Georges Perrier and Le Bec-Fin set the table for Philadelphia fine dining

In “The 86′d Project,” The Inquirer looks back at the restaurants that made an impact on the Philadelphia region. The name comes from the restaurant term “86″ — when the kitchen runs out of a menu item. (“Eighty-six the shrimp!” the chef may say, and the servers start pushing the scallops.)

In this installment, we remember Le Bec-Fin, created by Georges Perrier in 1970.

Genevieve Perrier went to the Warby Parker shop near Rittenhouse Square recently to buy a pair of glasses. It was difficult to walk inside, she said.

For three decades, 1523 Walnut St. was Le Bec-Fin, the posh French restaurant where her father, Georges, set the table for fine dining in Philadelphia, after more than a decade in a smaller location five blocks away. People passed through the door for spectacles of an entirely different sort: feasts served under silver cloches by tuxedoed staff in opulent dining rooms beneath outsized crystal chandeliers.

Georges Perrier, bursting with bravado, seemed to be everywhere back then — shopping at the produce market before dawn, jovially air-kissing his clientele in the dining room. When the kitchen doors swung open and one of his screaming tirades escaped, some customers seemed to savor it as part of the experience.

What his customers and workers saw and heard was his ego and passion, though his regimented, autocratic style has fallen out of favor in restaurants.

“It was the kind of experience that isn’t for everyone,” said Edmund Konrad, a sous chef who later was on Bravo’s Top Chef. “You got broken, built back, and hardened. I grew up in that kitchen.”

» READ MORE: Hear from Georges Perrier's associates about the man they simply know as 'Chef'

Perrier himself maintained a breakneck intensity that he expected those around him to match. The day before he left for France to receive the Legion d’Honneur in 2009, the man widely regarded as one of America’s finest sauciers worked the line and jumped into the dish pit when the kitchen got backed up.

Perrier opened other restaurants (Brasserie Perrier, Le Mas Perrier/Georges’, Table 31, and Mia) and a bakery (The Art of Bread), but Le Bec-Fin was his baby.

The later years, however, were not kind to Le Bec-Fin and to Perrier.

The grand Gallic stylings were no longer in vogue; neither was the atmosphere. An Inquirer review was headlined, “Dear Georges Perrier: What the Bec has happened?”

Perrier may have had the same fire but lacked the secret sauce to attract the younger audiences that would keep Le Bec-Fin relevant — a topic that drove the narrative of the lion-in-winter documentary King Georges.

It’s been 10 years since Georges Perrier bowed out of Le Bec-Fin, a year before its closing.

Perrier spent those first years doing a victory lap. He lent his time to the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College. He consulted for his protegés. His alumni have had high-profile careers of their own, including Pierre Calmels (Bibou), Robert Bennett (Miel, Classic Cake, the Union League), Chip Roman (Blackfish), Chris Scarduzio (Teca), Lee Styer and Jessie Prawlucki-Styer (Fond, The Dutch), Eddie Konrad (Messina Social Club), Peter Woolsey (Bistrot La Minette, La Peg), Jeffrey Power (Dettera), and Gregory Headen (The Black Plate Experience). Earlier chefs included Peter Gilmore (Gilmore’s) and Jean-Pierre Tardy (Jean-Pierre’s). Greg Moore, a general manager and sommelier, owns one of the region’s premier wine shops, Moore Brothers Wine Co., with his brother, David. Two of his chefs — Nicholas Elmi (now at Laurel, Lark, and Landing Kitchen) and Kevin Sbraga (Sbraga, The Fat Ham, now a consultant) — won Bravo’s Top Chef.

Two months after Le Bec-Fin closed, he lost his younger brother Bernard, who had worked for him for 40 years.

Now 79, Perrier has settled into retirement. He reads, watches television, enjoys lunches with friends, and dotes on his granddaughters. He rarely cooks.

» READ MORE: The signature recipe: Galette de Crabe ‘Le Bec-Fin’

We have Peter von Starck, the son of a Philadelphia lawyer, to thank for bringing Georges Perrier to Philadelphia. In the early 1960s, armed with a new fine arts degree from Yale, he discovered French cooking while traveling around the South of France. Back home, he took a job at the Coventry Forge Inn near Pottstown before returning to Provence, where he started working as a saucier and poissonier at Baumanière, a restaurant with three Michelin stars. That’s where he and Perrier met in 1967.

Chatting at his daughter’s home recently, Perrier said he was born to cook. Around age 12, he told his father (a jeweler) and his mother (a physician who lived to 101) that he wanted to become a chef. This choice did not sit well with the bourgeois Perriers, but he prevailed. He began training at age 14 in France’s ruthless brigade system, enduring harsh orders, hours of prep work, and, in the earlier years, hazing. “They used to pour alcohol down my throat,” Perrier said. “The things they did then, you’d be arrested for today.”

Over a bottle of Scotch, von Starck told Perrier that he planned to open a restaurant in a converted rowhouse in Center City Philadelphia. He’d call it La Panetiere, “the pantry,” and he wanted Perrier to be chef.

Perrier turned 24 years old just two weeks before La Panetiere opened shortly before Christmas 1967 at 1312 Spruce St. Classic French cuisine was a novelty in steak-and-potatoes Philadelphia. Across town in Society Hill, there was the far more casual Janine et Jeannine, precursor to La Truffe. “Philadelphia was a desert,” Perrier said.

La Panetiere’s 28 seats filled quickly. Notices were so good that in 1970, von Starck moved La Panetiere to a larger space at 1602 Locust St., while Perrier chose to stay behind on Spruce Street to operate his own restaurant. Le Bec-Fin, an idiom for “fine palate” or “good taste,” opened that year. Perrier said Le Bec-Fin’s food was classic, while La Panetiere’s was more modern.

At Le Bec-Fin, he perfected recipes such as galette de crabe, a French riff on an American crab cake that Perrier devised after a trip to Maryland’s Eastern Shore. (He was making the mousse one afternoon in 1995 when he cut several fingers almost to the bone when he misjudged the blades of a food processor. That injury, from which he recovered completely, was front-page news.)

La Panetiere closed in 1984, following von Starck’s death at age 42.

Perrier moved Le Bec-Fin to the much larger space at 1523 Walnut St. in 1983. The restaurant ushered in a dining revolution on the 1500 block of Walnut Street. It was joined by Susanna Foo, Circa, Il Portico, and Striped Bass (now Butcher & Singer). In time, the restaurants’ success managed to price them off of Walnut Street. Brasserie Perrier, a more casual restaurant, opened in January 1997 at 1619 Walnut St. Perrier closed it at the end of 2008 rather than sign a new lease at triple the rent. Many of those restaurants are now retail stores.

After Genevieve Perrier walked out of Warby Parker and made her way along Walnut toward 15th Street, she looked up and smiled with satisfaction. The city street sign still hangs over Sydenham Street, an alley that links Walnut and Locust Streets. It reads “Georges Perrier Place.”