Striped Bass

Striped Bass will close at the end of the month as owner Stephen Starr plans to turn the seafood destination restaurant this fall into a '40s-supper-club-style steak house called Butcher & Singer Steak & Seafood. Starr told staffers yesterday that they'd be offered jobs at his other restaurants, including Parc, the French bistro he plans to open July 1 on nearby Rittenhouse Square. Butcher & Singer was the brokerage firm that occupied the space at 15th and Walnut Streets before Striped Bass opened in 1994.

'People think that when you're the champion all you have to do is defend your title," Helen Segal Wilson once told me. "Defend? They're kidding. You have to win it over and over again!" Wilson, a talented golfer who once operated a highly regarded restaurant on the site now occupied by Le Bec-Fin, was talking about her own experiences. But the subject might just as well have been Striped Bass. With its decor by Meg Rodgers and food by Alison Barshak, the Striped Bass that opened in 1994 was immediately perceived as one of this city's most sophisticated watering holes.

Terence Feury could have been feeling like a fish out of water, but he wasn't. On a recent weeknight, the 33-year-old executive chef of Striped Bass was excused from his usual post at 15th and Walnut to execute a chic seafood dinner for 12 at a private home in Society Hill. The occasion was a fund-raiser for the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts held at the home of the hostess, academy board member Gabriele Lee. Cost to sample Feury's artistry would be $250 per person, and it would be his first experience since he arrived in Philadelphia nearly two years ago cooking a multi-course dinner in someone's home.

Here's the preliminary box score for the 1995 Book and the Cook: One late scratch because of illness. Forty no-shows at a restaurant that probably could have sold out three times over. Three cookbooks that people got to taste but couldn't buy because the books weren't in print yet. And one engagement. The cancellation was Craig Claiborne. The longtime New York Times columnist was to have appeared at a Saturday luncheon at Le Bec-Fin, as he has in previous years. Alain Sailhac - former chef at Le Cirque in New York, now culinary arts director at New York's French Culinary Institute - agreed to step in as guest host for the event.

Someday, farmers in South Jersey will grow more than acres of peaches and blueberries. Someday, they will grow acres of striped bass. Someday is now in Israel. For more than 20 years, Israelis have successfully farmed and marketed striped bass and other species of finfish, and New Jersey officials want to tap some of the knowledge gleaned from those two decades to spawn a similarly viable aquaculture industry here. To that end, Gov. Florio, as part of a trade mission for New Jersey, traveled to Israel last month, accompanied by members of the business, academic and scientific community.

They're catching a lot of big fish these days. Stripers three feet long and weighing 15, 20, even 30 pounds. From the banks of the Delaware River. In Philadelphia. The Frankford Arsenal is hot. So is National Park across the Delaware, and also south of the dam on the Schuylkill behind the Art Museum, where you can cast artificial lures from both sides, as striped bass build up below the fish ladder on their journey upriver to spawn. You may not hook any the first few times out. But hold on if you do. "We call them spoolrunners," said John Lahm, casting his bloodworm out from the boat-access ramp at Station Avenue in Bensalem.

Striped Bass co-owner Neil Stein is more philosophical than angry about Alison Barshak's Friday night resignation as his executive chef. "We all say good-bye at some point in our lives," he said yesterday. "But there's a way to say good-bye. " Barshak left notes on the desks of Stein and his partner, Joe Wolf, then disappeared on a weekend trip to Las Vegas. "She didn't even tell her staff!" said Stein, who is interviewing replacements inside and outside the Walnut Street eatery.

News of executive chef Alison Barshak's departure this week from Striped Bass, the Walnut Street seafood restaurant of national renown, raised the question of what effect the loss of a star has on a popular restaurant. Diners who have been making reservations up to a month ahead won't get to meet the slim, flame-tressed Barshak, but probably won't notice any difference in the food. And as far as restaurant management is concerned, it will be business as usual, with an easy transition of one of the five executive sous chefs into Barshak's position.

Every success story deserves a celebration. Even if the success story happens to be about a fish. And because angling is a billion-dollar industry in New Jersey, the venerable striped bass is worthy. "The striped bass has gone down and now it's back," Bob McDowell, director of the New Jersey Division of Fish, Game and Wildlife, said last week at a party in Beach Haven to mark the premier of a documentary made jointly with New Jersey Network on the comeback of morone saxatilis.

Just before dinner hour yesterday, Stephen Starr picked up his 10th high-profile restaurant - Striped Bass, the nationally known Center City power room that once was the domain of his former rival Neil Stein. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin J. Carey approved Starr's $1.3 million offer, about half what Stein spent a decade ago to build the all-seafood restaurant at 15th and Walnut Streets. Though the sale generated wide notice, Starr was the lone bidder. Striped Bass is Starr's first takeover; his other restaurants were cooked from scratch.

