Recharging in the park

Ricki Gever Eisenstein lived on Northwestern Avenue, just steps from a dilapidated Fairmount Park house for six years, knowing nothing of its history, until one day, at a relative's birthday party, she met Lucy Strackhouse.

Strackhouse runs the Fairmount Park Historic Preservation Trust, which owns the building known as Cedars House. She told Eisenstein that the house was available for rent as a business.

Eisenstein embraced the challenge of renovating the simple frame and stucco house in the charming woodsy setting, deciding to run it as a fitness cafe.

A certified personal trainer whose doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania focused on the urban university and community relations, Eisenstein thought it made sense to offer fresh, healthy fare, along with yoga and Pilates classes and even Swedish massage in this building passed by so many runners, bikers, and hikers in the park.

Located on Northwestern Avenue at the entrance to the park in Chestnut Hill, the Cedars is one of the newest Fairmount Park Trust properties to be repurposed as an eatery.

It joins the new Trolley Car Cafe at the Bathey, just off Kelly Drive at the ramp to Roosevelt Boulevard in East Falls, which also opened in June, the Centennial Cafe in the park's Ohio House, and the Valley Green Inn on Forbidden Drive.

At Cedars, the kitchen serves breakfast, lunch, and snacks from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. And the offerings are much more enticing than a typical concession.

Chef Jenny Sweeney, lately of Cake restaurant in Chestnut Hill, makes the daily chilled soups for the summer menu, along with flaky-crusted quiches, rich chocolatey brownies, and fresh-from-the oven cookies, and she stocks Cedars' pantry with fresh ingredients for salads and sandwiches made on the spot.

Smoothies here start with Pequea Valley Farms yogurt from Lancaster County and can be bolstered with protein.

With the fervently fit in mind, the cafe stocks regular and gluten-free energy bars.The late-19th-century building first housed the Andorra Nursery. By the time Eisenstein toured the inside of Cedars, there were holes in the floorboards.

"It was pretty gross," she says.

But today, Eisenstein dreams of a year-round operation at Cedars, with hikers gathered outdoors around a fire pit in the fall, sipping hot cider or cocoa.

In the nearer future, Cedars will host marathon training for running moms, with or without jogging strollers.