March 01, 2023
Provided Image/Loch Bar
Loch Bar, a seafood house and whiskey bar based in Baltimore, is opening a Philadelphia location at the corner of Broad and Spruce streets on the Avenue of the Arts this fall.
Loch Bar, an upscale seafood restaurant based in Baltimore, is set to open a Philadelphia location on the ground floor of the Arthaus Condominiums in Center City later this year.
The restaurant, at 301 S. Broad Street, will serve seafood staples from the Mid-Atlantic region, including lobster rolls, Oysters Rockefeller, crab cakes and sea scallops. Its drink menu will include craft beer, wine, whiskey flights and more than 100 varieties of spirits.
Diners may find cocktails named after popular songs. In Baltimore, Loch Bar serves drinks like "Rocket Man" and "Ring of Fire;" In Houston, the restaurant offers "Killer Queen" and "I Wanna Be Sedated." The restaurants also serve crush cocktails, a drink popularized in Maryland beach towns in the 1990s.
The Philly restaurant will sit at the former site of Philadelphia International Records, where Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff developed the Philadelphia soul genre in the 1970s. The raw bar will hire local artists to play seven nights a week, keeping in tune with the spirit of its home along the Avenue of the Arts, where it sits across from the Kimmel Cultural Campus.
Loch Bar will open at 11 a.m. and offer lunch, dinner, late night bites and weekend brunch.
Loch Bar's menu features seafood dishes that are synonymous with the Mid-Atlantic region, like crab cakes and Oysters Rockefeller. Its cocktail menu includes more than 100 kinds of whiskey and bourbon, as well as cocktails named after popular songs.
The seafood house will be Atlas Restaurant Group's fourth Loch Bar location. The first opened inside Baltimore's Four Seasons Hotel in 2016. Loch Bar expanded to Boca Raton in 2018 and Houston in 2019. Each restaurant features a similar menu and cocktail offerings pillared by live music from local artists.
"We are incredibly grateful to introduce Loch Bar to the city of Philadelphia," Alex Smith, president and founder of Atlas Restaurant Group, said in a news release. "We have always been excited by the art, culture and culinary scene that defines Philadelphia, and feel that Loch Bar will be welcomed addition and natural fit for the market. We are bringing something new to the table, both literally and figuratively, and are eager for Philadelphians and visitors alike to immerse in the full Loch Bar, and by extension, Atlas Restaurant Group's dining experience."
The open-concept restaurant will be outfitted with 13.5-foot floor-to-ceiling windows that allow diners to look onto South Broad Street and the Kimmel Center. The 5,198-square-foot restaurant will include seating for up to 170 people, with 50 seats for outdoor diners.
Loch Bar will be located on the ground floor of the Arthaus Condominiums, at 301 S. Broad St., the former site of Philadelphia International Records. It will be across the street from the Kimmel Cultural Campus.
Loch Bar will utilize herbs grown in Arthaus' greenhouse and sky garden for select dishes and cocktails, Smith said.
The restaurant will be situated around other entertainment and culinary venues, including the Wilma Theatre, Suzanne Roberts Theatre, the Miller, the Academy of Music and the Clef Club. It's also a short walk from Rittenhouse Square and the Center City business district, which has nearly fully rebounded from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The raw bar is the latest addition to Arthaus Condominiums, a 47-story luxury condo tower developed by Dranoff Properties, the company behind Symphony House, Southstar Lofts and several other Center City properties. Arthaus Condominiums began welcoming tenants in July after more than three years of construction.