Here is an excerpt from Craig LaBan's online chat: Reader: I was sad to see Bebe's BBQ close in my neighborhood. That closing drove me to revisit Percy Street for the first time since December. Had a great dinner there and was especially pleased by the delicious sides: white bean salad and German potato salad. Craig LaBan: I was sad too, because he made a pretty good 'cue, mostly because of the fantastic rub. I'm not surprised though - the place was inconsistent and seemed to struggle with the basics of running a business.

Mike Stollenwerk has a somewhat bigger fish to fry. That would be Fish (1708 Lombard St., 215-545-9600), his larger, liquor-licensed follow-up to his critically acclaimed Little Fish, a BYOB in Bella Vista. Stollenwerk hopes to open next week, licensing permitting. Stollenwerk will be full time at Fish, a 50-or-so-seater that occupies the double storefront in the Graduate Hospital area that for decades was Astral Plane. Sous chef Chad Jenkins is running Little Fish; he's now a partner.

No one had counted on the fluke. The fluke was a bonus. The real target was the good-eating black sea bass known to be biting off Atlantic City. They congregate over the old shipwrecks five or six miles offshore - easy, almost-guaranteed pickings, which is important if you've promised the freshest fish dinner in the city. That was the hook that Fork, the top-rated Old City bistro, used to reel in a charter boat's worth of customers for its $200 all-inclusive Fisherman's Dinner on Saturday evening.

From the moody, palm-fringed dining room at Fork, you can view the catch that is Terence Feury, framed in the stainless steel of the open kitchen, dark bistro apron past the knee, shaven head glinting in the light from above. He's a trophy fish, an exceedingly big fish (time at Le Bernardin in New York, top chef jobs with various Ritz-Carltons and, most visibly, before its demise, the city's celebrated Striped Bass), suddenly, though ostensibly contentedly, aswim in a far, far littler pond.

Before we bury the dear departed Striped Bass beneath a stampede of hungry meat-eaters, let us first pay tribute to the lasting splash of the big fish. In terms of a culinary legacy, there's no denying its impact: In the last year alone, no fewer than 10 chefs reviewed in this column worked at some point behind the lines of Striped Bass' open kitchen. Of course, its closing last year and recent replacement by a less-adventurous concept, a steak house called Butcher & Singer, marked the beginning of the end of an era, too, adding a scratch to the gold-plated culinary ambition of Walnut Street's Restaurant Row. That veneer has since taken a few more scuffs with the recent closing of Brasserie Perrier and news that Susanna Foo, ever the survivor, wasn't above starting to offer home delivery.

Clearing the Record This article about Michael D. Marino?s annual game luncheon incorrectly stated that Marino voted for Barack Obama. While Marino says he is  impressed with Obama, he cast his ballot for John McCain. What would Michael Pollan, acclaimed author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, think of Mike Marino's annual Wild Game Luncheon? Pollan has been a writer, teacher and advocate for informed, sustainable eating for about as long as Marino, a former Montgomery County district attorney (1988-99)

Striped Bass will close at the end of the month as owner Stephen Starr plans to turn the seafood destination restaurant this fall into a '40s-supper-club-style steak house called Butcher & Singer Steak & Seafood. Starr told staffers yesterday that they'd be offered jobs at his other restaurants, including Parc, the French bistro he plans to open July 1 on nearby Rittenhouse Square. Butcher & Singer was the brokerage firm that occupied the space at 15th and Walnut Streets before Striped Bass opened in 1994.

Chain competition is heating up in Cherry Hill. It also was a massive investment. Aside from the build-out, M&S needed a liquor license, which in Cherry Hill Township is among the most expensive in the world: $1.5 million. To maximize its return - and to stake a claim on potential steakhouse competitors (hear that, Morton's?) - M&S has opened William Douglas Steakhouse . The name reflects not a famed Supreme Court justice but M&S founders Bill McCormick and Doug Schmick.

In downtown Wilmington, as my third weekly road trip continues south on Delaware Route 9 toward Dover, I see scaffolding and a row of painted American flags. Artist Max Mason of Wynnewood is painting a "flag-centered tribute to the fallen firefighters of Sept. 11" on the side of Fire Station 1 at West and Second Streets. When complete, it will show a procession of firefighters through time. Included will be historic Wilmington fire stations and apparatus through the years.

More than 30 years ago, a truck carrying asphalt fell through the deck of the elevated West Side Highway in Manhattan. And so began a story that continues today in the form of Hudson River Park. The characters in this decades-long, David-vs.-Goliath saga, many of whom are still involved in ways both large and small, included governors, mayors, and other prominent politicians; community activists; open-space and environmental advocates; federal, state and city bureaucrats; preservationists; lawyers, lobbyists, urban planners, and - oh, yes - the striped bass.