The former John Henry's Pub at 98 Cricket Avenue has been waiting on EMei since July 2025. Anyone who has been watching that address and wondering whether this is finally the season the Sichuan restaurant opens will find the schedule has shifted. What has changed since last summer is the order in which owner Dan Tsao's projects are expected to open.
The Purchase That Started It
In July 2025, EMei owner Dan Tsao closed on the building at 98 Cricket Avenue, the former home of John Henry's Pub. The bar had run there for nearly four decades under Jim and Kathy Kearney before they retired that February. Tsao's purchase, at $1.45 million, included the liquor license, furnishings, and equipment already in place. He told the Philadelphia Business Journal he hoped to open by the following August or September, later softened in subsequent coverage to "next summer."
The Ardmore location was meant to solve a specific problem. EMei's original Chinatown restaurant runs its entire kitchen out of a basement at 915 Arch Street, serving more than 100 menu items made in-house, with delivery drivers now crowding an entrance built for a much smaller operation. Sales have grown more than 300 percent compared to 2019, and staffing has gone from 11 full-time employees to 37. Ardmore, seating 100 to 125, was going to be the release valve. It made sense that Tsao's first expansion in EMei's 14-year history would go there. Many of the restaurant's Chinatown customers already live in Lower Merion, where Tsao himself lives with his family.
Then Marra's. Then the Irish Pub. Then Old City.
Except Ardmore didn't stay the only project. In December 2025, Tsao bought the former Marra's building on East Passyunk Avenue for $1.55 million, ending the South Philly red-gravy institution's 98-year run under three generations of the Marra family. That project was structured in phases, with takeout and delivery launching during renovations and full dine-in service targeted for summer 2026, the same season originally promised for Ardmore.
Five months later, in May 2026, Tsao settled on a third property: the long-shuttered Irish Pub at 2007-11 Walnut Street in Rittenhouse, a building that had sat on the market for seven years before he bought it. He described plans to combine it with an adjacent storefront into one restaurant spanning roughly 5,500 square feet, with apartments added upstairs.
Then, in July 2026, came a fourth. Tsao leased the former Olde Bar in Old City, the building that housed Old Original Bookbinder's for generations before a 2009 rebrand. It was, as the Inquirer reported, his fourth landmark restaurant property acquisition in a single year. Tsao was direct about how it happened.
"The acquisitions were never intended to happen simultaneously. Several independent opportunities simply surfaced within a short period."
That's four buildings, in four different Philadelphia neighborhoods, all in various stages of construction at once. Tsao has said this deal marks the end of the expansion, not the start of a fifth purchase.
Why Ardmore Might Not Be First After All
Here's the part that matters if you've been planning a Cricket Avenue dinner around a summer 2026 opening that already came and went. The Inquirer's July 7 reporting on new Ardmore businesses noted that EMei's timeline for both the South Philadelphia and Ardmore locations had been pushed back due to permitting and architecture hiccups. Ten days later, the paper reported something more specific: work has begun at all four properties, but Tsao plans to open them one at a time, and Old City, the building he bought last, may actually be the first to begin operating.
The reason comes down to what each building already has. The Old City space still has a largely intact kitchen, which means Tsao can start there as a commissary operation, running takeout and delivery under the EMei name while a full dining room, bar, and event space come later. He's floated names for the concept: The Bindery for the overall space, The Publisher Bar for the bar, both references to the building's Bookbinder's history and to Tsao's own background as owner of New Mainstream Press, which publishes Metro Chinese Weekly and Metro Viet News.
Ardmore and the Passyunk Avenue site don't have that shortcut. Both are described as needing more extensive rebuilds before they can open as EMei restaurants, which is exactly the kind of work that runs into permitting delays and architectural revisions. The Rittenhouse property, meanwhile, isn't becoming an EMei location at all. Tsao has said it's being developed as a separate hospitality concept.
So the order that made sense on paper in July 2025, Ardmore first because it was purchased first, has been overtaken by the order that makes sense on the ground: whichever kitchen needs the least work gets there first, and that's Old City, not Cricket Avenue.
What's Already Filled the Wait on Cricket Avenue
None of this has left the block empty while it waits. If you've kept eating dinner in Ardmore over the past year and a half, here's what's actually filled that stretch of Cricket Avenue and Lancaster Avenue around it:
- Ripplewood, at 29 East Lancaster Avenue, remains the anchor of the modern dining scene under owner Peter Martin and chef Biff Gottehrer, with its speakeasy feel and secret garden dining area still the draw it was when it opened in 2018.
- Izzy's, two doors down at 35 East Lancaster Avenue, is Martin's 24-seat sake and cocktail bar sharing a kitchen with Ripplewood. No reservations, no website, 17 sakes on the list, and it still draws a line most weekends.
- Tired Hands Fermentaria, at 35 Cricket Terrace, is the operating taproom, distinct from the brewery's 16 Ardmore Avenue location, which rebranded as Ardmore Brewing Company in early 2025 and is now closed to the public except for private events.
- Raffs Italian Cuisine, at 65 Cricket Avenue, opened in April 2026 as chef Raffael Kupa's second restaurant, a 100-seat BYOB room built into Cricket Flats.
- Bored Trading Café, on the ground floor of that same Cricket Flats building at 43 Cricket Avenue, opened in January 2026 with all-day breakfast, sandwiches, and coffee.
- Vintner's Table, at 24 Cricket Avenue, the third location for this Italian-style wine bar tied to Folino Estate Winery in Kutztown, is renovating a few doors from EMei's building. As of the Inquirer's July 2026 reporting, it hadn't shared an opening date either.
That last one is worth sitting with. EMei isn't the only build-out on Cricket Avenue running past its original timeline. Two of the block's most anticipated arrivals are both still under construction more than a year after they were announced, which says less about either operator and more about what it actually takes to bring a commercial kitchen up to code in a building that wasn't built for one.
What This Means If You're Still Waiting
The honest answer for anyone circling a calendar is that there isn't a reliable date yet, and the properties that get there fastest are the ones that need the least structural work, not the ones that got purchased first. If EMei Ardmore opens before EMei Passyunk, or after, that will likely come down to which building's permitting clears first, not which one Tsao wanted more. Watching for that kind of construction milestone, permits pulled, kitchen equipment delivered, staff postings appearing, will tell you more than another "coming this summer" sign in the window.
Ardmore's Cricket Avenue has turned into one of the more closely watched blocks on the Main Line, and the story here isn't really about one restaurant's delay. It's about how a single owner's four-building expansion across four different neighborhoods has quietly reordered which project moves first, whether the guess is Ardmore, Old City, or somewhere else entirely. If you're the kind of resident who's been tracking this build-out as closely as we have, the Houder Nuñez-Strid Team keeps an eye on what's changing along Ardmore's commercial corridors as part of understanding what makes this stretch of the Main Line work day to day.
