Stephen Starr’s Pod will close, just shy of its 25th anniversary
The University of Pennsylvania has confirmed the closing, which appears to be effective after dinner Feb. 22. The futuristic restaurant first opened in October 2000.
Pod — Stephen Starr’s futuristic Japanese restaurant in University City — will close later this month, just shy of its 25th anniversary.
Starr did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The information, disclosed to The Inquirer by an employee not authorized to speak about the matter, was confirmed by the University of Pennsylvania, the restaurant’s landlord. Pod’s reservations on Resy will not allow bookings after Saturday, Feb. 22.
Pod opened in October 2000 adjacent to the Inn at Penn at 3636 Sansom St. It was the follow-up to Starr’s first two hits in Old City — the Continental (opened in 1995, closed in 2020) and Buddakan (opened in 1998).
Pod’s James Beard Award-nominated design, created by David Rockwell, offered a bold cinematic statement at the staid Ivy League university.
You could describe it as “2001: A Space Odyssey meets The Jetsons” for the high-gloss white epoxy walls, acoustic foam ceilings, polished concrete floor, airplane-like stainless-steel “onesie” bathrooms, the 30-foot red rubber “barge” serving as lounge furniture (where you’d sip color-coded drinks like the “Blue,” which combined Absolut Citron and blue lemonade), and a robotic sushi conveyor belt wending around a 34-seat sushi counter beneath a video monitor showing scenes from the restaurant.
The decor has morphed over the years, but the three semiprivate dining “pods” still feature a panel of multicolor buttons that younger patrons delightedly slap to change the lighting.
At the opening, Starr said he was inspired by the 1960s TV shows “with dancers on the scaffolding. I wanted the space to reflect that.”
Pod initially served sushi and Japanese small plates, similar in many ways to the current menu. But while planning Pod, Starr was also working on Morimoto, the high-profile Japanese restaurant in Washington Square West with chef-partner Masaharu Morimoto. Soon after Pod’s opening, the menu was broadened to pan-Asian.
Pod has been home to a who’s who of chefs and restaurateurs: Michael Schulson was executive chef before heading to New York to open the Buddakan there before returning to Philadelphia. Aimee Olexy was a general manager before she opened Django and Talula’s Table and, later, Talula’s Garden and Talula’s Daily in partnership with Starr. Ben Byruch was a chef at Pod before he migrated to New York, where he met and married chef Leah Cohen and opened Pig & Khao (which will roll out a Kensington branch this year). Sushi chef Hiroyuki “Zama” Tanaka went on to open the vaunted Zama. Kevin Yanaga of Yanaga Kappo Izakaya had two tours as Pod’s lead sushi chef.
Like many long-running restaurants, Pod had lost much of its mojo just before it was shut down by the pandemic. In early 2022, Starr and chef Peter Serpico retooled Pod into a Korean-inspired variant called Kpod. A redesign by Stokes Architecture & Design won a Built Design Award that year. By all accounts, Kpod did not have the appeal to fill a nearly 200-seat restaurant, especially given the seasonal nature of its campus location.
Serpico left a year later. Starr restored the Pod name but shifted the menu to Japanese, billing it as a “grown-up” and more refined version of the original.
A Penn spokesperson said the space will be marketed.