"...an elegant interpretation..."

Dining Out

Magic Pans: Four intriguing new arrivals, from Philadelphia's first Malaysian restaurant to the return of, yes, crêpes

By Maria Gallagher

Pancakes for dinner. Stingray for lunch. A dozen oysters as a midnight snack. A burger for brunch.

A quartet of new restaurants with day-into-night menus are challenging conventional notions about what we should eat, when we should eat it and what we should call it.

At Beau Monde in Queen Village, a coq au vin crêpe can be ordered at noon or at 10 p.m. Can't face another midday tuna hoagie? Penang in Chinatown will be pleased to serve you spicy stingray, a tropical fruit salad with shrimp paste or any similarly exotic dish from its Malaysian menu, straight through until i a.m. Oberon, a French-Italian bistro in Old City, opens its kitchen at noon, doesn't shut down until midnight on weeknights and 2 a.m. on weekends, and keeps its raw bar going lunchtime to midnight.

Rouge 98 doesn't label anything an appetizer or an entree. The menu simply lists "plates"; food service is continuous from noon till 2 a.m. The cheeseburger, though withdrawn during dinner hours, is so popular that it's usually a special at Sunday brunch.

Consider these rule-benders successors to the diners that offer breakfast all day long. Here you can have lunch or dinner or a light bite almost anytime--even before Happy Hour or after the 11 o'clock news--and call it what you will.

I have never been to Brittany, the part of France that Beau Monde names as its source of inspiration, but I do have an enduring fondness for crêpes that I can trace to a certain sidewalk cart on the Boulevard St. Michelin Paris. Those crêpes-- cooked on a big griddle while I watched, then smeared with apple butter or sprinkled with lemon juice and sugar--were folded neatly while still hot and handed over with a paper wrapping. One cost the U.S. equivalent of a dollar, a wonderfully affordable indulgence for a hungry student.

The savory and sweet crêpes at Beau Monde are a far more elegant interpretation of my fondly remembered afternoon snack, with such grown-up fillings as coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon or chèvre and apples. They are served in an impeccably detailed dining room with velvet doorway draperies, a stamped-tin ceiling, a petite bar, a center fireplace and French doors that can be opened in fair weather. The 48 gold-leaf botanical paintings that ring the room are the handiwork of Bolivian-born co-owner David Salama, a fine-arts painter who doubles as le roi of the crêpe griddle, having served an apprenticeship in Brittany. The front of the house is the domain of co-proprietor Jim Caiola, a filmmaker with a restaurant management degree from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, who has a family connection to the crêpe-making craft: An aunt and uncle have operated La Crêperie in Chicago for more than 25 years.

           

Fold 'em: One of Beau Monde's savory buckwheat crêpes

Beau Monde's savory crêpes, made with buckwheat flour, are folded into squares and served without any side vegetables or garnishes. They look plain and thin on the plate but prove to be an ample main course. Some combinations worth recommending: mushrooms, Swiss cheese and toasted almonds; creamed spinach and sea scallops (a combination of my own devising); and earthy raratouille paired with spicy Andouille sausage.

Two can share one of the large, uniformly fresh salads as a prelude to main-course crêpes; the best for appetizer purposes is the spinach salad with roasted beets, hazelnuts and marinated onions in a balsamic vinaigrette, served with goat cheese crostini. A seafood salad that combines tuna still warm from the grill with chilled shrimp, scallops, greens, hard-cooked egg, olives and basmati rice can stand alone as a lunch or dinner entree.

I was less enthused about the onion soup and the escargots, the latter served in a pool of butter with clots of garlic paste, rather than chopped fresh garlic. The pâtés are good, though not made in-house. A cheese plate with fresh fruits and breads can serve as a late-night nosh or dessert substitute, though I can't imagine why anyone would pass up dessert.

The crêpe with sautéed apples, brown sugar, caramel sauce, Chantily cream and vanilla ice cream won our Best of Philly award this year for fruit dessert. The banana-Nutella combination is equally deserving. The dessert crêpes are large enough to share, which mitigates the sticker shock: $10.75 in the case of the aforementioned apple crêpe.

I did find myself pining for a better selection of wines by the glass. At least one Beaujolais, s'il vous plait?