"We also wanted to be part of a community." That is what Tania Spensierato told The Philadelphia Inquirer this summer, standing inside a restaurant she and her husband had just agreed to buy on Montgomery Avenue. The restaurant is Aldar Bistro, a Lebanese dining room the Wakim family has run for 34 years. Spensierato and her husband Luciano, along with their partners Marco Mondello and Anna Bellizzi, are not opening something new down the street. They are taking over the building at 285 Montgomery Avenue and turning it into Bruzi, a Southern Italian restaurant named for the ancient people of Calabria, where all four partners trace their roots.
If you have lived in Bala Cynwyd for any stretch of that 34-year run, this is not a small thing. Aldar has been the kind of place where the name alone tells you what night it is: hummus and lamb on a Friday, a familiar server who remembers your order, a corner of Montgomery Avenue that hasn't needed reinvention because it already worked. Aldar's closing is a loss, but the neighborhood isn't losing its character: the address is entering a new chapter. This isn't a chain moving into a beloved storefront. It's one family with three decades of hospitality handing the address to two Philadelphia-based couples with hospitality experience of their own.
The People Buying Aldar Have Been Doing This a Long Time
Luciano Spensierato has tended bar for 35 years, the last several of them at Gran Caffè L'Aquila in Center City. Marco Mondello joined him there in 2016 and trained as a sommelier. Tania Spensierato works in retail now but comes from a restaurant background, and Anna Bellizzi is a scientist at Temple University who is putting in the same sweat equity as the other three. Together they are two Philly-based couples, both with roots in Cosenza, a province in Calabria, and they picked Bala Cynwyd on purpose. According to reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the sale is contingent on the liquor license transferring, a process the Wakim family expected to close sometime in September, which puts that milestone right around now. Renovations are expected to take about two months after that, with Bruzi targeting a late October or November opening.
Aldar will stay open through the transfer, so there is still a window to get a last meal in the space as it currently exists before the room becomes something else. The bones will change more than the address will. Glynis Tart of Verden Interior Design is reworking the dining room with a modern Mediterranean look, blue and gold accents pulled from the Calabrian flag, olive trees, and a small retail section stocked with imported Italian products. Mondello plans to open the wine list with roughly 100 Italian bottles and grow it from there, and Spensierato says cocktails will get equal billing behind the bar. The chef is already hired, trained in Italy and currently working in Florida, though the partners haven't named him publicly yet.
The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Tania Spensierato saying, "Our first priority is simply to get started." She added, "One goal at a time."
This Corner of Montgomery Avenue Keeps Attracting the Same Kind of Talent
Bruzi isn't the only recent sign that chefs with real credentials are choosing this stretch of Bala Cynwyd rather than another Center City address. A few minutes from Aldar, at 611 Righters Ferry Road, Nicholas Elmi opened Lark, a coastal Mediterranean restaurant that marks his newest concept. Elmi is a James Beard finalist and a Top Chef winner, which means his choice of location says something. He didn't pick Bala Cynwyd for a pop-up. He picked it as a place to plant a flag, and this is actually his second move in the neighborhood. Back in 2021, Elmi opened The Landing Kitchen at the Ironworks, the Residence Inn by Marriott on the same road, describing it at the time as a space built for farmers markets, concerts, movie nights, and a dog-friendly outdoor footprint. Five years later, he's back with Lark just down the block. That's not a chef testing the water. That's a chef who already knows the water and decided to swim in it again.
Put those two data points next to Bruzi and a pattern starts to look less like coincidence. Independent, chef-driven restaurants are choosing to buy or build here. For residents, the practical upside is straightforward: the restaurants opening near you include personal projects on this stretch of Montgomery Avenue and Righters Ferry Road.
City Avenue Is Filling In With a Different Kind of Growth
Drive a few minutes the other direction and the story shifts registers. Federal Realty Investment Trust's redevelopment along City Avenue, anchored by the new Blayr residential building, is bringing a different flavor of growth to Bala Cynwyd. Chopt Creative Salad Co. and NAYA, a fast-casual Lebanese concept with build-your-own bowls and house-made hummus, are both slated to open on the street level there in 2026, alongside Hammer & Nails Grooming Shop. The retail footprint for those three tenants is about 7,000 square feet total, a small slice of a project that Federal Realty says approaches $170 million in total investment and includes more than 300 residential units and roughly 190,000 square feet of retail across the broader corridor.
This is worth noticing precisely because it's a different kind of bet. Montgomery Avenue is getting restaurants built around a family name and a chef's reputation. City Avenue is getting national fast-casual brands leasing space inside a large-scale residential development. Both are legitimate ways for a neighborhood to grow. They just come from different playbooks, and Bala Cynwyd is running both at once, a few blocks apart. If you've noticed the neighborhood feels like it's changing in two different speeds depending on which street you're standing on, this is likely why.
What to Actually Do With This
If you've been meaning to get to Aldar one more time, the window is short but it's still open. The restaurant continues operating through the license transfer, and once that closes, expect a two-month renovation before Bruzi's doors open, with a target of late October or November. If you want to see what Nicholas Elmi is doing with Lark, Righters Ferry Road is worth a visit now rather than waiting, especially since his last Bala Cynwyd project, The Landing Kitchen, has already had five years to prove he sticks around. And if City Avenue's new fast-casual lineup interests you more than white-tablecloth Italian, Chopt and NAYA are both expected to open at Blayr later this year, which means the corridor will likely look noticeably different again by the time the leaves change.
None of this is really about real estate, though it says something about the kind of place Bala Cynwyd is becoming. A neighborhood that can hold onto a 34-year-old family restaurant long enough for another family to want to inherit it, while also drawing a Top Chef winner back for a second project five years running, isn't losing its character. It's just handing pieces of it forward.
If you're curious what else is shifting in Bala Cynwyd, or you'd like a local's read on the neighborhood beyond the dinner menu, Nora DeCristofano is always glad to talk. Let's Connect.
