PHS Pop Up Garden at South Street — Restaurant in Philadelphia

Update: PHS's Pop Up Garden is my go-to for drinks slightly further away from my house/closer to center city but still walkable. You can't beat the ambience and environment! Being surrounded by super cool plants is always an amazing experience, and I find their drinks to be strong and affordable (also thank you so much for having a cider on tap!). I attended one of the free plant swaps hosted by solo real estate recently, brought six plants and left with six new plants. It was a great experience, super easy and introvert/shy friendly, and very chill over all. It was nice seeing that planty folks aren't necessarily super greedy/stingy, and everyone seemed really happy with the process of the plant swap. I did see that compared to the fully rooted/grown plants I brought, that most did not necessarily bring that to the table (a lot of single cuttings without roots, single tiny plant in a larger nursery pot, cuttings from vegetables), so probably don't bring your super rare or exciting plants unless you are feeling generous (although if so, yay!). The hosts were super nice, and I enjoyed hearing more about Solo real-estate during the process. I think the only upgrade I could see was the location of the plant swap, it was just super crowded, but I also understand why it needed to be held in the area that it's held in. My only tip would maybe to be to encourage folks to gather outside rather than crowding the room consistently, like take a look inside and especially be inside getting plants, but once you're done head out so others can have space to move. Honestly though, all around I always have a phenomenal experience here and I'm so glad PHS can have this income because they need it to be able to do awesome things around our city.

Great outdoor space for drinks and food. They have a variety of seating areas, lots of room, and the food/drinks are great. It's perfect for lunch or an afternoon snack. The drinks are fairly strong. The French fries and nachos were definitely worth coming back here. Also really love that this helps the PHS -hopefully they can start planting more trees in the city with some of the money...

I hate leaving a bad review because I've heard good things about this spot and PHS. But this place wasn't a good vibe. My friends had a table reserved, but when I showed up the hostess wouldn't let us in until we told her what table # our friends were at. I didn't know what table they were at - I thought that was the hostess's job. I pointed to which table they were at and thought that would clear things up. Then the hostess got snappy with me for not figuring out what table number it was. How would I find that out? I don't know the table numbers. I'm not the hostess. My friends weren't checking their phones because they were trying to enjoy their food and drinks.

Then things got worse. She refused to let me in until I signed up for their email list serve. I've never been to a bar that refused entry until you gave them your email address. Obviously I didn't give my primary email address... I don't want their spam. It was weird that she insisted even when I kindly pointed out that I didn't want to give them my email address.

The food was quite good, the drinks were okay but a bit watery and a bit overpriced. I was still enjoying myself until another hostess came by to warn us that our "90 minutes were up" in 7 minutes. This was a disappointing surprise. We were ordering tons of food and drinks still, and had JUST bought a round, and they gave us a few minutes warning to chug our fancy drinks and clear out. There were several open tables, but they made us leave anyway. They suggested we could get back in line and be reseated. No, thanks. We went down the street to a spot with tastier drinks and no weird policies. This place has potential and I feel bad leaving a bad review, but it just wasn't enjoyable with all the...

I had a couple of good experiences at this bar and appreciated the selection of vegetarian and vegan options and the ambiance. It does get crowded on weekends, as to be expected. I have previously had a small issue where I ordered vegan tenders but was served chicken tenders. No biggie.

However, I recently tried to go with my friend who was visiting from Germany and the older male staff member who was checking IDs told us she couldn't get in. At first he said it was because it wasn't an American ID or passport, but it is an official German ID and she hasn't had a problem anywhere else the six months she has been in the US. Then he said it was because she wasn't 21, though she is. He must have thought this due to the fact that in Europe the date is written day/month/year but in America it is month/day/year, so he was reading it backwards. When I tried to tell him that and that she is, in fact, 21, he talked down to me (e.g. demeaning tone, "miss," "sweetie") saying that it's not his fault, it's the law, telling me to read the sign, and overall not listening to either of us at all. As someone who has worked at bars (and as someone who does have a brain), I know the laws, but he was adamant about not letting us in for some reason.

Overall we were incredibly disappointed with how poorly this man dealt with the situation and would much prefer to spend our money somewhere with, at the absolute least, a polite or...