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Scarpetta: Stylish Italian dining on Rittenhouse Square

Minimalist and monochromatic, clearly more contemporary than its steakhouse predecessors.

New dress-up-night-on-the-town restaurants are few these days, so the buzz for Scarpetta, the polished Italian that opened Sept. 28 at the Rittenhouse Hotel, is understandable.

Scarpetta (210 W. Rittenhouse Sq., 215-558-4199) takes the two-level space that last was Smith & Wollensky. Aside from the bar's being on the street level and the dining rooms' being upstairs, the differences are dramatic.

Where Smith & Wollensky (and, for that matter, predecessor Nicholas Nickolas) had that sumptuous, manly man steakhouse feel, Scarpetta is minimalist and monochromatic, clearly more contemporary.

Scarpetta - whose owner, LDV Hospitality, has locations in Manhattan, Miami, Las Vegas and the Hamptons - is "a constant dichotomy," said John Meadow, president of LDV, in an interview over the summer. "It's high-end but not stuffy. The food is humble [though pastas are served with a flourish beneath cloches]. The space is modern, simple. There's no theater in the design."

Chefs Jorge Espinoza and Jon Oh oversee the menu, and the chef de cuisine is Aaron Gottesman, an alum of Kevin Sbraga's orbit at Sbraga and The Fat Ham. (Chef Scott Conant was the frontman at Scarpetta's 2008 opening in Lower Manhattan, but that affliation ended.)

While on the subject of restaurant drama: Philadelphians got a taste of LDV in Atlantic City, where it operated American Cut with Iron Chef Marc Forgione, Azure with chef Alain Allegretti, and Lugo Italian at the Revel before the casino went belly-up.)

Scarpetta is short for the idom "fare la scarpetta" - the act of scooping up sauce (or the very last bite of a meal) with a piece of bread.

Scarpetta's first floor, with its brick walls and 30-seat wrap-around marble bar, is fairly casual. The second-floor dining rooms give two different experiences: the romance of overlooking Rittenhouse Square along the perimeter and in a space at the top of the stairs, and the bustling feeling of a dinner party in the main room.

Here are the opening menu  and the bar snack menu. It's priced in line with Rittenhouse Square: Pastas (including the signature spaghetti) in the low-to-mid-$20s, with meats and fish mostly in the $30s.

It's open for dinner nightly in the early going.