915 Lancaster Avenue Has Failed Three Times Since 2017. The Storefronts Around It Are Filling Up Anyway.

Walk the stretch of Lancaster Avenue that runs through Bryn Mawr Village this month and one storefront has scaffolding up while everything around it is already serving customers. That storefront, 915 Lancaster Ave, is getting its fourth restaurant concept in nine years. The block it sits on hasn't had that problem at all.

The space reopening this September is Alessandro's Enoteca, the third location from 28-year-old chef Alex Fiorello, who already runs Alessandro's Wood Fired Italian in Wayne and Alessandro's Pizzeria in West Chester. It's a notable expansion for a young restaurateur. It's also the fourth tenant to try that same address since 2017, and the pattern behind the first three tells you more about how this stretch of Bryn Mawr actually works than the new opening does on its own.

Three Tenants, One Address

Enoteca Tredici opened at 915 Lancaster in 2017 and became, by most local accounts, a genuine hit. It closed in 2021, a casualty of the pandemic and financial strain that took down a lot of ambitious restaurants that year. The space didn't stay empty long. It became Fiore Rosso, a concept with ties to Philadelphia chef Marc Vetri, and that iteration was short-lived before the space was rebranded as Il Fiore in 2024. Il Fiore closed at the start of this year.

Three concepts, none of them casual, all built around some version of destination dining: a wine bar, a Vetri-adjacent Italian restaurant, a rebrand of the same idea. Each one had real culinary credibility behind it. None of them lasted much past the three-year mark.

What the Landlord Keeps Asking For

Paul Aschkenasy, who owns Bryn Mawr Village, talked to Main Line outlet SAVVY about what he wanted this time, and his answer is the most useful sentence in this whole story. He described wanting a restaurant that "appeals to so many of our neighbors, has a lively bar scene, and is priced such that people can visit on a regular basis." That's not a description of what Enoteca Tredici, Fiore Rosso, or Il Fiore were. Those were occasion restaurants, the kind you book for an anniversary or a client dinner, not the kind you wander into on a Tuesday because you don't feel like cooking.

Fiorello, for his part, has described the new concept as "a step up from Wayne," his more casual, high-volume neighborhood osteria. He's promising dry-aged proteins from on-site aging refrigerators and subtle Japanese touches that could include sushi-style dishes. That's an elevated menu, not a neighborhood one. The tension between what the landlord says the address needs and what the new tenant is actually building is the same tension that's played out here twice before. It's worth watching whether Alessandro's Enoteca resolves that gap or repeats it. The opening itself has already slipped once, from an original April target to September, which suggests the "quick turnaround" this space is known for hasn't been as fast in practice.

Two Doors Down, No Such Problem

While 915 Lancaster has been cycling through concepts, 865 Lancaster Avenue, less than a block away, opened as Dim Sum Factory's newest location without any of the drama. It's already running full weekly hours, seven days a week, serving the same Shanghai and Cantonese-style soup dumplings, shumai, and scallion pancakes as its sister locations in Horsham, Flourtown, and Northeast Philadelphia. Its listing shows regular hours and an active phone line, and it has settled into the block's daily routine.

That's not a coincidence tied to the cuisine. It's a pricing and positioning story. Dim Sum Factory is built for the exact use case Aschkenasy described: a place you go on a random Wednesday, not a place you plan around.

The Rest of the Block Runs on Repeat Visits

The pattern holds elsewhere on the same strip. Love & Honey Fried Chicken opened its Bryn Mawr location as the suburban counterpart to its Northern Liberties spot, serving buttermilk-fried chicken, tenders, and sandwiches, the kind of menu built for weekly rotation, not special occasions. Flakely, the gluten-free bakery that built its name out of an industrial kitchen in Manayunk, is opening its own storefront on the same Lancaster Avenue corridor, another concept that depends on people coming back often rather than once.

Then there's the Saturday routine that has nothing to do with any single restaurant. The Bryn Mawr Farmers Market runs year-round in the train station parking lot on Lancaster Avenue, Saturdays from 9 to 1 through the end of the year, dropping to select Saturdays each month once winter thins the vendor list. Vendors like Madi's on a Roll, known for cheesesteak and apple pie egg rolls, and Aaji's Indian Cuisine have built a following there specifically because the market rewards exactly the kind of low-friction, come-as-you-are visit that a $60-a-plate tasting menu never will. Bryn Mawr Day, the annual event put on by the Bryn Mawr Business Association, filled Lancaster Avenue with vendors and activities earlier this month, the kind of turnout that depends on a downtown people already treat as their own, not one they're discovering for the first time.

None of this is new money proving out a concept. It's existing neighborhood habits getting reinforced by businesses that were built to fit them.

What This Means for the New Restaurant

None of this means Alessandro's Enoteca is destined to repeat its predecessors' timeline. Fiorello's Wayne restaurant has built a genuine following since 2020 on strong takeout and a busy dining room, which suggests he understands the accessible, regular-visit model Aschkenasy is asking for better than a wine bar or a Vetri-adjacent concept might have. Keeping the space's existing industrial look, rather than a full gut renovation, was framed as a practical decision to speed up the opening, and it also keeps the restaurant from presenting as a fully reinvented, more formal space than what came before.

The open question is whether "a step up from Wayne" ends up meaning a step up in price too, and if it does, whether that pulls the concept back toward the special-occasion pattern this address has struggled to escape. A bar scene built around wood-fired pizza and pasta, priced for a Tuesday rather than a birthday, would be the first tenant here in nearly a decade actually built for what the space's own landlord says he wants.

Either way, the rest of Bryn Mawr Village isn't waiting to find out. The dumplings two doors down, the fried chicken up the block, and the Saturday market in the train station lot are already doing the thing 915 Lancaster keeps trying to figure out how to do.

If you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by what actually survives on its main street rather than what gets announced, that's the more useful read on Bryn Mawr right now than any single opening. Arielle Roemer spends a lot of time watching these patterns play out block by block across the Main Line, and is always glad to talk through what a given stretch of a neighborhood is actually like to live near, not just what's opening this month.