Palizzi Social Club is opening a martini bar with live jazz and you’ll need a gold seal to get in
Eight years after taking over Palizzi Social Club in South Philly, chef/president Joey Baldino has done up the second floor into a cozy martini bar with live jazz on weekends.
Since chef Joey Baldino took over Palizzi Social Club in 2017, he has said he had wanted to open an intimate lounge on the second floor to accommodate members during the weekend rush.
“I didn’t have the ability to do it,” Baldino said. “I always wanted to, but then it just turned into storage.”
Over the last several months, workers refashioned what was the social club’s original assembly room into a cozy spot called the President’s Room. It opens Feb. 28 for service on Friday and Saturday nights.
To get there, you climb 15 red-carpeted steps behind the ATM in the foyer, past a velvet rope. Baldino said the room is not intended as a final destination. Rather, it’s a stop-off for a cocktail before dinner at Palizzi, or a late-night drop-in after dinner elsewhere.
A fraction of the size of the first floor, the President’s Room has a five-seat bar and eight tables, with a martini list, live jazz from a small stage, and antipasti. There is no formal food menu.
It looks Rat Pack-y enough, with gold curtains ringing the room, cream-color velour banquettes, and a vintage-1970s linoleum floor that screams “South Philly Italian social club.”
Because that is what it was.
Palizzi was one of many social clubs that served South Philadelphia’s Italian immigrants after World War I, helping with housing and jobs and serving as a living room of sorts for the emigres. Palizzi members hailed from the Abruzzese town of Vasto.
Baldino, who owns the acclaimed Italian restaurant Zeppoli in Collingswood, grew up around the corner from Palizzi amid three generations of his family, which has run the club since 1952. His uncle Ernest Mezzaroba, who was 82 when he died in 2016, was the previous operator.
Just like downstairs, it’s open to members only — but you’ll have had to be in the club for two years to be eligible.
Some tables can be reserved online. But first, you’ll need to buy a gold seal ($40) to affix to your $20-a-year membership card, bringing the annual price to $60 for full access. Gold seals can only be purchased on Thursdays and Sundays, to keep the doorman from having to juggle too much.
Palizzi’s membership rolls have been closed since June 2023, but Baldino said additional memberships — also granting access to the President’s Room — will be available in late May.
Side note to anyone interested in running a South Philly social club, be advised that the Broadway Theatrical Club on 13th Street near Moyamensing Avenue has just come onto the market, with an asking price of $340,000 plus liquor license.