A longtime South Philly brunch spot is reborn with cabin vibes and a steakhouse-inspired menu

Bella Vista’s got a brand-new brunch, and it goes heavy on the vodka sodas and martinis.

After making a splash with their Fishtown tasting room, Vivek and Vikram Nayar — the twin brothers behind Two Robbers, Philly’s hard seltzer-turned-vodka brand — have branched out to South Philly for their second act: The Lodge by Two Robbers debuts at 11th and Fitzwater on July 11 with a 20-drink cocktail list, a killer pub burger, and weekend brunch — a nod to the space’s long-lived predecessor, the craft beer bar/brunchery Hawthornes. The bar will be open for dinner six nights a week.

On paper, the Two Robbers tasting rooms serve as platforms for their retail products, but in practice, they read like fully fledged bar-restaurants — pretty good ones, at that. Two Robbers Fishtown has become a neighborhood go-to for its creative cocktails (I had a tasty cherry-miso vodka number on my last visit) and well-executed bar food. The Lodge is poised to be a strong follow-up, albeit one with a strikingly different vibe than Fishtown’s contemporary Blade Runner-inspired setting.

When redoing the space, the Nayars took cues from Hawthornes’ stone fireplace nook, now painted black. The brothers had nearly every wall in the restaurant clad with walnut-stained beadboard. They hung half-curtains, installed warm lighting, and adorned the dining room with fake antlers, an antique stained-glass Budweiser lamp, and some lake-themed decor (ducks, fish, etc.). The changes add up to a cozy, rustic atmosphere that stops short of being overly kitschy.

“There’s a fine line between cabin and, like, ’70s basement,” Vivek said. “We had to toe it.”

The food menu, from older brother Ashok Nayar, is familiar — “simple comfort food,” as Vivek describes it. For brunch, there are cast iron-griddled pancakes cooked in clarified butter, avocado toast with house-cured salmon, eggs Benedict (or Norwegian), and crispy fried rice with sweet-salty Chinese sausage.

The dinner menu is even homier, with options vaguely reminiscent of a casual steakhouse. It’s anchored by an excellent 8-ounce burger that’s also on the menu in Fishtown, made with a custom Pat LaFrieda blend of 50-50 dry-aged beef and ground chuck. That’s rounded out by steak frites, fish and chips, eggplant and chicken parm, plus wedge and Caesar salads, mac and cheese, French onion soup, and four potato sides (twice-baked, scalloped, mashed, fries), and more.

Some drinks overlap the menus at the Lodge and Two Robbers Fishtown. Both have the company’s canned vodka sodas — made with real fruit, in flavors like Cara Cara orange, pink grapefruit, and pineapple — plus drinks that rely on its vodka and recently debuted gin, as well as other Pennsylvania-made spirits. The Lodge’s cocktail list will put more emphasis on martinis. There are five on the menu, including a Gibson, an espresso martini, a tomato-suffused Pomodoro martini, and a dirty martini, dubbed the Two Robbers World Famous Martini, spiked with an ounce and a half of Castelvetrano olive brine infused with thyme, rosemary, fennel, bay leaf, and orange zest.

General manager Lexi Stahl heads up the beverage program and changes up the cocktails every six months. Current offerings range from a gin-and-ginger highball and a mojito with mint-washed rum and vermouth to the Bear Trap (coffee amaro, vodka, raspberry foam) and the Ube & Coconut, with lemongrass-infused vodka, silky coconut syrup, and an ube-flavored shaved-ice float that mixes into the drink as it melts.

Vivek and Vikram started Two Robbers as a hard seltzer company in 2019, initially contract-brewing with Yards Brewing Co. In 2024, the brothers quietly transitioned away from hard seltzer to vodka sodas. They were spurred by the burgeoning canned cocktail market, exemplified by High Noon and emerging local behemoth Stateside (whose spiked Surfside teas and lemonades have made it big).

“My brother and I have always seen [canned cocktails] as the same customer [as seltzer], it’s just that that customer has graduated,” Vivek said. The most daunting change was switching distribution channels, as liquor is more closely regulated than beer and malt-based products.

The vodka sodas are currently distributed in just Pennsylvania and New York City, but the company is slated to expand to New Jersey and Delaware this fall, around the same time their Eagles-branded packaging is set to debut. (Its vodka sodas will also be sold at Lincoln Financial Field this season.)

As was the case with its seltzer, Two Robbers’ spirits production is currently contracted out (a fairly common arrangement for liquor brands). Retail bottles of vodka and gin are only available at the Fishtown and Bella Vista bars.

When Two Robbers Fishtown opened in 2022, it gave the neighborhood something to talk about, having transformed a former auto body shop into a vividly colored hard seltzer bar with an avant-garde menu that included eggplant tonnato and straciatella “tacos.”

The boundary-pushing fare has since been dialed back: The Nayar brothers have a proven ability to read the room. And their food has become as much of a selling point as the drinks; The Inquirer’s Craig LaBan has praised Two Robbers Fishtown’s smash burger and its Kerala fish sandwich.

Some of those lessons inform the Lodge’s highly approachable menu, meant to lure people in for a full-on dinner as opposed to a barhopping stop. “The atmosphere we’re trying to create [in Bella Vista is] a little bit more calm, more expected dining situation,” Ashok said.

The Lodge by Two Robbers (738 S. 11th St., Philadelphia, PA 19147) is open Tuesday and Wednesday 4 to 10 p.m., Thursday and Friday 4 to midnight, Saturday 10 a.m. to midnight, and Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Its kitchen is open till an hour before closing time. For more info, check Instagram @tworobberslodge.