Penne: Lots to learn in University City

The rejuvenation of University City has been an exciting thing to watch because the building spree has been more than academic.

The streetscape has been recast with wide sidewalks, cultural centers, bookstores and cafes - all necessary amenities to connect the university community with the vibrant possibilities of urban life. Restaurants, too, will play a crucial role in turning this area into a destination neighborhood.

But they will have to do better than the Ivy Grille, which, until you try the food, seems ideally suited to the cause.

Located at the Inn at Penn, the new hotel centerpiece of the Sansom Common complex, the four-month-old Ivy Grille is an airy and stylish room with a sunny cafe view of Walnut Street.

It was created by a "restaurant conceptual group" in New York and it has a calculated concept feel, an odd collage of trendy styles all thrown into the same room. A tin-roofed ceiling and little brass fans. A granite-topped community table with flickering votive candles. An amoeba-shaped stainless steel awning that hovers over the California-style open kitchen.

Mission wood accents give the room enough warmth to make a go at American bistro, an ambience that has style without being stuffy, and a democratic menu that gives as much respect to the burger as it does to the ostrich tartare.

It's not a bad concept when one considers the diverse university clientele, ranging from students to visiting business diners. This growing area needs more fine dining options, and the Ivy Grille sets a high bar of expectation both with its prime location and an ambitious menu that hovers around $20-plus an entree. But after three visits of consistently disappointing food, both in quality and value, I don't think either end of the spectrum is being well served.

There are a few attempts at regional cuisine - tom turkey and dumpling soup, Kennett Square mushrooms sauteed with crab - that were satisfying enough. I also liked the sweetbreads in caper butter.

But shoddy cooking (and a few tall tales) turned this wildly eclectic menu into a hapless parody of pretentious contemporary cuisine. Nothing, it seemed, arrived as advertised.

Seafood ceviche was so overmarinated, eating a scallop was like biting into a bitter citrus rind. A cheesey glob of "lobster" risotto had no trace - either in flavor or meat - of any crustacean relation. As for the exotic basmati and jasmine rices that supposedly garnished many of the entrees, ours had less flavor than Minute Rice. Even with the sweetbreads, "light flaky pastry" somehow materialized as a fried spring roll wrapper.

And how about those scallops with "watermelon and kiwi coulis?" Never mind that they showed up in a slosh of orange juice and cranberries. I wondered at the gobs of jet black fish eggs that were mounded on top of each one. These tiny black pellets had the unmistakable styrofoam chew and chemical salt harshness of low-grade supermarket roe.

Our friendly waitress told us the chef on duty had said it was deluxe Russian beluga from Assouline & Ting. I highly doubt it. With such caviar selling for $45 an ounce, this $21 dish would have cost well over $50. I didn't need Joel Assouline or the restaurant's executive chef to confirm (as both later did) that the Ivy Grille does not buy caviar from Assouline. Or, as the restaurant also corroborated, that it was not Russian beluga. Ah, the fibs that diners hear. . . .

Many of the dishes had good ideas, but lacked the finesse of balanced flavors. Slices of beef carpaccio (still crusted in thawing ice crystals) had potential, but a garnish of oyster mushrooms had been marinated in so much sour vinegar, they were practically embalmed. Undercooked slices of nearly raw duck breast languished on a bed of mushy linguine, glazed in the cloying sweetness of Grand Marnier orange sauce.

The kitchen has a nice supply of fresh fish. The seared Chilean seabass was tasty and well done, even if it was skimpy for $20. Tasty tequila-cured mahimahi came with a potent and smoky chipotle relish. And sesame-crusted tuna was perhaps my favorite dish, despite the Asian soba noodles underneath that were doused in a sauce almost too sweet to eat.

Diced-up and served raw with greens, the fresh ahi tuna "tapenade" would have been fine without the blaring culture clash - salty Greek olives and spicy Japanese wasabi battled at the expense of pristinely flavored fish. At $11, our appetizer of grilled prawns should not have been lukewarm and gray.

Even less ambitious dishes left much to be desired. The $9 burger, for example, suffered from an over-herbed, underbaked focaccia roll and shards of unmeltable provolone cheese - an overpriced victim of pointless upscaling.

It wasn't the first time a style statement backfired. Ivy's geometric shaped plates - triangles, shields and rectangles - give its dishes a striking platform for dramatic presentations. The cobalt colored plates, though, also make fingerprints shine, revealing carelessly cleaned plate rims smeared with an unappetizing smudge.

If the plates raised any housekeeping issues, the fact that there was no sign of soap in the men's room didn't put them to rest. It was also obvious the one-seater is too small for a restaurant of this size.

With dessert left to make amends, Ivy's kitchen fell short again with a lack of attention to details as mundane as coulis, the perfunctory fruit sauces that garnish dishes with color. An unstrained mango puree was mealy on the plate; a blackberry coulis so undersweetened it left a tart pucker.

I'd stick with any of Jeremy's Microbatch ice creams for real satisfaction - the chocolate overload and cinnamon bun flavors made my shopping list for the next day.

The desserts made in house, though, were less successful. The chocolate tower, supposedly soft enough to spoon into, was a hard chocolate spike that looked like a dunce cap on a plate. The pumpkin cheesecake was a thick and pasty brick. And the creme brulee, that simple yet over-made, oft-abused classic, was one of the worst renditions I'd ever encountered. Twice I received a dish that was not even remotely caramelized on top. Instead, it was topped with a mysterious powdery crust, a dusting of brown sugar crystals so thick it appeared as if this creme brulee had been unearthed during the excavations for Sansom Common.

For all the progress that development has brought to this neighborhood, the latest ambitious restaurant open in its high-profile footprint has got a long way to go to keep up.