Zach Russell was in a band that used to play shows at Nietzsche's when he was still coming of age in Allentown. Ten or fifteen years ago, he says, that stretch of Allen Street near the club was the spot. Then it wasn't. Over the last several years, the neighborhood's energy pulled toward the middle of the street, the blocks between Elmwood and Delaware, leaving the far end where Nietzsche's has anchored since 1982 to run quieter than it used to.
Russell spent years testing burger recipes out of a food trailer parked behind Twenty Six on Allen Street before he had a permanent address of his own. This spring he took over the space that last operated as Days Park Tavern and opened F.A.T., short for Food After Ten, with a stated goal: bring back the version of that end of Allen Street he remembers from his own teenage years, not just the stretch between Elmwood and Delaware where most of the newer energy has landed.
That's the story worth telling about Allentown this season. Not a list of openings. A specific correction to a specific imbalance, happening block by block, with named businesses filling in a stretch of Allen Street that had gone quiet.
What actually opened at that end of the street
F.A.T. sits at 253 Allen Street, in the room that most recently ran as Days Park Tavern. The kitchen is open Wednesday through Saturday from 4:30 p.m. to 2 a.m., and Sunday from 4:30 p.m. to midnight, closed Monday and Tuesday. The menu centers on the Skirt Burger, a California-style smash burger with a cheese halo bigger than the bun and house-made pickles, priced at $16. There's also a Mississippi pot roast brisket sandwich with mozzarella for $18, along with off-menu items that started as customer modifications back when the whole operation was a trailer.
"It'd be nice to make it the whole street again."
That's Russell's own framing, and it matters because he's not describing a neighborhood in decline. He's describing one section of a single street that got crowded while another emptied out, and a new business betting that the quieter end can fill back in.
A few doors down at 15 Allen Street, Labyrinth Workshop opened as something Allentown didn't have before: a reservation-only tasting experience, Thursday through Sunday nights, built around a rotating quarterly theme. Owners Bethany Halbreich and Cameron Sinclair, a husband-and-wife team with backgrounds in design, structure each evening around three craft cocktails and three small plates, with the theme changing every season. Past runs have included a David Bowie tribute and a sci-fi Cinema Club pairing films like Interstellar and Arrival with matching drinks. It's a two-hour format that asks guests to put the phone away, which is a different kind of night out than anything else on this end of the street.
And at 26 Allen Street, right where Russell parked his original trailer, Twenty Six has been holding down that block since 2023, when it took over a space that had run continuously as a queer bar for more than three decades before that, most recently as Cathode Ray. Twenty Six rebuilt the concept as an all-inclusive LGBTQIA-friendly bar, open seven days a week, with karaoke, DJs, and drag and watch-party nights on rotation. It's not new anymore, but it's the reason this end of the street never went fully dark, even during the years when the crowds thinned out.
The dinner-hour cluster that's grown up around it
The same stretch has also picked up daytime and early-evening options that give people a reason to be down there before the bars fill in. Bamboo Ridge, at 244 Allen Street, opened in 2025 serving a mix of Burmese, Vietnamese, and Chinese-inspired dishes plus a full sushi bar, with Dragon Noodles and Burmese Fried Rice as the standouts. Its owners have a personal connection to their newest neighbor: they knew chef Dwayne "BigWayne" Jones from their years together at the West Side Bazaar, which is part of why his Jamaican restaurant landed right next door. Jones built a following there with scratch-made Jerk Chicken and Curry Goat before going out on his own, and his menu now includes a slow-cooked oxtail that takes four to five hours to prepare, along with Rasta Pasta, beef patties, and Escovitch red snapper.
A second location of JBC also opened nearby, following an earlier mostly-takeout spot on Delaware Avenue. The broths spend up to eighteen hours in a pressure cooker and the meats go through a 24-hour brine, with a full bar pouring a wide beer and sake selection and a signature Beijing Mule. None of these are late-night bars. They're dinner-hour destinations, which is exactly the kind of foot traffic that used to skip this part of Allen Street entirely.
The nights Nietzsche's never gave up
Through all of this, Nietzsche's kept its own calendar running, the same one it's run for years, and it's worth knowing if you're building a week around this end of the street:
- Tuesdays, 6 to 8:30 p.m., The Steam Donkeys play their regular set of cosmic Americana in the front room
- Tuesdays, 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., the Stripteasers burlesque troupe performs with live band karaoke from Spudz Budz, four dollar cover
- Every second Thursday, a jazz happy hour with Adam Bronstein and ABtrio, no cover, twenty dollar suggested donation
- Saturdays, 4 to 7 p.m., Celtic Sessions brings Irish traditional music and no cover charge
- Sundays, solo piano with Ann Philippone from 6 to 8 p.m., followed by the Jazz Cache from 8:30 p.m. to midnight
None of that is new. What's new is that for the first time in a while, walking down to Nietzsche's on a Tuesday or Saturday means passing a burger bar with a line out the door, a reservation-only cocktail room with a waitlist, and a cluster of restaurants that simply weren't there a year or two ago. The venue that never left has company again.
What this actually changes for someone who lives here
If you've defaulted to the Elmwood-Delaware stretch for a night out over the past few years, that wasn't laziness. It's genuinely where the density was. The correction happening now isn't a reversal of that, it's an expansion. The middle of the street didn't get quieter. The far end got louder, on purpose, led by someone who remembers what it used to sound like and businesses willing to bet on the same stretch.
That's a small thing on paper. A burger bar, a cocktail room, and a cluster of restaurants filling in around a bar address with more than three decades of queer nightlife history and a music venue that's booked live shows since 1982. But it's the kind of shift that only shows up if you're paying attention block by block, and it's exactly the sort of texture that makes Allentown worth living in rather than just visiting for one festival weekend a year.
If a night at F.A.T. or a Saturday afternoon at Nietzsche's ever turns into a bigger conversation about a house on this side of the neighborhood, Susan Lenahan has spent decades tracking exactly this kind of block-by-block change in Allentown and the surrounding city neighborhoods. Reach out for a free home valuation and neighborhood strategy whenever that conversation starts.
