The venerable Palm closed for renovations in July, putting the fear of God into power lunchers and leaving them to ponder the eternal question: Do I really have to eat at Capital Grille?

The wait is over. The old boy's club finally reopened this past month and is looking to expand the brand beyond its once-stuffy dining room (and once stuffy diners) into a spruced-up side bar and an upstairs private space. While reeking of the worldly charm that is dark oak and cigarette smoke, the new Palm is also lighter, brighter and more open, changes meant to tweak its elder status so as to pack in the young 'uns.

It ain't the corner of Byblos, Bar Noir and Continental Mid-town; but they're trying.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"Before you even finish the phrase 'old boy' — the answer is 'yes,'" says new Palm GM Curt Schaber, a Washington and Detroit Palm transplant, to a question I've barely asked. "We want a younger crowd. And we're already getting it."

This isn't the stodgy Palm.

While an elderly gentleman asks about his "usual table 12," Schaber informs me that third-gen Palm owners Walter Ganzi Jr. and Bruce Bozzi Jr. wanted to leap beyond the Palm as "destination restaurant" or "restaurant only" philosophy into the lounge aesthetic. "The Philly branch — one with the loyalest following — is the test market, to see how we can maintain the old atmosphere while appealing to younger sorts who like staying out later."

Upon entering the gold hotel doors, you get hit with the Palm's first change — a new red oak lounge to match the wooded finish of the restaurant. Tented by the Bellevue's cathedral ceilings and given several separate entrances, the bar's walls reach 10 feet, giving it delicious air space. It shares the same new booth look and old brown-and-tan, mosaic-tiled floor as the restaurant. "The old room was bland — an afterthought, really just to serve the restaurant," says Schaber. Still sidled with a Stan Lee Spiderman cartoon, the high-backed oak bar is filled, tonight, not only with guys in blue blazers and khakis but also reed-thin young women in body-hugging black cocktail dresses.

Another new addition is the mezzanine-level, short-ceilinged meeting/private dining room, one whose walls are covered with silvery photos of habitus (Oliver Hardy, Orson Welles) from the original Manhattan Palm as well as gorgeous oaken blinds that open for a breathtaking sight of the Bellevue's epic marbled lobby. "This is definitely a 'big night' room," says Schaber of a spot whose entrance stairway is currently still getting its fill of caricatures.

Then there's the main room. Go through the Palm's vaunted doorway. Go past the exposed hostess station (though I think this openness breathes an air of community, "This will change soon — enclosed to have our own space," says Schaber), new wainscoting and the wider, newly padded, brown-and-grey-striped power booths — the see-and-be-seen ones.

You find not only more breathing and foot space for diners and white-coated waiters under the slowly spinning ceiling fans, but a groovy side room as yet unnamed. "We ripped out the old walls, maître d' stands and what used to be a bar and expanded it over five feet," says Schaber about the side room. It's intimate, romantic and cozy: something of a respite from the now roomier main room, which sends up a roar between "the oceanfront property" of power booths along the Broad Street window and the new baby room on the other side.

They also had to remove a lot of the old faces from the walls. Who would be gone? How would they take it? Would most of them even be alive to know? "That's the rub. We have been putting a lot back up. Slowly — finding the right real estate for them. We get customers in here nightly asking, 'Where's my face?'" (When I drank, that was always a question of mine.)

For some, there are good answers. "It's over there." Or, "Not up yet," says Schaber. Along with cleaning up many of the older caricatures and restoring them, Philly artist Bronwyn Bird is currently drawing reproductions of many the faces that had to come down during construction. "To some, my job is to embrace people, give a hug and say, 'It's coming.'"

Others have not made the cut: Old sports sorts no longer playing in Philly or whose careers ended 15 or more years ago are gone, says Schaber. "Some faces had to go."

The Palm, 200 S. Broad St., 215-546-7256.