Growing Planes

A defunct Philadelphia landmark opens anew — and fails to impress.

by Elisa Ludwig

Mark Stehle BREAST IN SHOW: The Drunken Chicken is soaked in sherry, marinated with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg and topped with smoked ham. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Occupying a cozy row house on Lombard Street for 34 years, Astral Plane was regarded as a bit of a time capsule, a place where you could slip back to another era in Philly's history with a Zodiac-themed cocktail, glazed duck breast and your Bette Midler fantasies.

Over time, though, the nostalgia wore off, the Bloody Mary bar got watered down and the Plane had had its day, closing its doors last summer for good. Enter Christine Fischer (founder of Wynnewood's ChriStevens Catering and former proprietor of the now-shuttered ChriSteven's at Ninth and South) and partner Clara Gomez with their reincarnation, Astral Plane Millennium.

The "millennium" in the name seems to imply an update to the original — a better, fresher Astral Plane for the modern age. And visually, at least, that concept has been manifest. The old hippie-romantic interior — the parachute ceiling, the mismatched tableware, the aura of faded celebrity — has been stripped away, whitewashed, candlelit for warmth and recast in the minimalist model of so many local BYOBs. Oh, and the liquor license is gone, too.

But in keeping the old name, Millennium has doomed itself to perpetual comparisons. And they're not, on most counts, flattering.

The old Astral Plane was always something of a theatrical experience, but walking into this one feels like jumping into a game of make-believe, with service so stilted and awkward it verges on the opposite of hospitality. When seating us, a server told us it was too cold in the front room, then led us around to another area, only to realize there were no seats available. She then announced that we would have to turn around and parade back to the cold area.

"Maybe the manager will bring out a heater," she offered. He didn't.

We then sat for many minutes waiting for service — or at least someone offering to open our bottle of wine. When the server did resurface, she looked past us and conversed with friends behind us. Our check was served with dessert and an unconvincing "take your time." We were assured by another server that our credit card would soon be retrieved — an assurance we truly didn't need. When has a restaurant ever failed to collect on its bill?

The old Astral Plane was certainly eclectic, but Millennium's menu is an odd amalgam of flavors and influences with no unifying logic to lend it identity. There's a little bit of Italian, some Latin flavors, a Greek salad and a smattering of Indian curry, plus something called "salmon fantasia."

More baffling is a separate carpaccio menu. Nothing about the restaurant suggests this would be a particularly good place to order raw, or nearly raw, meats and seafoods. Even so, we tried the scallop carpaccio, ghostly pearlized slivers arrayed in a semicircle. Drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice and plated with a mound of basic salad greens, it's utter simplicity — but it works.

The same basic principles are on hand in an octopus salad, the mini lavender-mottled cephalopods lightly laced with a tangy chili dressing. These, too, are surprisingly tender, having met the optimal cooking time between rawness and rubber band.

We also enjoyed the whitefish empanada, a half-moon of pastry with an unexpectedly satisfying filling of smoky fish, bits of carrot, capers and a mustard sauce.

The weirdest of appetizers? Bruschetta and plantains. Never mind that this is absolutely the worst time of year to eat a dish that lives and dies by ripe tomatoes. There is no good reason why these two things need to share a plate, unless maybe there's a plate shortage.

Technically, most of the entrées pass muster, like the juicy, tender half-rack of grilled New Zealand lamb chops. Yet the meat, nominally medium rare, is grayish, and its Moscato sauce is so mild as to be almost undetectable. (Why not opt for a bolder wine to sauce lamb?)

A fillet of snapper wrapped in parchment with a smattering of seafood — shrimp, tiny clams, rings of calamari — is nicely cooked to appropriate flakiness, but the tomato-based sauce is watery and thin, spilling out of the packet and across the plate in a mediocre pool. And though the heat-puckered potato wedges and the string bean accompaniments are tasty, it's disappointing to see that all of the dishes have the same sides. At this price point, you might expect something more thoughtfully matched to your main.

Millennium hosts regular pasta nights, suggesting that it's something of a specialty, but the pappardelle with wild mushrooms is a straight-up disaster, the bands of pasta lumping around increasingly solid sauce that is too bland to even be comfort food.

Hope comes in the form of Drunken Chicken. Breast slices are soaked in sherry and peppered with cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg with raisins and almonds. Along with it are long strips of thick-sliced smoked ham — an odd presentation but a nice counterpoint. It's not mind-blowing, but it's a dish you don't see anywhere else around town — the kind of thing that could set Millennium apart.

There will be some Philadelphians who will miss the original Astral Plane, who, out of geographic loyalty, may visit this one to pay their respects or see what the new owners have done. But nostalgia is by definition fleeting, and there need to be better reasons to buy your dinner here.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Astral Plane Millennium

1708 Lombard St., 215-735-0815, astralplane-millenium.com

Hours: Tue.-Thu., 4-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 4-11 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. and 4-9 p.m.

Appetizers, $6-$10; Carpaccio, $11-$12; Entrées, $17-$28.50

BYOB.