Dream a Little Dream: Graduate Hospital
Yesterday we gave you the hottest restaurant neighborhoods in the region. Today we’re going to highlight three that could be our next best restaurant neighborhoods.
Graduate Hospital
Current state of the scene: Straining for relevance.
What it needs: Some love from small-time operators like Chip Roman or Michael Schulson, who could open their next great restaurants here.
Center City South, Southwest Center City, Graduate Hospital, G-Ho—what the area from Broad to the Schuylkill and Lombard to Washington suffers from as much as an identity crisis is a restaurant dearth. Sure, there are the likes of Pub & Kitchen, Meritage, Roberto’s Café and the venerable My Thai along the northern stretch of the neighborhood. And no one complains about the pub food and beer at Sidecar Bar & Grille, Resurrection Ale House and Grace Tavern. But where are the street-corner BYOBs, the neighborhood restaurants that truly say “We have arrived”?
Right now, Toll Brothers’ massive Naval Square has added close to a thousand new, wealthy residents to the neighborhood, and there are plans to erect another 125 units in the area. Despite the housing bubble’s burst, near-constant signs of construction are visible on Fitzwater, Catharine, Christian and Carpenter. But a word to those developers: Before proposing the next three-story house with architecturally sorry bump-out and front-facing garage, how about offering a commercial space that might one day be home to the next great neighborhood restaurant?
Photo via SOSNA
