Dining Room

The inspiration came floating to Robert Allen Cherry in a flood of late-night tears: Write a biography of Wilt Chamberlain. The great basketball player, the pride of Overbrook High, had died just three days before, on Oct. 12, 1999, at age 63. Three nights later, Cherry sat up late in the dining room of his Wynnewood home, reading newspaper stories about Chamberlain. One in particular caught Cherry's attention: It told of Chamberlain's kindness to the dying teenage granddaughter of his old Philadelphia Warriors teammate Paul Arizin.

In this era of restaurant trademarks and strong corporate identity, it's easy to assume that a place called Mimosa would have something to do with tropical drinks and casual fare. The new East Goshen restaurant features no expansive dining room, and no bar scene with a grand piano and the sounds of tinkling keys. Mimosa is a 65-seat BYO tucked away in an apartment complex off Route 3. If you're not familiar with the site, it's easy to miss - the low-lying building looks more like a clubhouse than a restaurant featuring one of the most eclectic menus I've seen in Chester County.

In a corner of my dining room stands a small, dark, rectangular wooden table. Its spiraled legs angle slightly toward the center of the top and support a lower shelf beneath. While I do not know the origin of the table, I do know the story of how it came to be what it is today. Nearly 50 years ago, my sisters and I came to our mother with a proposition: We wanted to set up a family altar. Mom was astounded and a little worried. She didn't have a very positive feeling about altars and responded with the classic parental phrase, "Let me think about it. " Not only did she and my dad think about it, but she consulted our pastor.

You know this kitchen, maybe it's even yours: counters crammed with clutter, table buried beyond hope of excavation for even the simplest meal. Inadequate storage is the most common gripe we have about our homes, a National Association of Home Builders survey confirms. And the kitchen - where we cook and entertain, organize our schedules, take messages, do homework, pay bills, stitch costumes - remains a popular spot for remodeling, census data show. With many families constantly on the go, it's especially tough to maintain order there, says Debbie Lillard of Havertown, a professional organizer who has appeared on HGTV's Mission: Organization.

Shiraz Restaurant takes its name from an Iranian city known as a poet's paradise. So many inspiring elements can be found in the two-story restaurant that stands like a shrine, it's difficult to know where the rapture begins. Is it the opulence of the building, a massive fortresslike structure on Lancaster Avenue? Or the exoticness of the Persian-style food? In terms of stagecraft, you can't do any better than Shiraz, a mosque-size restaurant that still manages to be down-to-earth.

Nicky Fischer's might be the only place I know where the menu needs an editor's signature red pencil. First thing, cross out those words with questionable connotations, especially those that bring to mind popular song lyrics. There's "Calcutta" shrimp, for instance; Cajun catfish fingers; and Kansas City chicken ("Goin' to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come . . . "). Those labels only add to the confusion at a restaurant that already has a lot of things going on. Second, Nicky Fischer's replaced the long-vacant Alfio's, one of several Italian neighborhood eateries that have names as basic as their menus (Spanky's and Rizzo's come to mind)

A dozen years or so ago, when we rented my uncle's ramshackle Victorian in the Cape May County bayside burg of Dennisville, I dragged some friends across Jersey's southern tip to Corbin City to the Buck Tavern, the quintessential roadhouse on the way to the Shore. The Buck was doing game then, and my wife and I tried to induce everyone to order the wild boar. One friend, Byron, was the only other adventuresome one, and as he cut into his first bite, he looked around the dark-paneled dining room in awe. "Ahhhhh, what a place to have the other, other white meat," he said.

You don't have to spy a stand of daffodils to catch spring fever. It starts with the first hint of balminess and continues as the urge to refresh and renew our homes becomes overpowering. To help you focus on the months ahead, consider that: March is a good time to think of what you'd like your home to be. More versatile? Perhaps your rooms can multitask. A home office can double as a guest room, a dining room as a crafts space. Consider versatile furniture, such as sleeper sofas and consoles with storage, to get you there.

Chick's Tavern is the only eatery I know where a meal is not complete without a plastic bucket on the table. On my visit, the dull thuds of tossed mussel shells soon gave away to sharp clicks - sort of like the snapping sounds of castanets - as the bucket filled. At this third-generation family restaurant, mussels are served two ways: by themselves or heaped on a bed of linguine. Either way, they're served with red or white sauce and placed in a dish the size of a punch bowl.

The first police officer to step inside the dilapidated and dimly lit rowhouse at 816 N. Lex St. after more than two dozen bullets were fired at its occupants told a jury yesterday about the horrific scene in the dining room. "I noticed there were eight to 10 bodies on the floor, in a semicircle," Officer Gavin Devlin testified about what has become known as the Lex Street massacre. "It's probably one of the worst things I ever saw. " Devlin was the first witness to take the stand in the murder trial of two brothers accused in the Dec. 28, 2000, slaying of seven people in the West Philadelphia crack house.