Firecreek

The red-meat race to build Center City's biggest, most luxurious chophouse has dominated the dining headlines of the last year. But an insatiable devotion to grilled beef is hardly confined to the urban limits.

There are already enough destinations in the suburbs that one can drive an hour in most any direction from City Hall and come upon an independent steak house of some distinction.

Head north and you'll hit the retrofitted church hall of Marsha Brown's Southern grill in New Hope. Head east and there's the contemporary style of the Chophouse in Gibbsboro; and even farther, to the Shore, where casino-fed carnivores make Atlantic City a meat-ropolis of its own. To the northwest, there are the buttery, cast-iron-seared steaks of the old-school Blue Bell Inn. To the west in Chadds Ford, there's the Wyeth country-chic of Brandywine Prime.

And now, if you amble even farther west to Downingtown, there is Firecreek, in a dramatically rehabbed historic paper mill overlooking the East Branch of the Brandywine. It's a project with big potential, the first of two recent suburban steak-house openings (swanky new Parker's Prime in Newtown Square is the other).

The long hall of the space is appealingly renovated, with exposed stone walls, fireplaces, and salvaged mill wheels that hark back to its industrial former life. A stylish bar scene, open kitchen, and riverside terrace, meanwhile, signal its current mission as a hot spot built for crowds. Firecreek is aiming for a more casual and diverse New American grill than the white-linen fine dining of its city cousins. It's a smart move to make it accessible to a wider audience.

And yet, with entrees that range from the low $20s to the low $30s for the steaks, this newcomer needs to hit higher marks, for both food and service, than it did at my meals.

I know it can, since the kitchen is being overseen by Carlo deMarco from successful 333 Belrose, whose wide-ranging influences - a Southwestern flair, some Asian accents - are evident on this simpler menu. But so many things here were either sloppily cooked or poorly tended in the dining room that I wonder whether this project is too big for this crew to handle.