The Best Restaurant Openings in Philadelphia – August 2026

At last, Ellen Yin’s all-day Bar Cicci has opened in Rittenhouse on a stretch of Sansom Street that seemed pretty stagnant until Uchi and dancerobot debuted about a block apart last year. Bar Cicci sits next to Uchi, between the two Japanese restaurants. Restaurant watchers looked on with great envy as Yin and her team traveled around Venice earlier this year, sampling the cicchetti that would form the basis of the menu, many served on High Street Hospitality’s famous bread. The menu also includes spuntini such as tuna crudo, arancini, and anchovies, as well as salads and cheese and salumi plates.

Anh Em seemed to come out of nowhere, taking over the former Madira space in Point Breeze, which has seen some interesting openings this summer, including Schmaltz. Husband-and-wife team Anna Huynh and Victor Nguyen are behind the project, which has a full bar with two dozen local draft beers and excellent renditions of bánh mì and Vietnamese classics such as bánh xèo, a crisp, savory rice-flour crepe, and bò tái chanh, rare beef dressed with lime. Also on the menu are hearty, even heavy, curried mussels. With Gabriella’s Vietnam, an ambitious Vietnamese restaurant a little farther south, closing in mid-December, perhaps Anh Em’s crisp bánh xèo will take some of the sting out of its loss.

Mixteca Philly, a larger sibling to the West Village cocktail bar, opened August 28 in East Kensington, one of the city’s busiest neighborhoods for restaurant openings this year. The neighborhood agave bar and restaurant pays homage to the Mixteca region of south-central Mexico, which extends into Puebla, where co-founder Victor Lopez was born. Lopez and business partner Jeff Bell met while working at PDT in New York. The kitchen serves duck flautas, shrimp tacos, tuna tostadas, and whole grilled dorade, while the bar focuses on cocktails made with agave spirits including tequila, mezcal, bacanora, and raicilla.

Recipe Philly requires a little imagination. The unusual concept, certainly a first for Philly, is an absolute beast of a project from retired business executive Ed Baumstein, with roughly 175 seats on the site of the long-gone McDonald’s at Broad and Arch Streets. The menu features dishes from 31 home cooks who competed in a reality TV show judged by local influencer Josh Moore and chefs about town Clara Park and Jen Carroll. Over several months, their recipes went through auditions, testing, and a filmed competition in categories including pasta, salads, poultry, seafood, and desserts, all vying for places on the restaurant’s menu. The concept grew out of a potluck dinner Baumstein hosted during the 2008 recession, nearly two decades ago.

Modern Mexican cantina and tequila bar Luna Marre technically opened at the end of July at the Piazza in Northern Liberties, serving classics such as guacamole, quesadillas, tostadas, and margaritas. Brunch brings chilaquiles and birria breakfast tacos, while weekday happy hour offers discounted drinks and bites. At dinner, the menu runs from ribeye fajitas to pollo adobado.