News
The $20 million Italian restaurant opens next week with the clam pizzetta, 100-layer lasagna, and one of the city’s largest amaro lists.
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Inside Borromini / Photography courtesy of Borromini
Let’s get the big news out of the way first: As I guessed a couple weeks back, Stephen Starr’s brand-new, massive, highly-anticipated, $20 million Rittenhouse Square Italian restaurant, Borromini, is opening to the public on Monday, August 25th. Philly has been waiting more than a year for this project to be completed — since the first mentions of Starr picking up the old Barnes & Noble space at 18th and Walnut from developer (and partner) Alan Domb back in 2023.
There has been a lot of breathless speculation (some of it right, some of it wrong) about what he would do with the space, how he would fill it and when it would be ready, but a couple things have been true since the very beginning.
Thing one: It was going to be BIG. Both physically (two stories, more than 15,000 square feet) and historically. This was, after all, Stephen Starr — who made his name in Philly before going off to conquer the restaurant world with 40 restaurants up and down the East Coast and a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2017. Starr, who’d launched the careers of so many of our best-known chefs, and opened so many of the city’s most notable restaurants. More, it was Starr returning home with his first serious, big-ticket opening since LMNO in 2021, and returning to the neighborhood where so much of his success has been concentrated.
Thing two: It was going to be an Italian restaurant.
But not just any Italian restaurant. In this city built on red gravy and meatballs, this was going to be Starr’s vision of an Italian restaurant in the way that Buddakan was his vision of an Asian restaurant or Pod was his vision of the future. It would be an enormous, immersive, ruthlessly curated, and exceptionally designed vision of an Italian restaurant experience as translated by a guy who has made hundreds of millions of dollars, an entire career and a life out of executing ever more complex restaurant fantasias in a signature style that can only really be described as carefully researched, painstakingly tested, and beautifully executed dining experiences, plus BLANK.
Plus lasers. Plus light shows. Plus giant gold Buddhas or astronaut cocktails or whatever other over-the-top detail this former concert promoter and rock-and-roll impresario thinks will get people through the door.
In the case of Borromini, the plus is a mural made to look like it was uncovered during construction. The plus are the custom chandeliers and meticulous design (by New York restaurateur Keith McNally, designer Ian McPheely, and Philly-based Stokes Architecture & Design) intended to make the place look like it has been around already for a hundred years on opening night.
Borromini’s 100-layer lasagna
And the plus is the 100-layer lasagna, brought to the menu by consulting chef Mark Ladner (who is working with Starr on reviving the now-infamous NYC restaurants Babbo and Lupa) from his days at Del Posto in New York. It’s legendary West Coast chef and baker Nancy Silverton (whom Starr is partnering with on a Washington D.C. outpost of her Pizzeria Mozza) who has come in to offer some dishes. It’s this sprawling network of expertise and connections across the food and restaurant world which Starr has tapped, all to make Borromini something truly special, and his own obsession with details that triggers something in me. Because when you know someone cares about something this much, and has committed this much time and effort and money and focus and sweat and talent and airline miles to chasing a particular vision, you can’t help but be excited to see how that’s all going to play out.
Right?
I dunno. Maybe I just have an unhealthy obsession with people who carry their own obsessions to extreme ends, but Starr has spent years prepping this project, pulling in talent from all over the world, testing and re-testing the menu, and I am very excited to see how it all finally comes together.
He’s got chef Julian Baker bringing his Michelin-star experience to the kitchen; clam pizzetta, a dozen pastas, Nancy Silverton’s focaccia di reco, that 100-layer lasagna, and chocolate olive oil cake on the menu; one of the city’s largest amaro lists; and a tomato gin martini at the bar. The space is gorgeous, pale, and bright. The staff is enormous and ready to go.
Could it all be a disaster? Sure. Starr isn’t immune from misfires. No one is. But I’ve spent a long time watching this project and the balance between flash and substance just feels right. I can’t explain it any better right now, in these nervous days right before the big reveal. After decades in this game, Starr has gotten pretty good at knowing how to thread the twin needles of art and commerce. He knows, from long experience, exactly how much both things matter.
And very soon, it’s all going to be put to the test. As I said at the start of this, Monday, August 25th is the big day. Service at Borromini will be open Sunday to Wednesday from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., then until 11 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It’s dinner only from the jump, with lunch and brunch service planned for later this year.
And yes, reservations are available right now.
I’ll see you all there.
Dining and Cooking