Restaurant Row

If you happen to live or work in a dining wasteland, as I once did, it helps to pray to the food gods for an accidental restaurant row to appear. One day, you're eating drippy burritos and chicken Caesar salads from a lunch truck. Then - poof! - the next day you're slurping uni-topped oysters alongside sizzling stone bowls of bibimbap in a room of spa-like tranquillity. The recent arrival of Doma - and its tasty neighbors on the suddenly bustling dining strip of Callowhill Street - proves that such miraculous things can happen in an unlikely place.

Margate City, the tony community just a poker chip's throw from Atlantic City, has been keeping revelers "at bay" for decades. But these days, the scene along the Amherst Avenue strip is a far cry from the wild and woolly times baby boomers fondly remember. The strip where a youth-oriented bar scene once roared is today an acclaimed restaurant district catering to adults with sophisticated palates and the means to satisfy them. "At one time [the neighborhood bordering Beach Thoroughfare - aka "The Bay"]

Now the spotlight is on Tony Clark. "Everybody's looking at me, to see if I'll be successful," Clark said. "I want to see if I'm right. " If he is right, Tony Clark's, his slick new bistro and dining room at Broad and Sansom Streets, will lead the emergence of a new restaurant row, expanding the trendy eating frenzy on Walnut Street. If Clark is wrong, and his restaurant fails, he'll be in a wicked jam. And so will the Avenue of the Arts, the city's $300 million cultural development project on Broad Street.

If you are craving predictability on the restaurant row (Eastern Division) that is the 700 block of Chestnut Street, you might want to walk right on past Chifa, the newest Jose Garces contender: The prime steaks are next door at the vaulted-ceilinged Union Trust; the comfort food is at Jones across the street, where "Thanksgiving Dinner," should you have missed it (or have an off-season hankering for it), is on the menu every night. At the Peruvian-Chinese hybrid called Chifa you will find, instead, bowls of chaufa rice, a stir-fry dotted with chorizo and topped with sweetly tender soy-glazed scallops, and diminutive ceviches far more complex (and the flavors far more balanced)

Restaurants want to be where the action is, and 18th Street from Market Street to Rittenhouse Square is one of the busiest restaurant corridors in Center City. Like the proverbial birds of a feather, a growing clutch of eateries, approaching two dozen, is catering to the lunch crowd. In the last week, a soup/salad/sandwich place called Brodo took a spot in the United Plaza building, just south of Market. Across the street, a Japanese soup restaurant called Nom Nom Ramen opened in March, and the vegan takeout HipCityVeg opened two weeks ago just north of the square, next to what may become a Crumbs Bake Shop . The week-old Rittenhouse Tavern , in the Art Alliance at the southeastern corner of the square, expects to join the lunch fray.

Georges Perrier said Friday that he planned to close Le Bec-Fin, his world-renowned French restaurant, by spring as he starts a new chapter in his culinary career. His decision, following the closings of Susanna Foo last year and Brasserie Perrier in 2008, removes the last of the star players on what was once the city's premier Restaurant Row, which Perrier himself created when he moved into 1523 Walnut St. in 1983. The restaurant will remain open until spring; a specific closing date has not been set. "I have owned this for 40 years," Perrier, 66, said.

Legendary Chinese restaurateur Susanna Foo knows how to deliver a dish with a powerful punch. Yesterday, Parking Authority officer Juanita Lewis, 38, got some of it takeout. Foo, 63, saw Officer Lewis ticketing a delivery truck in a "No Parking Anytime" zone on Sydenham Street near Walnut outside the exclusive Center City restaurant that bears her name, said a police source. Foo started yelling at the parking officer and then allegedly shoved her, then struck the officer about the head and stomach numerous times, police said.

Cars slow, looking for parking spaces. Couples stroll arm in arm, stopping to look at menus posted outside restaurant doors. The sounds of live jazz fill the air. It's a typical Saturday night in Manayunk, right? Wrong. Try Fairmount. That's right. Fairmount, the slowly gentrifying neighborhood near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is becoming something of a restaurant mecca. Okay, so Walnut Street doesn't have to worry about losing its Restaurant Row status just yet. And Fairmount doesn't come close to packing them in like Old City and South Street, let alone Manayunk.

Prolific restaurateur Stephen Starr has submitted a $1.3 million offer to buy Striped Bass, the nationally known Center City seafood restaurant that has operated in bankruptcy for eight months. Starr's bid, filed Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, has the support of Striped Bass' management, said Aris J. Karalis, the attorney who represents the business. The 15th and Walnut Streets location, formerly owned by rival restaurant developer Neil Stein, would become Starr's 10th location in Philadelphia.

