Bistro

If the Daily News were a restaurant, it would be a bistro. Bistros are friendly, informal eateries with a neighborhood atmosphere and short menus of delicious, simple food. But simple doesn't mean boring, and it sure doesn't mean easy. It means straightforward good tastes and good value for your money. There are lots of them around, and lots of imitations too. Halfway between Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the Avenue of the Arts, Caribou Cafe is a the real bistro deal, good for the spirit and great for the palate.

Joe Brown, successfully fusing Louisiana and Italy for 14 years at Melange Cafe in Cherry Hill, has ventured into Haddonfield with another BYOB, Melange @ Haddonfield (18 Tanner St., 856-354-1333). The larger spot, which opened last month, represents a new role for Shadee Holden, one of Brown's proteges. The East Camden-raised Holden started working for Brown while in high school. He went to Johnson & Wales (class of 2006), landed at Alphabet Soup and the late 707, and returned to Brown in Cherry Hill.

Moe and Nehide Rahpo, who have lived in eastern Montgomery County for years and formerly owned Ariana in Lansdowne, didn't want a long commute to their next Afghan restaurant. They took over a pizzeria off Easton Road in Horsham for their homey Yalda Grill (222 Horsham Rd., 215-444-9502), where it's a family affair that includes their sons Omid and Niez. The parents, who emigrated from Afghanistan in 1973, handle the cooking - a combo of Middle Eastern cuisine plus an assortment of Afghan dishes (the soup called aush , the dumplings known as mantu )

Rittenhouse Square's Twenty Manning (261 S. 20th St.) is back after a five-week redo to both its philosophy and its look. At Twenty Manning Grill , gone are the glass partitions that looked so cool 10 years ago when the place opened as the bar-equipped companion to owner Audrey Taichman's Audrey Claire down the block. Fury Interior Design went sunny and white, adding tongue-and-groove wood paneling and a white-tile bar to complement the white pressed-tin ceiling. The scheme contrasts with new yellow leather banquettes, dark wood bistro chairs, and wooden tables.

A wine thief is a glorified straw, a long glass siphon used to steal sips of wine from its aging barrel. And when Chris Simpson and his wife, Sophie, first came across such a device at a winery in Virginia, they were struck by what the samples it drew revealed about the virtues of a little time. The thief's draft of young 90-day-old wine was "pretty rotten," he said. The taste of a similar wine aged three years, however, had rounded out quite nicely into something far more worthwhile.

Slow economy? You wouldn't know it by the openings lighting up the local dining scene, going through its biggest growth spurt in recent memory. And we mean "big," from the mega-size of these new restaurants to the hefty checks and the big names behind them. Upscale ethnic eateries, power steak houses, ambitious pizza bars, and bold new places for the suburbs have also changed the eating landscape dramatically. Rick Nichols offers a primer to catch you up on hot spots you might have missed this summer.

Three days into its world premiere on Rittenhouse Square last week, Parc, the French bistro, was still four deep at the zinc bar, awash in first-wave beautiful people, at work on its sea legs. "Table 406?" the waiter inquired of owner Stephen Starr, approaching his curbside table with bowls of what looked to be trout amandine. "No," Starr said. He'd been chatting with a guest, studiously ignoring a cutting board - already served - heaped with country pate, salami, prosciutto and mustard: " This is Table 407. Table 406 is behind me. " Behind him, stretching half a block north on 18th Street, and almost as far around the corner on Locust, the cafe tables under crenelated awnings lent a distinctively - persuasively - Parisian mood to the place.

Nobody puts on a suit and tie anymore to go out to eat, as formal dining continues its quick fade. But Philadelphia's restaurants still have some serious style. Here are eight great destinations, from cutting-edge city hot spots to cool suburban classics, a Paris-style boite, and a parkside perch where the people-watching is as prime as what's on the plate.   Adsum This fall's hottest no-reservations table comes courtesy of ex-Lacroix chef Matthew Levin, whose debut as an owner-chef is refining contemporary bistro style in Queen Village with a menu that's both cutting-edge and affordable.

From the moody, palm-fringed dining room at Fork, you can view the catch that is Terence Feury, framed in the stainless steel of the open kitchen, dark bistro apron past the knee, shaven head glinting in the light from above. He's a trophy fish, an exceedingly big fish (time at Le Bernardin in New York, top chef jobs with various Ritz-Carltons and, most visibly, before its demise, the city's celebrated Striped Bass), suddenly, though ostensibly contentedly, aswim in a far, far littler pond.

Caribou, the two-story Center City bistro, is unpretentious, with a lower case "u. " How unlucky can I be, in the company of three attractive, acclaimed authors, to draw a waiter who uncorks a bottle of Vouvray, squeezes the cork, strokes it, sniffs it, and then tosses it disdainfully into the ice bucket? S'il vous plait, if I'm paying $32 for an $11 bottle of Vouvray, am I not entitled to sniff the cork? The Aigle Blanc Vouvray was terrific, crisp and clean. The waiter was pompous, intrusive and uninformed.