Figs usher out summer

It is the season for figs of the fresh, faintly purpled variety - plump purses, vaguely decadent, pouchy and sweet, built for the short haul.

You may be offered a couple from a modest home harvest as you walk down the street.

Or catch a glimpse at a farmstand as the first wave arrives, seated in the pockets of egg crates, their beaks peeking out from the nest.

If spring's first leafy ramps and humps of morels signal warmer times ahead, the fig sightings are just as surely the closing of the parentheses: Tomatoes are on the wane, their natural tapering-off hastened by blight; pesto's getting old; the corn's living on borrowed time.

Menus totter ambivalently, one foot in the zucchini patch, the other striking out for the land of roasted mushrooms and harder squashes, the memory of chestnut and pumpkin not so distant anymore: A blanket was called out of summertime slumber one night last week.

In South Philadelphia, Ninth Street was getting some color back in its cheeks. Di Bruno Bros. was carrying sticks of sandwiches, the size of highway flares, one of them, in this shrine to Italian cheese, called "The French Connection": A chewy, easy-grip baguette was split, with full-fat butter, mincemeat-sweet green-tomato mostarda, and gentle coins of mild saucisson sec.

The coffee granita was still churning at Fante's, though its days, as the days shorten, are numbered. New projects were creeping along - a wine-and-cheese bar in the shell of Pronto, facing the mammoth Rizzo mural; a meatball-and-gravy take-out storefront from Villa di Roma; an Argentine-Italian dining room amid the butcher shops that hold down the east side of the street.

Argentine-Italian? Pasta and empanadas? A second rendition, coincidentally, is rising on 10th Street in the overhauled precincts of old-shoe Shank's & Evelyn's Luncheonette. (Shank's has moved into a skinnier, mostly-take-out space at 15th and Sansom: Same cast of characters, same fried eggplant and chicken cutlet, but the vibe is gone. Or maybe just resting up.)

French-pedigreed (American-flavored) Fond, staffed with Le Bec vets, has opened on Passyunk Avenue, another score for E'Punk. Tiny Salt & Pepper, at Sixth and Bainbridge, has dipped from the same gene pool, its latest chef seasoned at the closed Brasserie Perrier.

On Eighth Street, which was the Italian Market before its migration to Ninth Street, yet another French accent was emanating from Bibou, the little gem where Pif once stood, run by Pierre Calmels, Le Bec's recent-vintage top chef, and his wife, Charlotte.

(A few doors south, last week, a Mexican customer ordered a Vietnamese hoagie at Cafe Huong Lan, "with chicken." "Pollo?" the Vietnamese cook asked, making sure.)

On this stretch of Eighth Street paralleling the Italian Market, at least one long-standing grudge, between the old owners of Mezza Luna and, right across the street, Maria Forte, the owner of Cucina Forte (who was once a partner at Mezza Luna) appeared to have cooled: Mezza moved a block south a few weeks ago to the corner of Eighth and Christian, occupying a space that has housed, in sequence, a Vietnamese restaurant and, last, a relatively upscale Mexican spot. Its new name is Bella Luna, and it will get a try soon enough.

For its part, Cucina Forte was cruising along, its old-school Italian room bronzed softly in the evening beneath a beaded chandelier, its storied ricotta gnocchi (in Gorgonzola or marinara) as supremely light and lush as ever.

And there was, as there has been for more than six years, the homey soup that Maria Forte says was inspired in a dream of her late husband, Tony; "Maria's Dream Soup," a rich chicken broth festooned with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms (though no longer the slivered wild ones she once used), fresh spinach, and cubes of homemade bread fried in olive oil and rendered plump and succulently juicy.

She has another dream now, to add new dishes from her summer's travels to her native Molise in Italy's midsection - a pasta à la guitarra, perhaps, with lamb in tomato and wine sauce, maybe a rustic bowl of beans and roast pork.

It is fig season, again - a good time to turn the page.

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