PHILADELPHIA — Philadelphia’s Fishtown has countless place to eat.
From scrapple fries at Sulimay’s Restaurant to omakase at Hiroki, the dining scene in Fishtown offers a plethora of options for diners of all kind.
But Fishtown’s newest restaurant is a bit off the beaten path in the former Penn Asylum for Indigent Widows and Single Women on at Susquehanna Avenue and Belgrade Street.
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Bastia sits inside the newly renovated facility, now the 50-room Hotel Anna & Bel.
The restaurant’s opening has been hotly anticipated by outlets such as Bon Appétit, AFAR, and Architectural Digest, to name a few.
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On Aug. 15, head chef and partner Tyler Akin and his team opened Bastia to the public, and business has been booming since.
The dining room seats 70 people and is open for dinner from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays. Brunch is served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, as well.
“It’s getting busier every week,” Akin said.
The busy nights are smoother than the middling nights, he said, as his front and back of house teams are firing on all cylinders like a well-oiled machine.
Bastia’s menu focuses on Mediterranean cuisine, which Akin said was inspired by Corsica, a French island that sits west of Italy.
He said the idea came to him while planning a collaborative dinner with a colleague in Washington, DC. The plan was to marry the French brasserie at Akin’s Le Cavalier in Wilmington’s Hotel Du Pont with the cuisines offered at Tail Up Goat in DC.
“It was an opportunity to French and Italian simultaneously through a new lens,” he said.
While that collaboration never came to fruition, Akin’s interest in Corsica stuck with him.
But he sought to find “something more obscure and novel” to highlight the Corsica region.
He traveled to the region this January, during the off season when the area’s not flooded with wealthy European tourists, and immersed himself in the culture and cuisine.
Over the few weeks he spent there, Akin said became enamored with the rustic facilities and hearty people, many of whom he said carry knives to cut cheese and charcuterie at a moment’s notice.
As of this article’s writing, diner will find menu items such as salt baked beets with Calabrian chili and ricotta, braised veal osso buco with olives and le puy lentils, gnocchi sardi with kyoto carrots, heirloom tomato and vermouth.
But Akin said the menu is always shifting, as he and his team are sourcing ingredients locally and internationally, tapping into the seasons’ freshest produce in Pennsylvania and abroad.
The late summer and early fall is a chef’s dream, he said. Fruits are juicier and sweeter and the produce is fully mature. Spring is the other season that Akin gets excited about, so check Bastia’s offerings when greenery starts popping up again.
Bastia’s dinner menu, which is available online here, is supplemented by nightly specials.
The specials not only offer diners unique dishes, but allow Akin and his team to tease out new things, refine dishes, sourcing components, and reworking plating.
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“If [specials] vindicate themselves and we get good feedback, they might make it on to the menu,” he said. “But sometimes it’s just a fleeting idea that’s there for a night or two.”
Some of that is affected by the availability of ingredients, which Akin said is made simpler thanks to Bastia’s partnering with Green Meadow Farm in Lancaster and Sogno Toscano, which supplies imported Italian ingredient.
Akin touted imported ingredients as being a crucial factor in cooking authentic meals in any kitchen, whether they be personal or professional, and for giving Americans new culinary experiences they’d otherwise miss out on.
Akin’s team includes chefs David Roque, Joke Gottshall, and Leigh Kuykendall. But a restaurant staff is more than just the chefs.
“Every position is critical to the success,” he said.
It’s all the steps in the kitchen that when executed properly take a restaurant from being good to great. Timing, knife skills, stamina, and many more factors are integral to success in the industry.
“It’s not an easy thing to open a restaurant. It’s chaotic. System do not exist, you manifest them. Some of them are informed by other places, but none of them are exactly the same.”
He likened introducing new systems to other chefs to fitting square pegs into round holes.
“But over time, you kind of whittle them into circles,” he said. “We’re well on our way to getting there.”
For now, Akin is focused on operational aspects, as he said he feels Bastia already has its own voice.
“I think it takes a lot of restaurants to get there,” he said.
He credits that to being ambitious and dedicated to the concept, while also finding opportunities to be creative while still working in that concept.
But, in the future, Coletta, a cocktail bar in the Hotel Anna & Bel will open. It’s a smaller space than Bastia’s dining room, but will spill out onto the hotel’s patio and pool area into the early evening. Due to rooms overlooking the pool area, hours will be limited to limit noise for hotel guests.
And, Bastia will offer all day café services Monday to Friday, as well.
Check out Bastia’s website here and its Instagram here.
Bastia is located at 1401 E. Susquehanna Ave. in Philadelphia
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