Continental Divide — and Conquer?

ABOVE AND BEYOND: Continental Mid-town, complete with roof deck, is busy distinguishing itself from its Old City sister, while its Rittenhouse neighbors adjust to its arrival. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Neighbors react to Continental Mid-town's opening — each for different reasons.

by A.D. Amorosi

Popping into Stephen Starr's Continental Mid-town on 18th and Chestnut — watching it go from the tattered Casual Corner to the Op-to-Pop lounge it would be — became summer's most obsessive sport for its neighboring entrepreneurs.

Duck in. Crane neck. Figure out what goes where.

After Rittenhouse Row re-defined itself for restaurant crowds in the last decade, recently minted Broad-and-below nightlife and restaurant owners have watched audience ranks swell in the last five years. And their Rittenhouse neighbors wanted more where younger audiences were concerned.

They wanted Starr.

"Not to sound arrogant, they should be overjoyed we're here," says Starr, who spied the beat-up Casual Corner along the beaten-down block of Chestnut Street two years ago. "The area has a reputation for being staid and older. The younger audiences want an alternative — something groovier — to Striped Bass and Brasserie Perrier. Few entrepreneurs brought that to that area. We will."

"Bobby Startup and I took the "square' out of Rittenhouse Square five year ago," laughs David Carroll of his crowded Bar Noir's tenure along South 18th. "But it could be better, younger. With Stephen, the overflow of under-40s will bring us more customers. I wish he would've come sooner." Carroll's experience was similar to Starr's entrance into Old City, and he knows what it feels like to take a risk. ""Yards away from dead old Chestnut? You're crazy,'" says Carroll of the initial reaction to Noir. "Now, we're a destination, the offbeat neighbor." He doesn't see Starr as competition. Rather, Carroll — like his neighbor, Dia Sawan, who's putting new lounge touches on his Sawan restaurant — sees Starr as a godsend. "We're uniquely situated. The spillover will make for a very compatible collaboration."

Having watched Tragos at 19th Street grow steadily in its nine-month existence, its co-owner, Justin Zeigler, sees the new Continental as part of the open market that is the new downtown. "Starr brings a cachet of success wherever he goes," says Zeigler. "But all new bars in this area like Loie [owned by Avram Hornik] have been helped by our opening and we by theirs. It's a slingshot effect. Crowds zig and zag between us." It wasn't easy. Zeigler's first four months at his lounge/dance club meant defining what Tragos was after. "We didn't just want "Not Old City or just Rittenhouse people,' he remembers. They wanted, and got, an 800-person capacity crowd who crave what Zeigler calls a family feel: "a homier, funkier vibe." Zeigler sees Starr's forte thus: People will go to Continental Mid-town for dinner and come to Tragos afterward. "I don't think he's so good at doing the club or lounge thing any more. He's more of a literally big restaurant guy."

Despite the fact that Mid-town is this three-tier, 16,000-square-foot, 300-seat, 42-bar-seat behemoth that cost seven million dollars to build and takes 197 people to staff, Starr's director of restaurants, Bradlee Bartram, counters claims that it's too big and lacks the lounge culture that brought the first Continental to prominence.

"I look at the back bar on the first floor — lowered ceiling, tight space — and I see what we started in Old City, an intimate bar with over-the-top drinks and food," says Bartram, the "original Starr employee." "I see the party room in the back of the mezzanine and I see the Bank [a club run by Starr in the '80s and '90s]. All [Continental Mid-town] needed was what it has — Stephen, a corner location — to make it."

And Old City was, nine and half years ago, on the verge. Now, Bartram says, "Stuff's getting ready to happen on both sides of us; it's exactly the same. This area is ready to extend."

Though the price tag isn't rootsy, Bartram sees this Continental as re-introducing an unfettered, convivial vibe that existed within the industry before Starr raised the bar toward greater expectation levels and high-ticket theatrical venues.

"I'm key because I can bring the looseness that was here — within this company and the Continental — from the start," says Bartram. That he calls this a "company" tells you how things have changed since meeting Starr.

Apart from Starr's "serious restaurants" — neighboring Striped Bass, Alma de Cuba, the upcoming steak house at the Barclay — Bartram sees Continental Mid-town's quality as being as high as its capacity for fun new menu fixtures like spinach maki roll (no rice, no nori paper). Amongst the staples of the Continental's signature "global tapas" are items like rad na Thai noodles and spinach ravioli, plus "wacky dessert fare" like cotton candy (ginger, cinnamon) and fruit loops — lemongrass-infused broth with coconut sorbet and multicolored tapioca pearls that taste exactly like the cereal. Eat that while drinking a Dirty Shirley, a Shirley Temple spiced up strongly with cherry vodka, and you're hearkening back to your youth.

"Since our start, the Continental created ingenious menu items and changed the grazing experience to one of fine dining that was fun. We're still doing that." Bartram hopes now they can vary the experience "from table to table." And there's even a new take on those tables — small mezzanine "deuce" tables lined with hanging wicker chairs next to worsted-wool-upholstered booths that hold eight. "It's going to cost money to sit in those seats," laughs Bartram about having to raise price points from Continental 1's more inexpensive menu to pay for Mid-town's decadence. "It'll be worth it."