"People see Bookbinder's as another restaurant," Dan Tsao told The Inquirer in July. "I see it as the large production kitchen we've been dreaming about."

Tsao owns EMei, the acclaimed Sichuan restaurant at 915 Arch St. in Chinatown. He has leased the former Old Original Bookbinder's at 125 Walnut St. His quote fits a pattern across Old City in 2026. The neighborhood's best-known restaurant and bar addresses are going to people who want something specific the last tenant left behind. At Bookbinder's that's a kitchen. On Market Street it's a bar room full of woodwork. On Chestnut it's a building the new owner already knows from the inside. These operators also tend to move slowly. They open in stages and buy or lease with an eye on the waterfront, years before the waterfront is finished.

The Bookbinder's kitchen was the reason

The building at Second and Walnut was Old Original Bookbinder's for generations before it became Olde Bar in 2015. Most people remember the stained glass and the dining rooms with late-19th-century furnishings. Tsao said those weren't what drew him. The kitchen covers nearly half the ground floor. It has five walk-in refrigerators and freezers and two 32-foot cooking lines under exhaust hoods, so he can start operating without the demolition and rebuilding his other properties need.

"If not for the kitchen space, I would not consider it," he said. "It is very hard to find such a large kitchen in Center City."

That changes what the neighborhood should expect first. The property has about 13,000 square feet on the ground floor and 5,000 square feet of basement storage. Its first job is mostly behind the scenes. It will be a commissary kitchen that takes pressure off the Chinatown restaurant, and it will also run takeout and delivery as EMei Old City. Next comes a dining room and bar of about 60 seats, then an event venue. Tsao is considering calling the whole complex the Bindery and the bar the Publisher Bar. The names nod to the building's Bookbinder heritage and to his nearly two decades in publishing. As of the July report those were working names, and no opening date had been announced.

One detail is settled. The vertical neon Bookbinder's sign on the east corner "has to stay," Tsao said.

He is also pacing the project on purpose. Tsao signed a lease with an option to buy, not an outright purchase. Old City is one of four landmark properties he has taken on in about a year, along with John Henry's in Ardmore, Marra's on East Passyunk, and the Irish Pub in Rittenhouse. "It may look like we're expanding quickly, but internally we're actually slowing down," he said, describing himself as "partly as a long-term real estate investor and partly as an owner-operator." Because the kitchen is mostly intact, he said Old City may be the first of the four to start limited operations.

A bar that came with its woodwork

A few blocks north, 226 Market St. shows the same pattern, and it has already played out. The Monto is the new Celtic pub from Fergus "Fergie" Carey and Jim McNamara, with partners Johnjoe Devlin of Plough & the Stars and Gary "Swing" McDonald, who has spent 25 years at pubs including the Bards and Tir na Nóg. It took over the former Mac's Tavern. Mac's closed in summer 2025 after 15 years. Its owners included Rob McElhenney and Kaitlin Olson of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Carey remembers the room from an earlier era. Before Mac's, he told Philadelphia magazine, the bar was Anthony's, "the kind of place where you could always get an ice-cold $2 draft." Asked about The Monto's concept, he said: "It's just a bar, a pub. It's not a dive bar. It's not a fancy bar. It is a beautiful bar, with all the woodwork and such."

This is the 11th bar Carey has owned. Its price points follow the old Anthony's tradition, with a $4 pint of Coors Banquet, and Carey calls Guinness "our signature dish." N.A. Poe of Poe's Sandwich Joint runs the kitchen. He calls his menu "Poe-gues," a mix of his cutlet sandwiches and cheesesteaks with Irish breakfast, sausage rolls, shepherd's pie, and fish and chips on Sarcone's bread. The Infatuation's September guide lists pierogis, spice bags, and fish and chips, and says the pub is open seven days a week until 2 a.m.

The Monto ran on a long clock too. In February the target was April. The Infatuation lists it as a July opening.

