Also this issue: Jolly's? Roger Jolly's American Bar is many things, but not your typical hotel bar. -Maxine Keyser

November 14-20, 2002

food

firstlook

by A.D. Amorosi

The South Philly tap room always had its own nuances to differentiate it from its Southwest and Fishtown brethren. Call it Braciolle-Noir -- a weird, backlit ambience that’d scare scungilli while wrapping its Italian neighborhoody arms around you as if to say “Have a meatball, pallie.” Find it at Kathleen’s now-dimly-lit basement bar, the red-door bachelor-padded Friendly Lounge at Eighth and Washington and the newly balconied Low at Seventh on the horn of Passyunk. Low is a great example; if you aren’t right on top of the orange and blue signage, you can’t see in. That’s a South Philly tap room: two steps away from a speakeasy. The swanky but tin-ceilinged Paglia e Fieno, at 937 E. Passyunk, between Christian and Carpenter, was a tap room in its pre-Bella Vista days when my great uncle (not sensational, but uncle twice removed) Anthony owned it. Now, under the aegis of neighborhoodies David Frank, Steve Simons and Bryan Dilworth -- of The Khyber -- the red and black sign reads regally: The Royal Tavern, and it’s serving ex-Standard Tapper Mary Kate Ralston’s upscale bar menu. (Anyone using that Standard Tap South line can suck a hot sauseege.)

Deep red brick and one tiny, high-bow window announce the RT, like it's a secret almost. You can sense the green-gobliny goblet gaslit light fixtures from outside. But just barely. Walk in, and you're immediately hit by the mammoth back bar -- the room's original mahogany awning modified with new lights and mirror glass for maximum mamaluke-ness, and the cold industrialism of exposed heat vents. The heavy bar and its long stools are situated so close to the table-chair-wooden bench sectionals behind them you'd think you'd be uncomfortable. But no. It does nothing but breed an immediacy and intimacy a wide room couldn't give. (It also breeds volume amongst the brew-sipping patrons loudly crowding the room that's been open for about two days.) RT is long and narrow, a shape that leads you to its raised-dais nosh spot, a tiny un-tony corner balcony (with its own railing) that could pass for the restaurant in Brooklyn where Pacino killed Sterling Hayden in The Godfather. Everything within is painted a brand of burnt purple-maroon most familiar to me as my aunts' favorite nail shade. Dave Frank tells me the walls -- centered by a mini-CD-jukebox and a scrim-screen window that leads to a second floor lounge-room still under construction -- will soon feature paintings and such. But I like Royal Tavern a little bit barren. Within an area known for its faux fleur-de-lis-ness, something sleek and spare and still quite regal is necessary.

Royal Tavern, 937 E. Passyunk Ave., 215-389-6694.