July 17–24, 1997

food|jim quinn on food

Dmitri In the Stix

Stix

2227 Pine St., 985-3680. Open seven days, no reservations, smoke-free.

Food

Eclectic and intelligent. Cooked-to-order seafood and veggies.

Atmosphere

Thirty- to 40-something professional. Quiet, moneyed, sophisticated, and accompanied by or looking for same.

Price

Low. Small plates and large, $18 and under.

Three Stars: Excellent.

Julia Lehman/City Paper

"He got the name because he saw a sign somewhere that said, DOOR STIX," says the cheery, harried, efficient and brusque waitperson gathering up and dealing out plates with quiet speed. "He" is Dmitri Chimes, "Stix" is his brand new restaurant on Fitler Square, very eclectic, very veggie, lots of fresh seafood.

Chimes also owns Dmitri's (grilled fish and Greek side dishes) and Pamplona (Spanish-influenced meat and seafood). Different menus, but important similarities: hip-elegant decor, small tables, loud acoustics, big young moneyed crowds too impatient to wait through standard meals with standard service, but willing to wait in line for the privilege of not waiting.

Eating here is great fun. The minor discomforts create a kind of camaraderie. You, and the waitstaff and chefs, are all in this together. Stay cool, lean close so you can hear your date, and make yourself at home. The food is almost uniformly wonderful.

The room looks big and airy. Yellow ceiling, pale green walls, black klieg-size lights, big windows on the leafy trees of Fitler Square, and a huge mural that more or less suggests the black stick surrealist figures Picasso painted in the '30s. Picasso's most despair-filled period, but cheery and decorative now. The crowd is 30-something Center City West: holders of advanced professional degrees who make over 75 finally have a place of their own in Stix. Dress: casual and moneyed. No grunge, no exposed body parts framed in rubber or leather, no baseball caps (except on the hard-working chefs), no tattooed anything.

A glass of merlot ($4.75) was probably what wine columns call "serious wine, worth discussing." Heavily tannic and small to me. Stoudt's all-natural unpasteurized beer ($3.50) was big and delicious.

The menu is divided like Pamplona's, into small plates and big plates rather than appetizer and entree. Small plates seem much bigger at Stix, and one makes a good appetizer for two. Some big plates can serve as shared entrees, making this a very low-price restaurant. Some can't, making it a moderate-price restaurant. Either way, you get very good value for your money. Food quality is high, and, a trademark of the Chimes chain, everything is cooked to order.

Mediterranean platter ($11) is big enough for two, a dark and delicious roasted baba; thick tasty humus; good bitey mild lentils, roast beets, a woefully undergarlicked cucumber and yogurt tzaziki, two excellent kalamata olives. The other small plates were bigger and even better. Spinach pie ($12) was immense, full of Feta, topped with lots of extremely well-cooked crispy filo, and a side of excellent fresh greens. It's a sign of a Chimes restaurant that the greens are obviously chopped and mixed in house, not just pulled out of a pre-mixed mesclun bale. An excellent salad, dressed to order. Roast vegetables ($7), a mix of long fancy red peppers, fennel, zucchini and eggplant, also seemed done to order, or at least given a last-minute char on the grill, to heighten the bright, fresh taste. Pierogies ($12) were best of all — thick homemade noodle outside, fresh mashed potatoes inside, good sour cream and a side of the great green salad.

Bouillabaisse ($18) is the highest priced big plate, and the most spectacular. Nothing like the dark sludgy bouillabaisse of Charlot in Paris. Nothing like the lobster stew of most Philly restaurants. And extraordinarily good to eat. You get a big meaty langouste, fresh not frozen, dabbling its claws in a small bowl of clear but rich-tasting seafood stock, two bread rounds topped with real saffron, and flanking the langouste are black mussels, green mussels, mahogany clams, some with a tiny curled shrimp tucked in the shells, some with chunks of potato cooked in the stock, plus two big crawfish and long boneless fillet of sea bass. All are perfectly cooked, and since all sit outside the stock you avoid the standard disaster of restaurant bouillabaisse: overcooked fish in undercooked stock. A superb dish. One problem: no shell crackers, so the very edible langouste was mostly uneatable.

Buckwheat noodles ($12) came with earthy beet chunks, small white potato chunks, greens and white stem chunks of bok choy — every thing rouged by cooking with the beets, all of it seemingly tossed like a salad with extra-good olive oil. No cheese, no nothing: just a perfect mix of plain flavors. Try this stuff — it's big and cheap and nobody at the table could stop eating away at it.

Grilled squid ($12) is just as big, expertly grilled to stripe with char lines, cut in bite-size pieces, served over a big bed of steam-fried Chinese veggies, with a smear of Vietnamese pepper sauce (very hot and good) on the side. Soft-shell crabs ($16) were a nightly special, the least-floured soft-shells ever, just enough to give an invisible extra crunch to the shell, fried till just done. Entirely different than the leathery battery Frito-Lay tasting soft-shells you get elsewhere.

Seafood with white and spinach pasta ($14) is made with real spinach instead of spinach powder, so the green is pale and leaks out, certainly made the day it was served, and served with real bite. The seafood is a mix of brown and black mussels, shrimp and mahogany clams, all obviously steamed to order, served in a tomato sauce so fresh-tasting that it too seemed made to order.

Desserts are $4. An undersweet baklava of ground walnuts with superb filo crust was best. Chocolate mousse was extra chocolatey, but so heavy it tasted like a brownie.