August 18, 2026
StreetView/Google Maps
Human Robot Brewery will now partner with Mexican restaurant Cantina La Martina to serve food at its locations in Kensington and Brewerytown starting Sept. 13. The craft brewer's partnership with Poe's Sandwich Joint ends Sept. 3. Above, Human Robot's tasting room at 1710 North 5th St.
Days after Human Robot Brewery terminated its partnership with Poe's Sandwich Joint at the craft brewer's Kensington tasting room and Brewerytown taproom, a replacement has been chosen to fill the void.
Human Robot co-founder Jake Atkinson said Tuesday the owners of Mexican restaurant Cantina La Martina will take over the kitchens at both locations. The food program will be led by chef Dionicio Jimenez and his wife, Mariangeli Alicea Saez, starting Sept. 13. The couple already provide food at Human Robot's Jenkintown taproom. They closed their Kensington restaurant in November after a four-year run, saying they would search for a new home in the neighborhood.
Human Robot just signed a five-year lease extension at its production facility and headquarters on North 5th Street, where the brewery opened in 2020. The taproom in Brewerytown, which replaced the former Crime & Punishment brewery on Girard Avenue, has been operating with Poe's Side Piece serving up sandwiches since it opened last year. Poe's last day at both spots will be Sept. 3.
Jimenez was nominated for a James Beard Award in 2023 for his work at Cantina La Martina in the Best Chef category for the Mid-Atlantic region. At Human Robot's Kensington location (1710 N. 5th St.), the restaurant will serve burritos, tacos, wings and nachos. In Brewerytown (2710 W. Girard Ave.) the taproom will have a burrito bar.
The changing of the guard marks a turbulent end to Human Robot's nearly seven-year partnership with sandwich maker N.A. Poe. The business relationship broke down over Poe's pot-stirring social media presence. Poe recently used his sandwich shop's account to post a particularly crude meme, one of a litany of online dust-ups that the brewery came to view as liabilities to its reputation and customers' trust.
"It just started to become too much," Atkinson said Tuesday. "It was like every day I'm waking up to a DM, mostly customers just wondering, like, why are you associated with this guy?"
Atkinson said he and his business partners asked Poe on several occasions to either tone down his social media use or move it to a personal account instead of posting edgy humor on pages tied to Poe's Sandwich Joint, which the public associates with Human Robot.
One of the final nails came when Poe, who had been slated to run the kitchen at the recently opened bar the Monto in Old City, took aim at owner Fergus Carey. Their business arrangement dissolved suddenly in June, only days after Carey's new bar opened. Poe later shared a meme that depicted Carey, who's Irish, performing a lewd act with a potato. Poe has since apologized for posting the image, which appeared in a temporary Instagram Story, but Human Robot decided to terminate Poe's contract after he didn't appear to take seriously the brewery's ultimatum earlier this month, Atkinson said.
Despite the end of their run in business together, Atkinson has no ill will toward Poe. He said it pained the team at Human Robot to make a decision that affects the livelihood of a person he's considered a friend. He said he has offered to be of help as Poe tries to figure out his next move.
"It was a great partnership. It always has been," Atkinson said. "I mean, the reality is Poe's actually a really good, nice human being. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. I don't know why he has this crazy edge lord online persona. It just came to a point where, like, how many chances can you give him and keep getting slapped in the face? We're trying to run a business here."
Poe said Tuesday he felt the decision was made "behind closed doors" and that his lapsed lease arrangement with Human Robot was part of a "flimsy" justification for his firing.
"I'm not trying to go scorched earth here, (Human Robot) makes great beer and I care deeply for a lot of people that work there," Poe wrote on Instagram. "Admittedly, I am an immature jackass with no filter, but that's par for the course if you followed anything I've done in the last two decades online or in the streets of Philly."
Atkinson said he's excited for the future with Cantina La Martina and ready to start a new chapter at Human Robot's locations in Kensington and Brewerytown. The brewery's South Philly taproom and its Doubles outpost in New Hope do not have food partners, instead letting guests bring food in from local businesses.
