Dining Room

While newer hotel restaurants generally emphasize quality of cuisine, the Haymarket dining room in the Mount Laurel Hilton sticks to the tried and true. Unfortunately, the old ways no longer seem so good. The unexciting decor in this brightly lighted restaurant seems little changed over the years, while the cuisine is a throwback to the days when steak houses were in vogue. With bookshelf-lined walls, the cavernous dining room has something of a library atmosphere, although it would have more appeal if the lighting were more romantic.

It's not quite ready to be called the Restaurant Row of Queen Village, but with the opening of the New Wave Cafe's dining room, Third and Catharine Streets now has two restaurant attractions. For those not familiar with the area, New Wave is directly across from Dmitri's, the very small Mediterranean BYOB where long lines of patrons endure the no-reservations policy to savor the now-legendary fresh fish dishes. It was, the story goes, this policy that helped give birth to New Wave's serious dining room.

It's nice when a restaurant improves but oh, so sad when the reverse occurs. Unfortunately, that is what has happened to the elegant cuisine and dining room at the former Tall Pines Inn in Sewell. Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski took over the restaurant and surrounding golf course nearly two years ago, renamed it the Eagles' Nest Golf and Country Club and downgraded the restaurant to an informal dining room with little character and modest food. Now called Mulligan's, the restaurant seems as much a sportsman's hangout as a public dining room.

The name of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel's most formal restaurant is simplicity itself: The Dining Room. The generously-proportioned room, with its crystal chandeliers and discreet piano music, is quite proper and restrained. The service is correct and unobtrusive. By now, you may be thinking: Uh-oh, here it comes. Boring food. On the contrary. Alsatian-born chef Philippe Reininger is turning out dazzlingly beautiful, original dishes that tickle the imagination as well as the palate.

In one breath, Susanna Foo explains that she is leaving these elegant digs on Walnut Street, closing her eponymous landmark of a dining room - the wellspring of her groundbreaking style of French-Chinese fusion - because she needs to "simplify. " She is vigorous still, at 65. But she was stressed from splitting herself - sometimes it almost seemed literally - between the Center City kitchen and her sleeker, newer (since 2006) Radnor restaurant, which will remain open. There's another reason to stay closer to her Main Line home: Her husband's health is not what it once was; a worrisome unsteadiness has crept into his gait.

Architect Anthony Weber studied in Italy for his master's degree in architecture. In 1988, he rented an apartment at Third and Catharine Streets, where he discovered that many of his neighbors had Italian roots. Weber, who comes from a small town on the Ohio River in Kentucky, fell in love with South Philadelphia. "At that point, the area wasn't exactly trendy," he said. "I liked the neighborhood and felt comfortable near the Italian Market. " The year and a half he spent studying in Italy might have had something to do with that.

Bryn Kaufman has gone from selling microcomputers from the dining room in his father's house to running a $35 million reseller of computer hardware, software and other equipment in the last 13 years. Kaufman moved his company, CMPExpress.com Inc., in October from Broomall to a second-floor office in the Hilltop Professional Building in Brookhaven. The young entrepreneur talks about tripling his 40-person workforce during the next year and getting ready for an initial public offering.

There are no windows in the luxurious dining room of the newly christened Westin hotel Grill Room. Its walls are so padded with posh green upholstery and dark wood accents that it feels like eating inside a Victorian sofa. Alone. That's right. There are virtually no customers in this dining room. And it is Friday night. What a strange sensation to sit in a space so lavish, decked with fine linens and crystal, an orchid on every table, the antique breakfronts filled with china, and watch all these gracious padded armchairs remain empty.

Longtime visitors remember Wida's, a mainstay built in the 1920s that in more recent years billed itself as "an old-fashioned seashore hotel like grandmother used to frequent. " Well, grandma, Wida's is gone. But unlike the island's cedar-shingled bungalows that were torn down and replaced with vinyl-sided seamonsters, Wida's has undergone a face-lift, an update, and a name change. Say hello to Daddy O. Martin Grims, the restaurateur who owns the Moshulu and several Main Line bistros, has turned the old Brant Beach structure into a 22-room boutique hotel and dining room aimed at the hip, urbane patron.

When Michael Vogel was studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he would spend a lot of his free time building things in the school's furniture-grade wood shop. Ten years as an investment banker, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, did not dull the Elkins Park native's interest in woodworking. "I tried to get access to woodshops regularly, but always found closed doors," Vogel said. The shops he approached would cite wear and tear on the machines, or insurance concerns, or that Vogel would be getting in the way as reasons to shut him out. The alternative was signing up for classes at a woodworking school, thus having regular access to a shop, but his schedule would not allow him to commit to, for example, certain set hours every Monday night.

