A year later, it's the place to be

One recent week, the lineup at the restaurant at the Fairmount Water Works began with a wedding reception on the balustraded terrace and progressed on succeeding days to a city film-office soiree hosted by M. Night Shyamalan (who was a no-show), a tasting of Greek olive oils, a cocktail party thrown by the Drexel University school of business, and a fund-raiser for Rudy Guliani, winding up a with a charity affair on a Saturday organized by Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb.

It is just shy of a year back in business now, a reanimated ornament from the city's Golden Age, its centerpiece - the restored Engine House (flanked by those Greek Revival temples) - dating to 1812.

Things went about as rockily as they could in reviving the space, so it is no surprise that the first year hasn't been a cakewalk: The heating and air-conditioning were erratic divas. The opening chef wasn't ready for prime time. Wildlife weary of life on the river occasionally popped up uninvited.

If you sit down with owner Michael Karloutsos, you can almost feel the post-traumatic stress. But drop by on a whim for lunch, the river twinkling below, and encounter the welcoming embrace of André Darwish, his eyes dancing, his linen suit just-so dapper, and, behold: You hear, afresh, the music of the place.

Darwish (like the Water Works itself) has come out of retirement, bored by days without opportunity for florid greeting and gracious seating, his stock in trade as a former maitre d' at haute Le Bec-Fin. So before we order, before we fully register the newer touches - white tablecloths on the cafe tables on the veranda, imported shade umbrellas that twist in the wind (the better to avoid keeling over) - he sweeps an arm across the expanse of the Schuylkill, and the curl of waterfalls, and the silent freight tracks in the distance, and offers in a French accent heavy with affection and local pride: "Look, you are in Europe here, not in Philadelphia!"

My panko-crusted oysters are appropriately crisp and nicely posed atop shells aswim with spinach and a milky, Dodoni feta fondue. And a classic shrimp scampi is done in the manner that, well, helped make it a classic. (There's a classic cocktail list, as well, and I forgive the Water Works Restaurant and Lounge for substituting Dubonnet Red for the sweet vermouth - to no good effect - in my negroni because it was quickly followed one evening by a pair of truly exquisite pan-seared crabcakes.)

Not everyone is easily pleased. Some are startled there's no white-glove service: "People have so much ownership," says Karloutsos. "They expect it to be what they imagined it to be driving past it on the expressway for 30 years."

And so they do, though they had one thing right all along - how sweet it would be to while away a lunch hour or leisurely dinner on those shuttered terraces: the traffic hum across the water, as manager Ed Doherty soon realized, precisely echoing the shushing of the falls; the sun slipping down; the lights of Boathouse Row winking on.

It is one of the city's prized perches, and 12 months later, two things are obvious. Chef Darryl Harmon's food seems surer-footed (and in the case of the juicy buffalo frog's legs, a tentative step beyond the classics). And event planners are quick to snap up those 105 prime outdoor tables.

On a given evening, this can mean you might be relegated to seating in the "Cliffside Terrace," facing a parking lot, a fountain, and the rock garden that climbs to the Art Museum.

Or, given the capriciousness of Mother Nature, you might be shooed off the riverside terrace ("Le Deck-Fin," as Darwish has taken to calling it) by a rain squall, and offered a free cocktail in the shelter of the bar.

Karloutsos' favorite Web site used to be Yankees.com. Now it's weather.com, he says: "My comps on rain days are out of this world."

640 Water Works Dr.

215-236-9000. www.

thewaterworksrestaurant.

com

EndText

.