If you walked past 34 East Butler Avenue this spring and did a double take, you weren't imagining things. Gypsy Blu, the restaurant that had held that corner since 2015, is gone. In its place: Porter on the ground floor and Gaslight tucked upstairs behind what regulars describe as a secret door. That's not a menu refresh. It's a full building changing hands, and it landed in the middle of a stretch of Butler Avenue that's been quietly filling in around it for the better part of a year. The coming weeks bring Ambler's fall event season to Butler Avenue.
What Actually Changed at 34 East Butler
The building itself predates almost everything else on the block. It went up in 1893 as the Wyndham Hotel. Around Ambler reported that the property had belonged to Michael Golden for eleven years; he opened Gypsy Blu there in 2015 as part of the Conshy Girls restaurant group and sold the restaurant itself to Bob Ross in 2020 while keeping the property. When Golden finally sold the building this past February, Around Ambler quoted him calling it "a wonderful result to a 11 year passion project."
The buyer is Barry Caplan, an Upper Dublin High School graduate and hospitality veteran who also picked up the neighboring El Limon building at 38 East Butler in the same deal. El Limon kept operating under its existing ownership. The Wyndham space became two concepts. Porter took the ground floor with an elevated American menu built around dishes like duck breast and linguine vongole, styled with vintage luggage and brass to match its name, a nod to the staff who once carried hotel guests' bags. Gaslight took the second floor as a dimly lit cocktail lounge with a speakeasy feel. Caplan brought in CFO Benjamin Hur and executive chef Brian Thress to run both, and told local reporters the two would operate independently of his other hospitality holdings. That detail matters more than it sounds. This isn't a corporate outpost testing the market. It's a dedicated, single-location bet on Ambler specifically, and it opened in early April.
In the months since opening, the word out of the dining room has matched what you'd expect from a two-concept launch inside a 133-year-old building. Diners have praised the mushroom fricassee and the squid ink pasta, and more than one review has singled out Gaslight's atmosphere as an immediate draw. Early visitors also flagged slower service and a still-green staff working out timing kinks, the ordinary adjustments of an opening month. If you're planning a dinner there, expect to spend somewhere around $50 to $60 a person before tax and tip, and know that Gaslight is open Wednesday through Saturday until midnight if a late cocktail is the goal rather than a full meal.
The Rest of the Block Filled In Behind It
Porter and Gaslight didn't open into a quiet corner. Within a few blocks, Butler Avenue and North Main Street picked up several other new anchors over roughly the same stretch of months. Ridge Hall, the multi-vendor food hall just off Butler, has been running with its full vendor roster since spring. Stone & Key Cellars opened a tasting room at 57 East Butler pouring local wine and cider, and it plans to serve hot mulled cider curbside during the first weekend of October. Around the corner at 9 North Main Street, chef Dionicio Jiménez, previously known for Cantina La Martina, opened La Baja, a restaurant built around his own history that earned a Best of Philly nod from Philadelphia Magazine.
Put those together and you get something Ambler hasn't quite had before: five distinct, fairly new concepts clustered inside a walkable few blocks, each with a different reason to visit and a different hour it's best for. That's the actual story here. Rather than focusing on one reopening, the corridor now offers a wider mix of places to eat and drink, with events through fall giving visitors new reasons to explore it.
October's Events Bring Ambler's Fall Calendar Together
Ambler's outdoor calendar is especially active in fall, with regular events continuing alongside the borough's larger gatherings.
Ambler Main Street's Saturday Farmer's Market and First Fridays both run May through October, which means the season has about two months left from here, not six. Temple University's Ambler Campus opens registration for its annual Campout on September 26 and 27, an early marker that the semester and the season are both underway. Then the first weekend of October stacks three separate events on top of each other:
- Ambler Oktoberfest runs Friday, October 2, through Saturday, October 3, with vendors, food trucks, and a beer garden filling Butler Avenue.
- The Ambler Arboretum's Ambler in Bloom garden party runs that same Saturday, October 3, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Temple's campus, meaning it overlaps with Oktoberfest's daytime hours rather than sitting on a separate day.
- Scoogie's Oktoberfest 5K, 5 Miler, 2-Mile Jog and Kids Root Beer Run follows the next morning, Sunday, October 4, with a post-race party at Well Crafted Beer Company where your race bib doubles as a drink ticket.
That overlap on Saturday is worth planning around rather than just noticing. If you want both the Arboretum's garden party and downtown's Oktoberfest, the realistic move is Temple's campus in the late morning through early afternoon, then Butler Avenue for the evening portion once the festival crowd is in full swing. It also happens to line up neatly with a dinner reservation.
Fall brings Oktoberfest to Butler Avenue alongside other events in Ambler. The festival closes the street to make room for the crowd, while the wider fall calendar offers a chance to explore the corridor's newer and established businesses.
If you've been meaning to try Porter, Gaslight, La Baja, or the tasting room at Stone & Key, October's events offer a timely opportunity to visit, with plenty to explore along Butler Avenue and North Main Street.
If you're thinking about what a neighborhood like this means for your own next move, whether that's buying, selling, or just understanding what your home is worth in a market this active, Hernan Alvarado is glad to talk it through with you. Let's Connect.
