By Georges!

The city's most celebrated restaurant has gone casual. Does the food still astound?

by Trey Popp

CART BLANCHE: All-you-can-eat sweets on wheels! Dessert at Le Bec-Fin is still the best post-dinner experience in town. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"Yes, we allow jeans in the dining room," a sharply dressed hostess said into the phone as I waited for a table in Le Bec-Fin's anteroom. As confusion burbled up from the other end of the line, she furrowed her brow before trying to put her latest caller at ease. "Well, you don't have to wear them. They're not required."

After 38 years of coats and ties, Philadelphia's fanciest restaurant is attempting to open its proverbial collar and relax. Saying that he has "no fun anymore," founding chef Georges Perrier has decided to take his high-end French temple into casual terrain. He recently introduced an a la carte menu (before, only prix-fixe tasting menus were available) and evidently wishes to replace cuff links with button flies as far as the dress code is concerned.

His hostesses have been doing a lot of explaining lately, ours confided after laying the receiver back in its cradle. "A lot of our older customers just don't understand it."

It's a little hard to believe for a younger customer, as well. The evening before my meal, I dropped by the restaurant wearing jeans and a golf shirt. Without even looking down to see if my footwear revealed my toes, the hostess assured me that I looked just fine.

If you're going to rest your elbows on the table, I suppose, they may as well be bare.

Which is fine by me. As far as I'm concerned, a necktie is just a noose with a pretty pattern — and why run the risk of ruining a perfectly good noose with a chocolate stain? No reason to wear a jacket in balmy weather, either, so I left that at home, too. Three steps into the gilded dining room, however, and I was glad I'd upgraded from the golf shirt. If there's anything that screams dress-down Friday, it's definitely not the half-million dollars' worth of chandeliers, antiquated mirrors and floor-to-ceiling pilasters inlaid with golden silk that Perrier commissioned for a redecoration in 2002.

The a la carte menu is essentially an invitation for more of the bourgeoisie to join the landed gentry who've become accustomed to three-hour, fixed-price extravaganzas over the years. Perrier told the Inquirer that dinner for two could ring up to less than $100.

That may be true in theory — a vegetarian pasta with spring vegetables goes for $18 — but you'd have to be pretty abstemious to pull it off in practice. A wine allergy would help, and you'd definitely need to avoid the $58 roasted Dover sole. But there's no question that it's more affordable than the six-course treatment of old.

The food remains excellent. Perrier's signature crab cake, which almost plays more like an unusually luxurious frittata than the classic Maryland treatment, is truly a unique pleasure. The spring peas in a risotto appetizer popped perfectly between the teeth, and even the foam on top was intensely creamy. The diver scallops were just tremendous, cleverly scored in a waffle pattern to catch the mustard seeds in a mango vinaigrette, which in turn played a delightful counterpoint to the savory, carpaccio-thin slices of heart of palm. Add the watery crispness of jicama cubes circling the bowl, and you can banish the thought that this kitchen has gotten stodgy in old age.

Entrées also met the mark, with the exception of an ivory king salmon special, whose white meat lacked flavor. The candied ginger sauce was tasty, but choosing flesh from fish genetically incapable of processing the pigments in their shrimp-based diet is really more a fetish than anything else. (Interesting to note that East Coast chefs seem more enamored of it than their West Coast counterparts.) The rack of lamb was unbelievably tender, as was the grilled hamachi, which came with a refreshing bulgur pilaf studded with dried mulberries.

Le Bec-Fin's dessert cart still qualifies as the best after-dinner experience in town — and considering that we shared the unlimited sampling among three without raising an upturned nose, it may be the best deal, too.

Yet the whole experience was strangely deflating at times. Perhaps because the tasting menu is still an option, the service was remarkably choppy. We felt rushed to order; our entrées didn't all come out at once; and several fairly simple questions stumped one server. Dinner was over in less than an hour, but the cheese and dessert carts took quite a while to arrive, creating a disjointed pace. And if the ornate décor doesn't do the trick, the ceremonial lifting of silver domes is bound to make anyone in jeans feel woefully underdressed. It's simply not a casual place.

We surprised ourselves to say it, but next time each of us would rather take the plunge and opt for the old-style tasting menu, bank accounts be damned. I think I'd even dig up a necktie for the occasion.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Le Bec-Fin

1523 Walnut St., 215-567-1000, lebecfin.com

Hours: Open for lunch Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.; open for dinner Mon.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m.; closed Sun.

Appetizers, $11-$28; Entrées, $18-$72

Reservations recommended.