Last night, Old City’s Sassafras celebrated its five year anniversary under the current ownership of Donal McCoy and Neil Laughlin. The time-honored institution, which also houses the Tin Angel on its second floor, is actually much older, and has been sailing under the Sassafras flag for more than 40 years. Kenn Kweder, a fixture on Philly’s music scene for almost as many years, entertained the revelers who came out to toast the occasion. And then Tom Jones — yeah that Tom Jones — showed up. A rep for the restaurant told Grub this morning that the “Sex Bomb” singer was casually strolling through the neighborhood, thought the bar and restaurant looked nice, and decided to stop in for a drink.
Early reports had him performing a cover of the Rolling Stones’ classic “Honkey Tonk Women” with Kweder, which isn’t so far fetched. But when we caught up with the “Mayor of South Street” this afternoon, he told us it wasn’t true.
“I was there performing earlier, and he showed up later,” Kweder told Grub. “While it would’ve been great, there was no jam session or anything. I just threw that out there on the social media this morning as a joke.”
The Sassafras rep added that it was a totally low-key affair. No undies were thrown, and Jones enjoyed a couple glasses of Prosecco before calling it a night.
