Leo, named for a Philadelphia Orchestra maestro, is the Kimmel Center’s new flagship restaurant
Featuring coastal cuisine and local ingredients, Leo will replace Jose Garces' Volvér later this spring. The new chef, Chris Cryer, hopes that people will treat it like a neighborhood restaurant.
Conductor Leopold Stokowski, who elevated the Philadelphia Orchestra to world renown a century ago and shook hands with Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, will lend his name to a new restaurant taking shape at the Kimmel Center, the orchestra’s home.
Leo, opening later this spring, will replace Volvér on the Spruce Street side as part of Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts Philly’s year-old affiliation with Rhubarb Hospitality Collection.
Rhubarb — which operates dining at the Historic Royal Palaces and Royal Albert Hall in London, as well as such restaurants as Peak in New York, Frederick’s at Sony Center in Berlin, and Sky Garden in London — brought in chef Chris Cryer from Peak to oversee it.
Cryer, who grew up in southern Maryland, opened Peak in 2020 and left last year. His first job at the Kimmel was to retool the cafe on the Broad Street side, which for a year was Ideation Hospitality’s Garces Trading Co. before it closed in January 2024. Dubbed Curtain Call, it’s open for coffee and light food by day. In the evening, it becomes a cocktail lounge with such dishes as crispy chickpea fritter and confit yellowfin tuna.
Leo and its bar, now under renovation, will seat about 100, plus eight seats at the wide chef’s counter facing the street. The overall effect, Cryer said, will give the working chefs more visibility.
Service will be à la carte, though there will be a fixed-price pre-theater menu. (You may recall that at its 2014 opening under chef Jose Garces, Volvér was entirely fixed-price and patrons were required to buy dinner-and-drink tickets at $325 a head, a practice that lasted about six months.)
Cryer’s menu draft shows coastal cuisine and seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. Among the examples: squid ink campanelle tossed in lobster and aged ham ragù, finished with caper crumb; lamb merguez dumplings served with cardamom yogurt and bell pepper hot sauce; fennel-cured hiramasa accompanied by smoked olive and calamansi; and for dessert, blood orange custard paired with coconut rice and finger lime.
The full menu, plus some items specific to the bar, will be available at the bar.
Cryer said he and his team will aim to provide a “very personable dining experience. I want the food and service to be great, but I don’t want the environment to be intimidating.”
He also said he wants customers to treat it as a neighborhood restaurant. “The focal point is to get people that actually live in Center City excited about this restaurant.”
Cryer said his local favorite restaurants include Kalaya, Zahav, and Laser Wolf. After a year in Philadelphia following 13 years in New York, he said, “I can say my favorite restaurants are the ones I can walk in and get a bottle of wine quickly and get my food fast — at a high level, obviously — and where the cooking is phenomenal.”