Welcome to Historic Spence Cafe

Spence Café, one of West Chester’s premiere restaurants and bars, features an international nouveau cuisine specializing in fresh fish and seafood. Spence’s seasonally rotating menu is accompanied by an extensive selection of fine wine, top shelf liquor, and drink specials after 9pm. This Zagat-rated restaurant showcases some of the area’s top musical acts during bar hours, and offers West Chester’s largest selection of bottled beers. The food and service at Spence Café offer a dining experience to appease even the most critical connoisseurs and entice them to return again and again.

upcoming special events

Swingin’ Summer Thursday First Thursday of every summer month
Great music, fun and food. We will be out front swingin’ and slingin’ our favorites.

Happy Hour

Monday and Tuesday $3 drafts and $4 Drink Well mixed drinks from 5pm-7pm

Oysters Special

Monday through Wednesday, we offer $1 oysters from 5pm-9pm with guest shucker, Phil Cottrell

CHEF TASTINGS

Tuesday through Thursday, Chef Dave Walti will prepare a five course tasting meal prepared with the finest and freshest ingredients for only $75 per person

byob sundays

Every Sunday, we allow you to bring your own with no corkage fees

Half priced bar menu

Monday through Thursday, we offer half priced selected appetizers at the bar from 5pm-7pm

The House that Spence Built

To the public: Having recently refitted and improved the old established “OYSTER AND EATING SALOON” of Spence Bros., East Gay Street.

I am at all times prepared to furnish Oysters cooked in every style or on the half shell. Meals at all housrs of the day. Ladies Saloon on First Floor. Families supplied with Oysters, and delivered at any time of the day.
-Moore Literary Gazette Feb. 28, 1885

A hundred years ago, if you were anyone important in West Chester, native or stranger, and you wanted a good, quick meal, you knew where to go.

A century ago, if you walked down Gay Street you certainly would catch the salty satisfying smell of cooked shellfish. From 1849 to 1910, the Spence family ran a succession of oyster houses and restaurants considered the best in town. The café, which apparently catered to the professional elite of West Chester, flourished until the time of World War I. Specializing in oytsers, fried clams, snapper soup, and an excellent chowder, spiced with horseradish grown in the restaurant’s basement.

The first floor of the building had a dining room on the right-hand side, which was open to ladies. On the left was the saloon bar. The second floor housed two banquet halls and the third and fourth floors Spence’s family.