The owners of two Port Richmond restaurants plan to open a moderately upscale Mexican restaurant in Old City, banking in part on the impact of the forthcoming Park at Penn’s Landing, which will cap I-95 and — they hope — send crowds to their doorstep.
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“It was an opportunity, and we decided to take a chance,” said chef Jesus García, a former executive chef at Lucha Cartel, which occupied the building at 207 Chestnut St. from 2013 until it closed last year. It was Philadelphia Fish & Co. from 1983 to 2009.
García and Alejandro Fuentes, his partner in the Mexican restaurant Nemi and the cross-cultural La Roma, bought the property this week and plan to open a yet-to-be-named Mexican restaurant similar to Nemi, which Inquirer critic Craig LaBan has praised, particularly for its creative tacos.
Fuentes and García opened Nemi at Ann and Thompson Streets in 2018, and followed in 2022 with La Roma at Allegheny Avenue and Mercer Street, where the menu crosses Mexican, Italian, and other influences.
Their new restaurant will enter a pocket of Old City that already has several Mexican restaurants. La Catrachita Taqueria opened next door in May. Across Second Street, Buena Vista Mexican Restaurant & Bar opened last summer at 123 Chestnut St., while South Street’s Las Bugambilias moved to 15 S. Third St. in 2021.
Fuentes and García’s purchase of 207 Chestnut marks the end of a saga that had entangled the property in competing efforts to resurrect the name of Tun Tavern, considered the birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps.
Montgomery Dahm, the Marine veteran who has operated a Tun Tavern in Atlantic City since 1998 and owns the trademark to the name, moved into Old City amid a trademark fight with the nonprofit Tun Legacy Foundation, which was planning its own historically accurate re-creation of Tun Tavern nearby.
In September, Dahm announced an agreement to take over Lucha Cartel at 207 Chestnut, about 400 feet from the foundation’s proposed site around the corner on Second Street. He told The Inquirer that he intended to spend $2.5 million to $3 million to turn the property into a Tun Tavern.
In November, Dahm added bunting and lightly renovated the restaurant for a party commemorating the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary. Less than three months later, in February, Dahm and the foundation settled their trademark dispute. Dahm subsequently decided not to proceed with the Tun Tavern at 207 Chestnut, leaving the property available.
Billy Creagh of National Realty Commercial brokered the sale, whose terms were not immediately disclosed.
Fuentes and García’s timing coincides with one of the largest public-space projects in the city’s recent history. The Park at Penn’s Landing, being built over I-95 and Columbus Boulevard between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, will reconnect portions of Old City and Society Hill with the Delaware River waterfront for the first time since the 1970s. The project, anticipated to be completed in 2029, is expected to create nearly 12 acres of parkland and dramatically change the pedestrian approach to the waterfront.
For 207 Chestnut, the significance is geographic: The restaurant will sit only a few blocks from the new park, along one of the principal east-west streets connecting Center City and Old City with Penn’s Landing.
The Old City project will put Fuentes and García in a considerably different restaurant market from Port Richmond, with heavier tourist traffic, historic attractions, nightlife, and increasing competition for Mexican food.
“I think it’s a great neighborhood, even if sometimes it has some ups and downs,” Fuentes said. “But there are a lot of local customers, and there are also a lot of tourists who visit Old City.”
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