Kay Sykora had lived in Manayunk and Roxborough since 1973, raising her children there and renovating several houses. Over 39 years, she helped found the Manayunk Development Corp., where she spent 16 years as executive director. She loved the area's history and charm. Frank Meis spent four decades in a classic Colonial in Lafayette Hill, raising a family there with his then-wife. When he and Sykora decided to marry in 2008, they looked for a place that was "theirs. " She was smitten with the hill towns, and he warmed to the idea of city living, but with one caveat: He wanted a driveway.

The first time Ashley Berke and John McGinniss saw the house in Fishtown that they now own, they bolted. "It was horrible — depressing!" as Berke recalls the three-story house, whose original section dates to the 1840s. Months went by as the couple searched for a home in the Philadelphia neighborhood, one they loved for its diversity, history and old dwellings, until — a year after that first visit — there was a call from a Realtor suggesting that the property might be worth a second look.

When Michael Vogel was studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he would spend a lot of his free time building things in the school's furniture-grade wood shop. Ten years as an investment banker, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, did not dull the Elkins Park native's interest in woodworking. "I tried to get access to woodshops regularly, but always found closed doors," Vogel said. The shops he approached would cite wear and tear on the machines, or insurance concerns, or that Vogel would be getting in the way as reasons to shut him out. The alternative was signing up for classes at a woodworking school, thus having regular access to a shop, but his schedule would not allow him to commit to, for example, certain set hours every Monday night.

THE GEORGES PERRIER era at Le Bec-Fin will end Saturday night. Amid the hushed white-tablecloth grandeur of the dining room of the Walnut Street institution, beneath enormous crystal chandeliers, Perrier addressed several dozen staff members before dinner service yesterday to introduce Le Bec-Fin's new owner, Nicolas Fanucci. "I never thought this day would happen," Perrier said, his voice breaking, his eyes welling with tears. "I'm 70 years old [actually, 68]. I just can't do this anymore.

Architect Anthony Weber studied in Italy for his master's degree in architecture. In 1988, he rented an apartment at Third and Catharine Streets, where he discovered that many of his neighbors had Italian roots. Weber, who comes from a small town on the Ohio River in Kentucky, fell in love with South Philadelphia. "At that point, the area wasn't exactly trendy," he said. "I liked the neighborhood and felt comfortable near the Italian Market. " The year and a half he spent studying in Italy might have had something to do with that.

The magic is gone. We no longer have anything in common. There are trust issues. So now, in this most impossible of real estate markets, I often wonder: Do I want a divorce from my house? My mortgage is not underwater, though these months of rain have left my spirits a bit damp. After editing all the articles for The Inquirer's recent Home Price Survey, I know that the median value in my town is down 19 percent since 2005, but I bought before the last housing bubble started to inflate.

This personal journey begins at the end. After 50 hours in New York City to get out of the neighborhood and take in a couple of plays, my wife and I returned home, where we had left our 19-year-old son Cale to his own devices. His older sister thought us crazy. And so began our second journey, an investigation, sniffing for clues about what happened during our absence. Clue No. 1: A strange car sits in the driveway. Clue No. 2: We get blasted by an overwhelming odor as we open the front door.

A 72-year-old man died in a house fire in Northwest Philadelphia Sunday night. The man was found in the dining room of his home in the 7000 block of Georgian Road in the city's West Oak Lane section. The house was fully engulfed in fire when firefighters arrived at 7:36 p.m. The fire was under control in under 20 minutes, according to police. The cause of the fire was under investigation. - Jeff Shields

When Irma and Lou Malissa decided last year that it was finally time to sell their large house in Rydal and move to smaller space and an easier life, Irma made one thing clear: "I don't want a place that makes me feel old. " Today, the Malissas - Irma is 86, Lou is 87 - have met that goal. Their airy new digs at Rydal Park, where windows reveal a panorama of trees, greenery, and even a waterfall, has refreshed them, they say, and given them a new home to cherish. "You're never sure how things will turn out," says Irma, who now knows she has gained more than she lost in the move.

In response to advice on how to clean a toaster oven, a reader in Chicago wondered how to clean the glass. The answer, from a reader in Baltimore, is "just use the cleaner designed for use on glass cooktops. I've been doing it for years - works every time. " Thank you. Question: I have a very expensive stone dining room table, imported from Italy, that has some type of finish on it. Recently, I discovered a ring stain from a glass. How can I remove this? I called the shop where I bought the table several years ago, but they were unable to help me. Answer: We have a polished-marble top on our dining room table (it took four movers to get it to this house from our last one 10 years ago)