Sonny's Cocktail Joint on South Street reopened Thursday for the first time since a fire forced its closure nearly three years ago.
This time, owners Chris Fetfatzes and Heather Annechiarico – the married couple behind Grace and Proper in Bella Vista and the former Hawthornes Cafe in Hawthorne – have aded pizza to the bar's menu. And they're hosting a watch party Sunday for the Eagles' playoff game.
MORE: Atlantic City Aquarium, which has been closed since 2020, will reopen March 24
Sonny's, named after Fetfatzes' mother, opened in 2021, but it closed in April 2022 due to an apartment fire upstairs in the building. The fire and water damage also forced the couple to shut down Wine Dive and forgo the opening of their underground cocktail bar Rabbit. The three bars were neighbors at 15th and South streets.
Since the closures, Fetfatzes said the couple has had an ongoing with case with an insurance company about the fire. As they've waited for that to resolve, the couple scraped together the finances needed to rebuild Sonny's, even sourcing some materials from Facebook Marketplace.
"We had to beg, borrow and steal and live a very difficult life building this place up and building this place back and we're here, and with hard work, the other restaurants and just chipping away at it," Fetfatzes said.
The couple also plans to reopen Wine Dive at some point – possibly at multiple locations – but a timeline has not been determined. Rabbit never reopened.
Sonny's underwent renovations, but the 2,500 square-foot-place at 1508 South St. looks mostly as it did in 2021 – except there's now a pool table. The restaurant sits 60 people at its bar, lounge and dining room, and it has a backyard patio that holds another 20 people. The bar can be rented out for private events of up to 100 people, and Fetfatzes also plans to bring back a live music program.
Steven Seibel, the former executive chef at Hawthornes Cafe, is leading the kitchen. Diners can expect buffalo blue cheese shrimp, truffle butter popcorn and smash burgers. Pizza toppings include seasonal greens and long hots and sausage. The bar menu has 13 draft cocktails, including six sub-zero freezer mixes and nitro infusions, plus eight draft beers and four wines.
"We just enjoy the comfort of a neighborhood watering hole, a dive bar, but just something that's familiar," Fetfatzes said. "But we wanted to have somewhere to cheer on the Birds, crush a pizza and have the best nuclear daiquiri they've ever had."
The opening comes on the heels of the couple's decision to close Hawthornes, their nearby brunch cafe at 738 S. 11th St. Closing Hawthornes in December was a strategic choice, Fetfatzes said, because the restaurant needed a bigger kitchen. They're currently on the hunt for another space, although he said he couldn't share a timeline for its reopening.
Sonny's Cocktail Joint is open 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Wednesdays through Sundays, with the kitchen closing at midnight. For now, Sonny's is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but Fetfatzes said the couple plans to add hours on those days in the spring.