Cocktail

THE RESTAURANTS and merchants of Rittenhouse Row are gathering again on Walnut Street this Saturday, and that means about 50,000 area residents and guests will be joining them for one of Center City's largest street fairs. The Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival will close Walnut from Broad to 19th streets (from noon until 5 p.m.) and feature food, fashion, entertainment and fun for children. It's big. It's crowded. It's fun. And this year there's a lot of new stuff. * Dunkin' Donuts will be giving out free iced coffee on the 1400 block of Walnut.

There are no exceptions - even on a cold, rainy night in January, you'll have to wait outside the unmarked door of Hop Sing Laundromat in Chinatown for entry. After the doorman comes out to check your party's IDs (don't try to enter with more than four people) and give you the once-over (don't wear sneakers or hats), you will, if you're lucky, make the cut to the next-level waiting room, where there are more rules (no cellphone photos, video, or talking), and finally to a table where there are yet more rules (cash only, two-drink minimum)

The philosopher Hannah Arendt once wrote a book about the banality of evil. After seeing "Cocktail," I want to write one about the evil of banality. I know, I know. It's only a movie. But when a movie is as cliche-ridden, witless, numbingly dull, untrue to life, ill-acted, silly, poorly constructed shoddily written and vulgar as this one - all washed down with a score of second-rate rock music - you tend to overreact. "Cocktail," which was directed by the previously reputable Roger Donaldson ("Smash Palace," "No Way Out")

THE cocktail menu is now taken as a given, almost an article of faith. If you go to anyplace with a liquor license and any sort of ambition above that of Bud Lights or Jagermeister shots, there's probably going to be one, usually with drinks costing in the double digits. Go back only a decade or two, and you found very few places with cocktail menus. Just about the only places that had specialty cocktail menus were places like Chili's, Applebee's or other chains, with their cloying Mudslides and Appletinis and Cosmopolitans and gigantic Day-Glo Margaritas.

The dark-haired woman who accompanied mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Pomona, N.J., Thursday night has been identified by law enforcement sources as Colette Phillips, a 37-year-old former cocktail waitress. Phillips, who lives in Longport, N.J., has been seen in the company of Scarfo, 57, since at least November 1980, the sources said. After Scarfo was arrested by FBI agents at Atlantic City International Airport at Pomona, Phillips, wearing a black mink coat, drove off in a Mercedes without making any comment.

Last week's apparent outbreak of amity among city leaders over school funding makes it seem more likely - though by no means certain - that City Council will finally pass a modest "cocktail tax. " This 10 percent tax on drinks sold in bars and restaurants won't by itself solve the schools' funding problems, but it is now a crucial component in the package put together to cover the school district's projected deficit by Mayor Rendell, the school...

While the eating may be suspect at the Farmers' Cabinet, the libations are solid gold. The beer geeks will be in heaven with 26 stellar taps of unusual Euro suds, including cask renditions of rare salty, wheaty Swiss La Douze from BFM, among many others. But with a ragtime band pumping away, I was really channeling the pre-Prohibition cocktail inspirations from mix-mistress Phoebe Esmon. There are renditions of the classics (a tart whiskey sour amped up with egg whites and Yamazaki whisky)

The culinary cocktail fad has spread - its emphasis on classics revamped with boutique liqueurs and surprising house-made mixers - into a required accessory for most striving new restaurants. And Adsum's moody bar, run by former Apothecary mixologist Preston Eckman, is no exception, with its own battery of infused wines, smoked blackberry syrups, house apricot liqueurs, and shaker-whipped eggwhite froths. But few of the cocktails here show the sharp kitchen cross-over moves of the genre quite as artfully as the Logical Consequence.

A former Northeast Philadelphia plumber's five-year fight to overturn his conviction for being the notorious "Molotov cocktail bandit" has gone down the drain. Yesterday, Common Pleas Judge James A. Lineberger not only denied Bruce Riffel's request for a new trial, but also sentenced the him to 30 to 60 years in prison on robbery, arson and related charges. Riffel, 36, of Sanger Street near Loretto Avenue, Frankford, used gasoline bombs and knives to terrorize and rob a series of convenience-store clerks, pulling the jobs between 2 and 5 a.m., in 1988, said Assistant District Attorney Tia Sutter.

Can there be the slightest doubt that "The Cocktail Hour," which bowed locally Wednesday night at Plays and Players under the auspices of the Philadelphia Theatre Co., is the closest A.R. Gurney play to Gurney's own true self? Does Heinz believe that pickles are delicious and refreshing? "The Cocktail Hour" is a play about a dramatist who has written a play called "The Cocktail Hour" which centers upon the author's own thinly disguised family - particularly his father and mother - and takes place during that cherished WASP social interval, the pre-dinner cocktail hour.

