Radnor's Trail Hasn't Changed in Years. This Fall, Everything Around It Did.

"First, they wanted to know when we would reopen and then, 'Will the nachos return?'"

That's chef Ross Essner, quoted in The Inquirer, describing the questions he fielded at the door of 333 Belrose for the better part of a year, while the St. Davids landmark sat dark behind construction paper. The restaurant had promised six or seven months. It delivered twelve. When it finally reopened in late June, the nachos were still on the menu, the strawberry basil smash was on the cocktail list, and regulars who'd been checking the restaurant's social media for updates finally got their answer.

Belrose's long way back is one story. It is not the only one. A few miles down the same stretch of Radnor Township, a hotel restaurant with a much shorter runway spent this year becoming something the neighborhood hadn't seen before. Between the two, and a third newcomer that gave Radnor its first Greek restaurant, this has been the biggest reshuffle of the township's dining scene in years. The one thing that hasn't moved an inch through any of it is the Radnor Trail, the 2.4-mile stretch of old rail corridor that residents have been walking, biking, and pushing strollers along since long before any of these restaurants reopened. This fall, that stability is exactly what makes the change around it easy to see.

Twelve Months for Two Questions

333 Belrose opened in 1999 inside a former colonial stable off King of Prussia Road, and it had been a fixture long enough that closing it for renovation in June 2025 counted as local news. The plan, as described at the time, was a refresh: new dining and bar areas, a reworked kitchen, updated restrooms, and a reimagined outdoor space, with the name, the team, and the chef staying put. What actually happened took roughly twice as long as advertised. A January reopening target came and went. The restaurant held an invite-only preview event, trained new staff, and didn't reopen its doors for walk-ins and reservations until late June 2026.

The finished space, redesigned by Barbara Gisel Design, rearranged the dining rooms and enlarged the bar, opening the terrace up in ways the old layout hadn't allowed. Capano Management, which bought the property in 2022, has framed the year-long renovation as a long-term bet rather than a quick turnaround, with Essner putting the timeline at two decades rather than two seasons. For a restaurant that's been serving the same corner of St. Davids since the last century, that's a specific kind of confidence: the renovation wasn't designed to make back its cost this year. It was designed to still make sense in 2046.

A New Name in an Old Hotel

While Belrose's clock was running, The Radnor Hotel was quietly working through its own transition. In January 2026, the hotel announced a partnership with Fearless Restaurants, the group behind Autograph Brasserie, White Dog Café, and Rosalie at the Wayne Hotel, to take over its food and beverage operations entirely. The result is Triple Crown Restaurant, Events and Garden, an equestrian-themed concept that began adding dinner service on July 24, roughly a month after Belrose's own reopening.

The design, by Barbara Balongue of Balongue Design, leans hard into the Ralph Lauren end of horse country: mahogany paneling, walnut flooring, emerald velvet, vintage riding boots and polo mallets worked into the decor as more than decoration. Executive Chef Robert Reissner, who grew up in Williamsport and started cooking at 14, runs a kitchen built around aged steaks, seasonal seafood, and a raw bar, in rooms that can close off for private dinners of ten to fifty guests. It's worth pausing on the timing here. Two of the most-watched restaurant reveals in Radnor Township this year landed within four weeks of each other, each the product of a different design firm run by a different Barbara, each solving a completely different problem: one bringing a beloved name back from a year of silence, the other replacing the hotel's previous restaurant with one built to be a destination.

A third arrival rounds out the shift with less fanfare but real significance. Estia Taverna became the first Greek restaurant in Radnor, built around whole grilled fish flown in from the Greek islands and the shores of Morocco, Tunisia, and Portugal. The space itself, with hand-chiseled Jerusalem limestone floors and antiqued stucco walls meant to evoke a traditional Greek home, gave the township a cuisine option that simply hadn't existed here before. Taken together, Belrose's return, Triple Crown's arrival, and Estia's debut mean that three of Radnor's most-discussed dining rooms turned over inside a single calendar year, an unusually compressed stretch for a township that tends to hold onto its restaurants for decades.

The One Constant

None of this touched the Radnor Trail. The 2.4-mile path running from Radnor-Chester Road to Sugartown Road was built on the old Philadelphia & Western Railway right-of-way, the same corridor that once carried electric trolleys toward the 69th Street terminal. It's the kind of infrastructure that doesn't get a renovation announcement. It's just there, open year-round, leashed dogs welcome, macadam and crushed stone underfoot, the same route it's been for as long as most current residents have lived nearby.

Halfway down the trail toward Sugartown Road sits the Wayne Art Center, with a small butterfly garden maintained by the Community Garden Club of Wayne and a rotating display of children's art along its fence. It's a modest landmark by design, the kind of stop that rewards people who are already out walking rather than people seeking it out as a destination. That's precisely why it matters here. The trail and the art center represent the version of Radnor that hasn't needed reinvention, running in parallel to a restaurant scene that just went through the biggest reshuffle it's seen in years.

The Week Both Stories Overlap

For one narrow stretch this fall, the trail's fixed calendar and the neighborhood's reshuffled dining scene actually line up. Wayne Art Center's first set of fall 2026 exhibitions, featuring work from nearly 80 artists, runs through October 3. The very next day, Sunday, October 4, Radnor Township hosts its Fall Harvest & Great Pumpkin Patch, with a Pumpkin Path Adventure routed along the Radnor Trail itself.

That back-to-back scheduling gives current residents a specific, short window worth knowing about:

• Now through October 3: Wayne Art Center's fall exhibition season, reachable directly from the trail near its Sugartown Road end.
• Sunday, October 4: the township's Fall Harvest & Great Pumpkin Patch and Pumpkin Path Adventure, staged along the same trail corridor.
• Any evening in between: three restaurant options that didn't exist in this form eighteen months ago, from Belrose's reworked dining rooms to Triple Crown's equestrian dining room to Estia's Greek menu.

None of these are new landmarks. They're the same trail, the same art center, and a stretch of Lancaster Avenue-adjacent restaurants that have simply been rebuilt, replaced, or introduced within the same twelve months. The Radnor Trail didn't need to change to matter this fall. It just needed everything around it to catch up.

If this is the kind of local detail that makes you curious about what's happening with home values along this stretch of Radnor Township, Main Line Fine Homes knows this corridor block by block and is happy to talk through what your own property looks like in this market.