R2L at Two Liberty, higher than we've ever been

Much is made of the military utility of high ground. Less so - in these parts, at least - of the giddy tonic of dining in the clouds.

Or scoring a crow's-nest lounge seat on the occasion of the setting sun, the sky going tangerine, then dusky pink.

Perhaps it's because in Philadelphia, where a gentlemen's agreement long capped building heights below the brim of Billy Penn's hat atop City Hall, there's little experience with the concept, and no general reserve of civic memory.

This is a river town, more accustomed to its boots on the ground, genetically a world away from Gotham, its commercial heart soaring, hungry to claw at the sky.

So when first-timers step into chef Daniel Stern's new cocktail-themed R2L on the 37th floor of Two Liberty Place - the loftiest public eatery in town - it's Manhattan's imagery they reach for. "This is our Rainbow Room," they tell him: "Our Windows on the World."

It is a singular, if rather corporate, venue in this late-to-vertical city, its views stretching for miles to the west and south. (Except for the tower of City Hall itself visible below from a corner of one of its private-function rooms, the best views are afforded Two Liberty's resident condo owners whose fitness club, infinity pool, and pet spa occupy the other half of the floor, and face north and east toward the inky Delaware.)

Still, at twilight and after dark, with a house-special perfect Manhattan (Must everything pay homage to the Big Apple?) and a deconstructed venison cheesesteak (Not everything!), you can see forever and not be seen: Watch the petty pace of the headlights below, inching corpuscularly; red taillights, their other selves, retreating.

You are up in the air, coming in for a landing, yet never touching down, a different calculus of possibility spread across mundane rows of workaday brick.

There is nothing of the coziness of the street-level bistro here. Nor does the robotically named R2L (Stern says he'll share the story of it over a drink some day) have the classic styling and denser urban setting of Restaurant XIX, the domed dining room on the 19th floor of the Hyatt at the Bellevue.

There can be a happy-hour vibe, though, a social scene made more fluid by wraparound lounge seating, the open-plan dining room, and the ready supply of young lawyers, brokers, and bankers an elevator ride away.