One of Chinatown’s busiest kitchens is about to get some breathing room. Dan Tsao, owner of Sichuan restaurant EMei, has closed on the long-shuttered Irish Pub at 2007-11 Walnut Street in Rittenhouse and plans to turn the corner property into a commissary kitchen and expanded restaurant hub. It is Tsao’s third major restaurant-property purchase in less than a year and is aimed squarely at relieving the cramped cooking setup at his Arch Street location. The pub, dark since 2020, still reads like a slice of neighborhood history from the sidewalk.
As reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal, Tsao bought the three connected storefronts at 2007-11 Walnut Street and plans to build a commissary kitchen that would function as the backbone for his restaurant operations. Property listings show the site spans roughly 18,600 square feet across the buildings, a footprint that can support both production space and ground-floor service. The listing appears on Crexi.
What Tsao Has In Mind
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Tsao envisions combining the three storefronts into roughly 5,500 square feet of ground-floor dining while renovating the upper floors into apartments, all while preserving much of the building’s historic facade. He told the paper that a full reopening is unlikely this year, although pop-up events could appear before a permanent dining room comes online. In other words, regulars might get a sneak peek long before the lights officially come back on.
Why A Commissary Kitchen Matters
Centralizing prep in a commissary would let Tsao separate day-to-day production from front-of-house service and ease the delivery bottlenecks created by EMei’s basement kitchen. Commissary and shared-kitchen setups have become go-to tools for Philadelphia chefs looking to grow takeout, catering and pop-up operations, as coverage by Philadelphia Magazine illustrates. Reporting from the Philadelphia Business Journal frames the Walnut Street project as an operational hub that could quietly power an even larger portfolio.
Timeline, Financing And Neighborhood Notes
A LinkedIn post from Asian Bank thanked Gregory Bianchi and others for helping arrange financing for the purchase. Brokers told reporters the site had been marketed for years and will require substantial renovation and historic-district review before full service can begin. Tsao said he intends to preserve the exterior, calling it "a beautiful building," per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The 2000 block of Walnut is already a tightly packed restaurant corridor, and Tsao’s move underlines how local restaurateurs are snapping up and rehabbing long-standing sites to scale their concepts. Passersby can expect preservation work and occasional previews as the team retools a familiar green-canopied storefront into a modern kitchen and dining room without erasing its Rittenhouse nostalgia.