A dishy design This pretty plate with Asian-inspired ginkgo blossoms is created with a wax relief technique that makes it more crafty than Crate & Barrel. Use the stoneware for display or that second helping of dumplings. - Cathy Rubin Akemi Green Platter, $6.95 for 12.5-by-6.5-inch plate at crateandbarrel.com. This is part of a collection that includes a 7-inch square plate as well as mini-dishes and a noodle bowl. Southern classic meets Brooklyn DIY Eric Prim and Josh Williams were college roommates, both with Southern roots, who found themselves hosting many a cocktail party and improvising with a Mason jar as their cocktail shaker.

There are 12,000 pieces in Drexel University's Historic Costume Collection, but curator Clare Sauro's eyes twinkle like metallic threads when she explains why a particular light blue, crushed-velvet sheath from the 1920s is ageless and of-the-moment awesome. "It's from the Callot Soeurs," Sauro said, holding the 87-year-old textile delicately between white-gloved fingers. She's referring to four French sisters considered among the earliest dressmakers to incorporate mixed media into their frocks of velvet, lace, and ribbons.

Makes 1 cocktail 2 ounces blanco tequila 1 ounce lime juice (fresh) 3/4 ounces simple syrup 1/2 ounces ginger/kale    juice (see note) 1. Rim cocktail glass with lime, then line with Smoked Sea Salt (fine grade). Fill cocktail glass with ice. Shake all ingredients in shaker with ice. 2. Strain into cocktail class full of ice. Garnish with lime wheel and kale leaf. - Recipe courtesy of Mike DiTota Note: Ginger/kale juice is made by juicing fresh kale and ginger at a 1:1 ratio.

There are no exceptions - even on a cold, rainy night in January, you'll have to wait outside the unmarked door of Hop Sing Laundromat in Chinatown for entry. After the doorman comes out to check your party's IDs (don't try to enter with more than four people) and give you the once-over (don't wear sneakers or hats), you will, if you're lucky, make the cut to the next-level waiting room, where there are more rules (no cellphone photos, video, or talking), and finally to a table where there are yet more rules (cash only, two-drink minimum)

Tea, anyone? Actually, by the time Sunday night's Downton Abbey return is over, you may be wanting something a good deal stiffer. Maybe one of those newfangled "cocktails" that are all the rage in the spring of 1920 as the third season of this British delicacy begins. What's all this, then? Trouble in Yorkshire? Indubitably. Both in the drawing room and in the scullery. When last we visited the Crawleys, Matthew (Dan Stevens) and Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) were joyously celebrating their betrothal in a shimmering snowstorm.

While Black Friday shoppers were winding down frenzied searches for flat-screen TVs, designer Bela Shehu hosted a swank meet-and-greet at studio:christensen with Harper's Bazaar associate editor Lisa Luna. In total Shehu fashion, the designer toasted her new retail space on the biggest shopping day of the year, confident her customers - women who would rather wrap themselves in asymmetrical black cloaks than get caught up in the buttons of a tan trench - would come to the Rittenhouse studio to check out 30 new pieces of her NINObrand collection.

This snappy cocktail created by Vincent Stipo from Vernick Food and Drink provides just the tonic to the tension of getting the turkey on the table. Plan ahead and make the base in advance, then appoint a bartender to mix drinks. - Maureen Fitzgerald Boggy Collins Makes 1 cocktail 1 1/2 ounces Tito's Handmade Vodka (or other good-quality vodka) 2 ounces fresh cranberry puree (see recipe below) 1/2 ounce fresh lime Splash of ginger beer Orange wedge or peel (for garnish)

The 3rd annual Six Flags Grape Adventure at Six Flags Great Adventure (Route 537 West, Jackson, N.J.) has been rescheduled for noon-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Sample wines from 12 Jersey vineyards, plus food, crafts and live music. A private safari tour, too. $20, $35 for wine/safari package. 732-928-1821, sixflags.com . Four days of celebratory events are planned for the new Kitchen Kapers store at the Marlton Square Shopping Center in Burlington County, N.J., including Thursday's Girls Night Out, with wine, cheese, gift bags and a holiday hors d'oeuvres demo by Chef Vivian Fiorentino of Nonna's Tuscan Restaurant (211 Haddonfield-Berlin Road, Cherry Hill, N.J., 856-795-1778, nonnascherryhillnj.com )

THERE ARE many experiential wrinkles in play during a visit to a craft cocktail bar. Baroque discussion of obscure aperitifs. Citrus peels set alight tableside. Raconteur barkeeps eager to share the cultural profile of a scotch you've not heard of before artfully cascading it into a chilled highball glass. All this whimsy, of course, is worthless if the drinks taste like death. If they're made right, by the right people with the right ingredients, it's never an issue. Until the bill comes.

The facade of a South Philadelphia house was damaged early Tuesday when two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the house, the Philadelphia Fire Department said. Emergency personnel responded to a call at 2:13 a.m. on the 500 block of Mifflin Street, Executive Chief Richard Davison said Tuesday. One Molotov cocktail had hit the door and ignited, while the other shattered a window but did not ignite. Firefighters controlled the blaze a few minutes later, he said, and no one was injured. Residents were still staying in the house despite the shattered front window, a charred door, and a strong odor of gas outside.