Walk down Easton Road on a Saturday morning and you'll pass the SEPTA train lot before the shops fully wake up, folding tables already going up for the farmers market, Farmer Bob's truck backing into its usual spot, someone from Lone Wolf Farm Market unloading crates of whatever's ripe this week. Keep walking toward Keswick Avenue and you'll pass three storefronts that, a few years ago, held three different names. That stretch is where this whole story lives, and it's worth understanding as one thing instead of three, because that's what it actually is.
Glenside didn't get three new restaurants this year so much as it got three handoffs. Keswick Tavern closed after years in business, capped with what its owners called an "End of Era" bash, and the space at 294 N. Keswick Ave became Rooster's Glenside. Apollo's Pizza, a longtime neighborhood standby at 112 S. Easton Road, became Vincenzo's Pizza & Steaks earlier this month. And Bernie's Restaurant & Bar, at 391 Highland Avenue, became Highland Restaurant and Bar. None of these are empty-storefront stories. Each one is a name change on a business that Glenside already knew, run by people who've already run something else nearby.
The pattern in who's behind the counter
| Old name | New name | Address | Who's running it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keswick Tavern | Rooster's Glenside | 294 N. Keswick Ave. | Justin Weathers, Joe Monnich, Glenside native Matt Moyer (Stove and Tap, Al Pastor, Joey Chops, GBU), and Chris Magarity (Jasper's Backyard) |
| Apollo's Pizza | Vincenzo's Pizza & Steaks | 112 S. Easton Road | Steve Schmucker and Alex Filipe, whose father previously owned Apollo's |
| Bernie's Restaurant & Bar | Highland Restaurant and Bar | 391 Highland Ave. | Dan and Chelsea Katz, owners of West Ave Grille and Pizza Wheel in Jenkintown |
None of these are strangers testing a first concept on Glenside's dime. They're operators who already built something a few miles away and are now betting a second or third location on this specific three-block stretch. Vincenzo's kept the pizza-and-cheesesteak core of Apollo's but built the menu around fresh daily dough and a stated goal of cutting frozen ingredients where they can, and the name itself is a small piece of continuity: Filipe named the shop for his grandmother Vincenzina and great-grandfather Vincenzo rather than starting from a blank slate. Rooster's leaned the opposite direction, building out a 3,000-square-foot space with 40 bar seats, 90 dining seats, and 44 more outside, plus a 200-inch television for game days, a much bigger footprint than the tavern it replaced.
"Get ready, Glenside! Rooster's Glenside, a new American restaurant, is coming to town."
That's the kind of statement you only make when you're confident the neighborhood is still worth showing up for, not just filling a vacancy.
The trail finished the same year the doors opened
While the restaurant handoffs were happening, Cheltenham Township quietly finished a piece of infrastructure that changes how you'd actually get to any of them on foot. On April 18, 2026, the township held a ribbon cutting for a new .44-mile stretch of the Tookany Creek Trail between Harrison Avenue and New Second Street, paired with a new signalized crossing at New Second Street and Tookany Creek Parkway. The event included a community fair at Gimbel Field, in the Elkins Park section of the township, and an invitation to walk the new stretch with ice cream, which tells you something about the scale of the celebration even if the mileage sounds modest.
What makes this segment different from a routine parks upgrade is how it was paid for. The project drew on three separate funding sources at once: $400,000 from the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, $700,000 from the Federal Transportation Alternatives Program, and $150,000 from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Lining up three funding streams for less than half a mile of paved trail is not a small coordination task, and it signals that this piece of the Tookany Creek Trail was treated as a priority connection rather than a nice-to-have. The new signal also links this segment safely into the existing trail along Tookany Creek Parkway to Central Avenue, meaning it extends a walking and biking network that already reaches toward Glenside rather than sitting as an isolated loop somewhere else in the township.
Saturday still starts at the train lot
The farmers market hasn't changed at all, and that's part of what makes it worth mentioning here. It still sets up every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, April through November, in the parking lot beside the Glenside train station at Easton Road and Glenside Avenue. This spring's vendor lineup included Canned Fresh by Lois, Heck of a Cookie, The Table Loaf, Spring Honey Bees, Domalvia, Lone Wolf Farm Market, Herr Castle Farms, and Musser Family Farming, set up to the left of the SEPTA parking lot entrance, the same arrangement organizers have kept for years. A market that hasn't needed to reinvent itself while three restaurants down the street were changing hands twice is doing something right, and it gives the whole stretch a fixed point that the newer businesses can build a Saturday around instead of competing against.
Putting the loop together
None of this required a master plan. A farmers market that's been stable for years, a trail segment that finished construction in April, and three restaurants that changed ownership within roughly the same window just happen to sit within walking distance of each other. But once they're all running at the same time, a Glenside Saturday looks different than it did two years ago:
- Morning at the farmers market on Glenside Avenue, picking up produce from Lone Wolf or a loaf from The Table Loaf.
- A walk on the Tookany Creek Trail's new stretch near Gimbel Field, or the existing path along the parkway to Central Avenue if you're closer to home.
- Dinner at Vincenzo's if you want pizza and wings, Highland if you're in the mood for a modern American menu with a fire pit, or Rooster's if you want a raw bar and 14 drafts on tap while the Eagles game plays on a screen the size of a garage door.
- A show at the Keswick Theatre to close out the night. August's calendar already brought Amy Grant, Buddy Guy, and the Neal Morse Band earlier in the month, and it still has a Yellow Brick Joel tribute on August 21, Mat Kearney on August 22, and the Neil Diamond Experience starring Robert Neary on August 27 to come.
That's not a coincidence of timing so much as a sign that this particular three or four blocks around the train station function as Glenside's actual center of gravity right now, more than any single street or landmark on its own. The businesses that opened, the trail that connected, and the market that stayed exactly the same are all reinforcing the same small footprint.
If you already live in Glenside, none of this needs an explanation. You've probably already had a slice at Vincenzo's or caught a first look at Rooster's bar. But if you're the kind of resident who tends to notice these things only after they've settled in, it's worth an actual Saturday spent walking that loop end to end. It's a short one, and it's gotten better in ways that add up.
If you're weighing a move within Glenside or thinking about what a stretch like this does for a home's everyday livability, the Art Herling Team In Blue Bell works this market block by block and can talk through what a specific address actually gets you here. Let's Connect — Start Your Move.