Restaurants want to be where the action is, and 18th Street from Market Street to Rittenhouse Square is one of the busiest restaurant corridors in Center City. Like the proverbial birds of a feather, a growing clutch of eateries, approaching two dozen, is catering to the lunch crowd. In the last week, a soup/salad/sandwich place called Brodo took a spot in the United Plaza building, just south of Market. Across the street, a Japanese soup restaurant called Nom Nom Ramen opened in March, and the vegan takeout HipCityVeg opened two weeks ago just north of the square, next to what may become a Crumbs Bake Shop . The week-old Rittenhouse Tavern , in the Art Alliance at the southeastern corner of the square, expects to join the lunch fray.

"Salvatore De Cristofaro" should translate to "well-traveled," as a peek at the chef-restaurateur's resume discloses. In his 35-plus years in the United States, he's been affiliated with such restaurants as Pinocchio, Kristopher, San Remo, Ristorante De Cristofaro, Avanti, Arrivaderci, and Sandro, and held high-ranking chef's posts with the Sands and Trump Taj Mahal casinos in Atlantic City. At this stage of his career, rather than slow down, he has launched a business importing food products from his native Apulia, Italy, and, with Christina and Robert Pirello of the TV show Christina Cooks , is about to start production of his own public-broadcasting show, to be shot in Italy.

If northern Indiana winters hadn't been so brutal, Susanna Foo and her husband might never have opened the Center City restaurant that made her famous. But while she eventually was named "truly one of this country's best chefs" by Gourmet magazine, E-Hsin Foo was the one, she said, who kept the Susanna Foo restaurant running for much of its 22 years, until a rare ailment afflicted him. E-Hsin Foo, 68, died Tuesday, Aug. 3, at Bryn Mawr Hospital after a fall at their Radnor home.

Georges Perrier is going to say "Au revoir!" to Le Bec-Fin, his landmark Center City French restaurant, some time next year. Unless, of course, he changes his mind. Which he might. Unless he doesn't. "I'm a little tired of doing the same thing. I think we will probably close in the spring," Perrier said last night. Moments later, he added: "I don't know. You never know. You can always change your mind. " What is known for sure is that Perrier put both the restaurant business and its building, at 1523 Walnut St., up for sale earlier this week.

Georges Perrier said Friday that he planned to close Le Bec-Fin, his world-renowned French restaurant, by spring as he starts a new chapter in his culinary career. His decision, following the closings of Susanna Foo last year and Brasserie Perrier in 2008, removes the last of the star players on what was once the city's premier Restaurant Row, which Perrier himself created when he moved into 1523 Walnut St. in 1983. The restaurant will remain open until spring; a specific closing date has not been set. "I have owned this for 40 years," Perrier, 66, said.

BACK IN the day, when Paul Hogan took a break for lunch from his job managing Robin's Bookstore, on 13th Street near Sansom, there weren't many options. "The food at McGillin's was always good, and they've been here forever," he recalled. "But other than that, 13th Street was a wasteland, a real depressed area. Horrible fried chicken, greasy pizza - really awful. " These days, Hogan has his choice of a global smorgasbord, thanks to a few hungry visionaries who have transformed 13th Street between Chestnut and Walnut into one of the city's best restaurant rows.

If you happen to live or work in a dining wasteland, as I once did, it helps to pray to the food gods for an accidental restaurant row to appear. One day, you're eating drippy burritos and chicken Caesar salads from a lunch truck. Then - poof! - the next day you're slurping uni-topped oysters alongside sizzling stone bowls of bibimbap in a room of spa-like tranquillity. The recent arrival of Doma - and its tasty neighbors on the suddenly bustling dining strip of Callowhill Street - proves that such miraculous things can happen in an unlikely place.

Margate City, the tony community just a poker chip's throw from Atlantic City, has been keeping revelers "at bay" for decades. But these days, the scene along the Amherst Avenue strip is a far cry from the wild and woolly times baby boomers fondly remember. The strip where a youth-oriented bar scene once roared is today an acclaimed restaurant district catering to adults with sophisticated palates and the means to satisfy them. "At one time [the neighborhood bordering Beach Thoroughfare - aka "The Bay"]

If you are craving predictability on the restaurant row (Eastern Division) that is the 700 block of Chestnut Street, you might want to walk right on past Chifa, the newest Jose Garces contender: The prime steaks are next door at the vaulted-ceilinged Union Trust; the comfort food is at Jones across the street, where "Thanksgiving Dinner," should you have missed it (or have an off-season hankering for it), is on the menu every night. At the Peruvian-Chinese hybrid called Chifa you will find, instead, bowls of chaufa rice, a stir-fry dotted with chorizo and topped with sweetly tender soy-glazed scallops, and diminutive ceviches far more complex (and the flavors far more balanced)