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Our dining scene is many things - youthful, sophisticated, and in the throes of constant flux. But we have virtually no connection left to the grand restaurants of yore, those brassy old spots where the snapper soup tastes as it did when our grandparents tipped the sherry bottle with extra fervor. It may never occur to that young foodie jockeying for a table in the latest BYOB or Stephen Starr production, but we are poorer for the fact, and missing a crucial piece in the family puzzle.

The fish house, the genre most synonymous with classic Philadelphia dining, has been clinging to life at the Sansom Street Oyster House, which has maintained the tradition almost singlehandedly - until now. Until the resurrection of Old Original Bookbinder's.

John Taxin, 37, is an unlikely hero for this tale. His family's famous restaurant was the city's premier destination for presidents and celebrities, but to most locals it was dead for decades before it actually closed in 2001 under the weight of a crumbling building and waning interest.

An overpriced tourist trap, Bookbinder's defined the meaning of a "No Bell" rating (that's bad, with a side of insult), which it earned in 1999. The old restaurant so alienated Philadelphians that upon news of its rebirth, I received numerous notes from readers who swore to boycott it, simply on principle.

They might want to reconsider. Granted, the four-month-old new edition of Bookbinder's has plenty of rough spots to smooth before its comeback is complete, but the improvement over its predecessor is obvious, the effort to restore its glory undoubtedly sincere.

Taxin spent $4.5 million over the last three years to gut and refit the rooms behind the restaurant's five historic Walnut Street facades. The back half and top floors were sliced off to make way for a condo complex, but it's still a 380-seat whale.

Designer Floss Barber did a beautiful job blending the old and new. The vintage mahogany bar and clubby booths in the President's Room have been well-guarded, along with its beveled crystal windows and ship-wheel-framed door. The main dining room, meanwhile, is full of sensual modern curves, painted a rich brick red and illuminated by high-tech halogens, with a bustling open kitchen at the rear and showcases filled with antique toys and carved mermaids near the front. Handsome acoustical tiles look like old pressed tin, but cleverly absorb the din.

It's a comfortable space that glows beneficently on every corner of Bookies' diverse crowd, from the Goldenberg Chew family we saw in the President's Room (talk about Philadelphia royalty) to the silver-haired quartet with grandkids beside us, to the long table of silicone-enhanced sirens who garnered so much gawking near the open kitchen.

Whether Taxin can revamp the old fish-house fine-dining concept for such a broad clientele remains a tricky and unanswered question. The wine cellar has been upgraded significantly, with a deep list of premium American bottles from Argyle to Cakebread and Far Niente, an excellent bar stocked with Macallan 18, sipping tequilas and Montecristo cigars.

The service staff, though, is in over its head. It's no longer the pack of cynical salesmen pushing eight-pound lobsters, but the friendly new folks are frequently overwhelmed. On our first visit, it took us 45 minutes just to order. On our second, the waiter was so green, he earnestly asked me to describe the wine.

You should expect more polish from a restaurant that charges $24 to $45 an entree. But the kitchen also needs to step it up.

I like the mix of old standards and new ideas presented by chef David Cunningham, a veteran of Le Bernardin who made his mark locally at the Yardley Inn. But the food never really hits a steady groove.

The highlight is the raw bar and appetizers, which may in themselves be the best reason to check out the new place. Our selection of oysters - West Coast belons, Pickle Points, and blue points - were plump, cold and briny. The shrimp cocktail brought crustaceans that were luxuriously huge in a silver bowl. The crab cocktail had lumps of sweet meat as big as golf balls.

The clams Casino were too brothy and lacked the bacon-sizzled crust that makes good ones irresistible. The oysters Rockefeller, though, were sublime, the tender mollusks just barely cooked beneath a silky puree of Pernod-scented spinach. The fried calamari were also a pleasant surprise, toothsomely crisp with a sweet and spicy side of Thai dip. Tuna tartare, a modern standard unheard of at the old Bookbinder's, was a tower of pristinely fresh fish aromatic with soy and sesame.

But trouble began with the soups. The creamy clam chowder was rich and satisfying. The crab bisque, however, was lukewarm. Of more concern was the crucial snapper soup. Cunningham has taken great pains to re-create the restaurant's elaborate recipe, but the finished product is completely flat, as dark as molasses but stunningly bland, with hardly a trace of the fragrant spices and citrus zest that should dance across sherry-splashed broth like an exotic trade wind.

Entrees brought mixed results, too. The best was a succulent bone-in N.Y. strip, which doesn't bode well for a fish house. There were a couple of seafood winners, a special salmon topped with crab meat and creamed morels, and Bookie's signature huge crabcake.

Others needed a gentler touch. I loved the thick piece of striped bass that stood on end in a bowl of lemon parsley broth, but it had been seared until one side of it was as hard as a shield.

The steamed two-pound lobster was "just plain," as advertised, but it had begun to cool and toughen by the time it was delivered. The gussied-up lobster Thermidor was tasty in its bisquey sauce, but the nuggets of meat were chewy and blended with so much mashed crab filler it looked like seafood dip.

Cunningham fumbled some more modern dishes as well, a grilled tuna steak that was not hot and served with an overly sticky Asian sauce; and a gratinee that buried beautifully huge scallops under a suffocating tan sludge of vermouth sauce.

These are points of execution - not concept or ingredients - that easily could be remedied with more attention, and possibly push Bookbinder's up to two bells by the end of the year.

And yet, with the homey desserts, it becomes clear why the classic restaurant is still in danger of extinction. It should be easy enough to re-create the old restaurant's huge wedges of strawberry shortcake, cheesecake and peanut-butter pie. But each just narrowly misses: too dry, too crumbly, too sticky, ever so slightly out of register. Like the snapper soup: technically correct, but lacking emotion.

Had our own old guard remained stalwart over the years, perhaps there might be someone left who remembered what the past really tasted like.