Next of Kin

Frankford Avenue and the Fishtown Bar Tier

Fishtown's transformation from a working-class river ward into one of Philadelphia's most concentrated dining and drinking corridors happened quickly enough that its bar scene still contains genuine range. At the lower end sit the dive bars that predate the neighborhood's reinvention; at the upper end, a cluster of cocktail-serious rooms that treat the drink as a structured product rather than a pour. Next of Kin, at 1414 Frankford Ave, occupies that upper register. The address puts it on the main artery connecting Fishtown's established venues to the newer openings pushing north, which means foot traffic from a crowd that already knows what it wants when it walks through a bar door.

The broader American cocktail bar has spent the last decade sorting itself into legible tiers. Cities like Chicago, New Orleans, and Honolulu have produced venues — Kumiko in Chicago, Jewel of the South in New Orleans, Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu — where the program is built around sourcing discipline, technique specificity, and kitchen-bar integration. Philadelphia's version of that movement is smaller and less documented than New York's or Chicago's, but it exists, and Next of Kin is part of it.

What the Room Signals Before the First Drink Arrives

Approaching 1414 Frankford, the building reads as a neighborhood bar that has been taken seriously rather than renovated into something unrecognizable. That matters in Fishtown, where the tension between the neighborhood's original character and its current restaurant-density can tip either way. Inside, the physical environment communicates priorities: this is a space organized around conversation at the bar and around the drinks that structure that conversation, with food positioned as a genuine accompaniment rather than an afterthought.

Cocktail bars that also do bar snacks well occupy a specific niche in the bar-going hierarchy. The food program isn't a full kitchen buildout, but it's not a bowl of mixed nuts either. The coordination between what's in the glass and what's on the plate , the kind of calibration that works leading when front-of-house, the bar team, and whoever is running the food side are operating in alignment , is the operational challenge that separates a thoughtful bar from a room that just sells drinks. At Next of Kin, the cocktail-and-snack format suggests that integration has been considered.

Within Philadelphia's cocktail bar set, the relevant comparison points are venues like 1501 Passyunk Ave and 12 Steps Down, each of which represents a different approach to what a serious Philadelphia bar can be. For a neighborhood-specific reference, 48 Record Bar and 637 Philly Sushi Club illustrate how Fishtown and its adjacent neighborhoods have developed distinct bar personalities. Next of Kin sits in a different lane from the beer-and-vinyl model or the sushi-bar hybrid , its anchor is the cocktail program, and the snacks extend the visit rather than redefine the category.

The Collaboration That Runs a Bar Like This

The editorial angle that matters most when assessing a cocktail bar operating at this level is not the founding story or the individual bartender's biography , it's how the different functions of the room work together. The bar team sets the technical register of the drinks; front-of-house determines whether that register is communicated to guests or kept behind the curtain; and whoever handles the food side decides whether the snack program is coherent with the cocktail list or merely parallel to it.

Bars that do this well tend to share a characteristic: they feel consistent across different visits and different staff configurations. The drinks don't vary wildly based on who is working; the food doesn't feel like it was sourced from a different establishment's concept. That consistency is a team product, not a solo performance. It's the same dynamic that distinguishes Superbueno in New York City or ABV in San Francisco , both rooms where the program coheres because the people running it are working from the same set of priorities.

Philadelphia's cocktail bar scene has historically operated with less national visibility than its restaurant counterparts, partly because the city's food press has concentrated on its dining rooms and partly because the bars that deserve attention tend not to pursue it aggressively. That dynamic is shifting. Venues operating at the craft cocktail tier , whether on Passyunk Avenue or along Frankford , are developing the kind of repeat-visit culture that sustains a serious bar program. Julep in Houston and The Hôtel Lili lobby bar in Beverly Hills represent the range of contexts in which cocktail-and-food pairings have found traction nationally; Fishtown is a logical geography for that format in Philadelphia.

Placing Next of Kin in the Philadelphia Night

For a full account of where Next of Kin fits within the city's broader drinking and dining map, our full Philadelphia restaurants guide covers the neighborhood-level distinctions that determine which bar suits which kind of evening. Fishtown operates as a high-density corridor where a bar crawl and a dedicated cocktail sit can coexist in the same block, which means the choice of where to anchor your night has genuine stakes.

Next of Kin's positioning on Frankford Avenue places it within walking distance of enough adjacent options that it functions both as a destination and as a natural first or last stop on a longer evening. The cocktail-and-snack format makes it more versatile than a drinks-only room , you can arrive having already eaten, or you can let the bar snacks carry you through. That flexibility is part of what the format offers, and it's part of why the team dynamic that produces a coherent food-and-drink program matters more here than at a bar that only has to manage one side of the equation.

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