Options grow as Walnut St. dining fades

With the impending loss of Susanna Foo, the Asian fusion palace that is one of the city's marquee restaurants, another fine-dining jewel is departing Walnut Street's Restaurant Row.

But this is hardly the grim commentary on Philadelphia's dining health that it might at first appear. Rather, as one era winds down, another phase of the city's restaurant identity has been maturing to replace it.

In the six areas of most rapid growth in the city, no fewer than 20 restaurants have opened in the last year, and 17 are scheduled to launch soon.

From the glitz of luxury steak and cutting-edge Latin fusion on Chestnut Street to a surging revival on East Passyunk Avenue, from new ambitions along Sansom Street to continued growth in Northern Liberties, at least a half-dozen strips are pulsing with restaurant energy.

Naturally, Walnut Street's latest loss evokes melancholy for a grand era ended. After the closings of culinary landmarks Striped Bass in June and Brasserie Perrier in January, the coming sale of Foo's building is just another high-profile blow to a strip that for the last quarter-century defined Philadelphia's national reputation as a serious restaurant town.

A combination of soaring rents geared more to retailers and tastes trending away from formal dining leaves the strip's days as a gourmet mecca numbered.

"We expect every other restaurant to ultimately leave Walnut Street . . . as leases expire within the next five to seven years," said Larry Steinberg, a Center City real estate broker with Michael Salove Co., which specializes in retail and restaurants and is brokering the retail space for Foo's restaurant.

But with a vibrant and thriving restaurant scene emerging in more diverse areas than ever before, diners are not likely to look back for long.

"To my mind, the fact that you have depth and breadth now in restaurants is much more powerful than a single restaurant row," said Eugenie Birch, codirector of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. "It's a mark of a more sophisticated city.

"I've been looking at 45 to 47 downtowns around the country," she said, "and with some of them, all they have is a restaurant row."

Those cities, she said, "would die" to complement their high-end strips with Philly's growing repertoire of strong neighborhood restaurants, a testament to its rising residential population.

Of course, Center City's upscale restaurants still depend in great measure on business dining, conventions, and an affluent suburban clientele. According to Paul Levy, president of the Center City District, those restaurants are the number-one reason people come from the suburbs, "even before arts and culture."

Among the splashiest new candidates to supplant Walnut Street as the destination for gold-plated dining is the 700 block of Chestnut Street, which offers manageable rents on grand spaces, not to mention handy curb cuts for easy valet drop-off. In February, it welcomed 550 seats with the simultaneous openings of Chifa, the Peruvian-Cantonese hot spot from star chef Jose Garces, and the soaring luxury steak house Union Trust, where diners have been sampling $100 "vertical tastings" of variously aged rib eyes.

The block was already well-primed by Stephen Starr's Morimoto, Jones, and Blue Angel (long closed but scheduled to reopen this year); a bustling deli (Kibitz in the City); a Malaysian restaurant (Aqua); and an Italian-theme sports bar (LaScala's).

But is it ready to be considered the prime-time restaurant row that Walnut Street has been?

Not quite, said one of the street's own, Union Trust owner Ed Doherty. He believes at least one more anchor restaurant is needed to reach the saturation point where the array of choices, and not just the allure of one place, draws sustaining crowds.

"There's no doubt we have a future here as a burgeoning restaurant row, but there is still a lot of ugly between here and Broad Street," he said. "We're definitely pioneering. We still rely on people getting in their cars and driving here as a destination."

In terms of pure opening numbers, small-but-mighty Sansom Street has proved to be among the city's most fertile restaurant ground, with a crop of cozy but stylish new bistros that cater more to locals than to tourists or business diners.

The 2000 block has had the most recent action, with the relocated Melograno trattoria, the ambitiously contemporary new Noble American Cookery, and the soon-to-open burger and whiskey bar Village Whiskey, from Garces, who also owns Tinto around the corner. On the 1500 block, already a funky mix of tiny eclectic eateries, the arrival of the stylish pub Ladder 15 and the coming remake of the Sansom Street Oyster House will bring even more crowds to this already busy lunchtime magnet.

East of Broad Street developer Tony Goldman's longtime investment at Sansom and 13th (also known as "Midtown Village") is finally paying dividends as the once-seedy storefronts get replaced.

Along with El Vez and the growing BYO empire of chef Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran (soon to open two more concepts beside their Lolita and Bindi), the entertainment crossroads has attracted a cutting-edge cocktail lounge (Apothecary), an absinthe bar (Time), and a planned branch of Rittenhouse Square's Audrey Claire.

The vibrant growth, however, is by no means limited to Center City, with especially strong redevelopment along East Passyunk Avenue, where eight openings in the last year went far beyond the neighborhood's traditionally Italian theme, adding gastropubs and sushi.

And in Northern Liberties, developer Bart Blatstein will launch next week three more restaurants (with a fourth on the way) to anchor his new 500-apartment complex, the Piazza at Schmidts.

Farther south on Second Street are anticipated openings from Bistro 7's Michael O'Halloran (Kong) and Matthew Levin, who will debut with Masano after a four-bell stint at Lacroix at the Rittenhouse.

Nearby Girard Avenue also continues to add funky neighborhood eateries toward Fishtown, such as Paesano's Italian luncheonette revamp; Sketch, a gourmet burger joint; and Ekta, a popular Indian restaurant.

The long-awaited arrival of ambitious dining options for University City is near, too, with a handful of restaurants coming to two large new developments, including the Radian, and taking a cue from Garces' Distrito at 40th and Chestnut. The more neighborhood-centric strip of Baltimore Avenue has also undergone some gentrifying dining growth.

Such vigorous expansion into neighborhoods beyond Center City only reinforces Birch's assertion that affordable Philadelphia is "land rich" compared with more expensive towns like Boston or Manhattan. The city's penchant for such cost-efficient concepts as BYOBs and gastropubs provides more opportunities for young chefs, many of whom earned their stripes in the blue-chip institutions of Walnut Street that now are on the wane.

"That corridor was important in redefining Philadelphia as a gastronomic center," Birch said, "but now you have all these little discovery places that have emerged. Each one is a surprise, and that's sensational."