207 Chestnut goes back to someone who cooked there

The building at 207 Chestnut St. has had an unusually busy history. It was Philadelphia Fish & Co. from 1983 to 2009, then Lucha Cartel from 2013 until it closed in 2025. In September 2025, Montgomery Dahm, who runs a Tun Tavern in Atlantic City, agreed to take over the space and said he planned to spend $2.5 million to $3 million turning it into a Tun Tavern. In February 2026 he and the Tun Legacy Foundation settled their trademark dispute, and he later decided not to go ahead at that address.

In August the building sold to chef Jesus García and his partner Alejandro Fuentes, the team behind Nemi in Port Richmond and La Roma on Allegheny Avenue. García was once executive chef at Lucha Cartel. They plan a moderately upscale Mexican restaurant similar to Nemi. As of the August report it had no name and no opening date.

The restaurant will join a corner that already has a small cluster of Mexican spots:

• La Catrachita Taqueria opened next door in May 2026.
• Buena Vista Mexican Restaurant & Bar opened at 123 Chestnut St. in summer 2025.
• Las Bugambilias moved from South Street to 15 S. Third St. in 2021.

"It was an opportunity, and we decided to take a chance," García said. The Inquirer reported that the team is partly counting on the future Park at Penn's Landing to bring foot traffic to its door. The timing of that park comes up again below.

The 200 block of Market, address by address

On the south side of the 200 block of Market Street, nearly every storefront has either changed hands or been announced for a new tenant this year. Here is the block as The Inquirer described it in May, with later updates where the reporting has them.

Qahwah House is the Yemeni coffee chain founded by Ibrahim Alhasbani. Its 224 Market St. shop is planned as a 2,500-square-foot, two-level cafe, the chain's 36th U.S. location and its first in the Philadelphia area. Baba Döner comes from Bakir Gunaydin and his partners at Oh Brother, the cheesesteak spot a few doors down at 206 Market. Our research found no public confirmation that either has opened.

At the river end of Market, Genti Mataj of Osteria Ama has announced Trattoria Ponte Vecchio at 118 Market St. It will have a Florence-inspired menu of steaks, seafood, pizza, and tableside preparations, and in May it was aiming for a late-summer opening. That opening hasn't been confirmed either.

Not every turnover runs toward an opening. 117 Old City, the American restaurant and bar at 117 Chestnut St., announced its closure in August.

The streetscape is finished, and the park is years away

The Market Street storefronts sit on a street the city finished rebuilding this summer. On June 11, 2026, Philadelphia announced that the Market Street Old City Improvement Project was complete between 2nd and 6th Streets. Construction began in December 2024. The city's project page had estimated completion for April 2026. The finished corridor includes:

• a curbless plaza at 2nd and Market
• wider sidewalks between 2nd and 5th
• sidewalk-level separated bike lanes from 2nd to 6th, with 55 bike racks and a relocated 25-dock Indego station
• more loading zones and new left-turn lanes and signals at 3rd and 4th
• four concrete bus boarding bump-outs

For anyone running a restaurant on that block, the extra loading zones and wider sidewalks are working infrastructure, much like the Bookbinder's kitchen. Those improvements are already in place.

The waterfront park is not. The Delaware River Waterfront Corporation describes Penn's Landing Park as an 11.5-acre park under construction on a new cap over I-95 and Christopher Columbus Boulevard. The park is "set to open in 2029/2030." In early September, crews were still installing caissons for the foundation at Pier 2, at one to two weeks each. PennDOT reported that 18 deck beams were placed in late May, with more beam-setting planned for later in 2026 and pier work on the east side continuing into spring 2027. DRWC now plans to install the South Street pedestrian bridge extension in winter 2027 and open it to the public between late 2027 and early 2028.

That means the García and Fuentes plan at 207 Chestnut depends partly on a park that is at least three years from opening. Tsao is moving at a similar pace at Bookbinder's, starting with a commissary, then a dining room, then an event venue, with a lease that lets him buy later. In Old City this year, the operators taking the landmark buildings are choosing them for what's already inside and opening them in stages.

If you own in Old City and are watching your block change, The Robin Gordon Group follows these storefronts address by address. We can talk through what a new neighbor at 125 Walnut or on the 200 block of Market could mean for your own plans, whenever those plans take shape. Contact Robin.