owned Stella's Pizza in Northeast Philadelphia for 14 years and was an early partner at Verona Pizza in Maple Glen, while Sherif worked in pizzerias but put that aside for electrical engineering.

The pie doing the talking is the Broken Burrata. As the Inquirer pointed out, be sure to try the luxurious Broken Burrata pizza, featuring spooned stracciatella, arugula and six-year-aged balsamic. The cheesesteak has a lineage worth noting too. Liguria also features a killer cheesesteak, drawing on the owner's experiences at suburban cult-favorite shop Verona Pizza in Maple Glen, Pennsylvania.

The other corridor: Girard, and what expanded onto it

Frankford is not the only street getting denser. Two long-running Philadelphia names extended into Fishtown along Girard and the surrounding blocks.

Ricci's Hoagies. After making hoagies for over a century, Ricci's is showing no sign of slowing down. The hoagie shop has expanded to Fishtown, where you can grab a chicken salad hoagie, black pepper turkey hoagie, or the corned beef special. The Yelp signal reads like the arrival most residents describe: "We were driving down Girard on our way home from an appointment when we spotted Ricci's familiar sign. We had no idea they had opened a Fishtown…"

Cafe Tinto. A Northeast Philly standby went bigger, not just wider. Cafe Tinto has long been a go-to spot in the Northeast for Colombian food, and now it's going bigger with a larger menu and cafe-style seating in Fishtown. The menu has a similar lineup to the original: empanadas and other handmade pastries, but you can also expect breakfast sandwiches and brunch bowls. Read that as a morning move. The Northeast location was a lunch stop. The Fishtown version is a place to sit with a laptop.

Stella's Ice Cream. A national scoop shop chose Frankford Avenue for its Atlantic coast debut. Stella's has opened its first East Coast location in Fishtown. On top of cake batter, salted caramel, or rocky road scoops, you can also grab sweet treats like brownies, cookie sundaes, and cookie ice cream sandwiches from the shop.

AMA and the live-fire pivot

A different kind of arrival is worth flagging because it changes what a "Fishtown reservation" means. Named after the informal way to say "mom" in Spanish, this live-fire Mexican restaurant is bringing flavor to Fishtown. Local reception has been quick: "AMA is a very new restaurant in fish town bringing the best of Mexican City dishes to Philadelphia." Between AMA and Emilia, the corridor now has two open-kitchen concepts within walking distance that are booking dinner service as their headline meal rather than as a pizza-and-drink add-on.

What is filling in behind the recognizable names

One quiet signal of a corridor maturing is what happens to spaces after a well-known tenant leaves. The former Cheu Fishtown space did not sit dark. What happens when an Ambler, PA brewery teams up with the chef behind Gass & Main in Haddonfield, NJ? You get this Fishtown spot serving french bread pizza, a pork roll hoagie, and a drink menu full of saisons, lagers, and pale ales. It's located in the former Cheu location, which means it offers both indoor dining and an outdoor patio. That is Forest & Main, and the beer program is the through-line rather than the food.

At the same time, Fishtown is exporting formats too. Pretzel Day Pretzels, which built a following inside the neighborhood, where you can order flavors like cinnamon sugar, longhots provolone, or s'mores. The dessert shop opened its third location this month after gaining a following in Pennsport and Fishtown. The Frankford Avenue food footprint is now a proving ground for concepts that go elsewhere.

How the map has actually changed for residents

Line the openings up and a pattern shows: this is not a wave of restaurants scattered across the neighborhood. It is a densification of two corridors, with different jobs.

• Frankford Avenue, roughly 1800 to 2300. Sit-down dinner is the anchor. Emilia is the destination reservation. LeoFigs is the wine-forward Sunday afternoon. Liguria covers the walk-in slice night. AMA is the live-fire booking.
• Girard and adjacent blocks. Daytime and takeout. Ricci's for the hoagie run. Cafe Tinto for the morning sit. Stella's for the after-dinner walk.

For a resident, the practical outcome is that the dinner-plus-dessert loop now fits inside a ten-minute walk. For anyone hosting out-of-town guests, the itinerary writes itself: coffee on Girard, an afternoon at Philadelphia's Magic Gardens or the waterfront, dinner on Frankford, scoops on the way home.

A note on what this signals

Restaurant openings are a lagging indicator of who thinks a corridor is worth a fifteen-year lease. When a James Beard winner, a husband-and-wife winery couple, a fourteen-year pizza operator, and a century-old hoagie shop all commit to the same six blocks inside twelve months, they are pricing in something the listings are still catching up to. That is worth watching if you own on this side of the neighborhood, and worth walking if you already live here.

If you are thinking about how the Frankford Avenue corridor fits into a longer-term move, whether that is a first home in Fishtown or a next step out of a starter rowhome, Evangeline Gambardella can talk through what the block-by-block shifts mean for your specific stretch. Get a Free Home Valuation to see where your home stands as the corridor keeps filling in.