Steaks rarer at Table 31

It has been less than two weeks since Chris Scarduzio quit the city's steak-house rat race, pulling his Table 31 - once and for all - out of the searingly overheated competition.

It was the first entrant, last spring, in the new wave (tsunami?) of Center City steak houses. Now the words "steak house/bistro," are being explicitly chiseled off the latest menus.

Henceforth it is Table 31, period. But with a decided Italian accent. (We shall hear from Scarduzio in a moment as to why "Italian" is considered a less crowded field than "steak.")

The changes at the tailored, tri-level Comcast Center restaurant won't be subtle. The walls are getting a redder, sexier cast; the drapes are darkening. A hideaway bar is being installed upstairs, the better to accommodate regulars who were bereft when Scarduzio and partner Georges Perrier abruptly shuttered (French-accented) Brasserie Perrier on New Year's Eve.

On a menu once dominated by steaks, on which prices had already been trimmed, you could find last week an entire section devoted to pastas, all but one of them (including the house-made cavatelli with pancetta and tomato butter) $13 or less. And classic Italian veal and chicken dishes - veal fricassee, veal valdostano, diavola grilled chicken - outnumbered the shrinking inventory of prime steaks.

A town can stomach only so much red meat. And as Butcher & Singer, mammoth Del Frisco's, and recently the soaring Union Trust followed on Table 31's heels, putting 1,500 new steak-house seats in play and tons more beef on the street, it was only a matter of time (especially with the economy cratering) before someone blinked.

Or came to his senses.

Last week, Scarduzio sounded like a man happy to have the monkey (the steer?) off his back: "My customers were saying, 'Chris, why are you just putting steak on the plate?' " he said. " 'You've got so much more to offer.' People were saying I wasn't challenging myself."

The main-course correction couldn't have come too soon for Joe Wolf, the former restaurateur (he cofounded Striped Bass with Neil Stein) who oversees operations for the restaurants headed by Le Bec-Fin legend Perrier and Scarduzio.

"I've been telling him for three months not to compete with the steak houses," Wolf said. "We're going to revive the old Jimmy's Milan [the fabled haunt on 19th Street]; he had a great steak, but he never advertised it as a steak place. We're going to stand alone."