Wiz Kid, From the Owners of Vedge and V Street, Has an Opening Date

Wiz Kid, from the Vedge and V Street team, is shooting for a June 1 opening. The vegan cheesesteak spot will be geared towards the daytime crowd, with a focus on takeout, plus 18 seats. It will also serve alcohol, in case you don’t have to rush back to work.

Owners Rich Landau and Kate Jacoby have been getting more and more casual since opening Vedge, their upscale, nationally lauded vegan restaurant at 12th and Locust. Next came V Street, with its spicy street food menu and relaxed (for Rittenhouse) bar, and then a Wiz Kid outpost inside the new Fairmount Whole Foods. And now Wiz Kid gets its own storefront, right next to V Street at 124 S. 19th Street, in what was previously an eyeglass shop. The V Street kitchen, which will service both restaurants, has been moved to the new property.

Next week, on May 9-12, V Street will be previewing Wiz Kid’s menu during lunch, “to introduce folks to what will be their new lunch stop on 19th Street,” says Landau. (There will also be “a few V Street classics sprinkled in,” he says.) At the end of the week, V Street ends lunch service for good, but, starting May 15, adds Monday dinner hours. Friday brunch is also being added — “amping up our already-jumping weekend brunch,” Landau says.

Official

Wiz Kid’s menu is very tight, with just a few sandwiches, including the signature Wiz Kid Philly — a take on the cheesesteak with mushrooms, seitan, fried onions, pickled peppers, and rutabaga wiz, on a potato roll — along with salads and fries.

To drink, Landau says, Wiz Kid is doing a couple of draft beers and one or two wines, plus a black lemonade and a mint julep iced tea, which can be made alcoholic. A glass shelf behind the counter will hold mason jars, each with a shot-and-a-half of vodka, gin, rum, tequila, bourbon, or rye whiskey: Add the lemonade or iced tea to a jar and — voila! — you have a cocktail.

Landau and Jacoby are also opening a second V Street later this year, in Washington D.C.

Rachel Vigoda

• Wiz Kid [Official]