Food and Drinq

Back in September 2006, restaurant pioneer Neil Stein and I had a long chat. He had plenty of time, as he was sixth months into a federal prison term after pleading guilty to tax evasion, surrounding the downfall of his former empire in a mess of booze, pills and month-long vacations.

What was he up to in the pokey? Keeping his nose clean and designing a swank restaurant-hotel-spa called "Wow!"

And now, a year and two weeks after walking out of the Federal Correctional Institution in Schuylkill County, he says he's one step closer to his next project.

But it'll be called Cabaret, not Wow!

Back in November, I reported on his talks with Gene Lefevre and Michael DiPaolo, who own a sweet little historic inn-slash-restaurant, the Morris House,catercorner from Pennsylvania Hospital. The inn's short-lived restaurant was called M, and it garnered wonderful reviews. Still, DiPaolo told me when he closed it last June, it was losing $5,000 a week. Ouch.

Stein says he has a better idea for the property. Partnered with Lindsay Ratkovich, a real estate developer ("I won't tell you how we met -- yet"), Stein is calling the place Cabaret. (Because life is, I guess.) He describes it as a bistro on the order of Rouge -- which introduced sidewalk dining to Rittenhouse Square back in 1998 -- with one standout feature: the garden tucked behind the restaurant. Not that the square itself, plopped across from the street from Rouge, was too shabby. Stein is a regular at Rouge; as part of a settlement, he signed over his interest in the bistro to his daughter Maggie, who runs it.

Cabaret's decor, by Marguerite Rodgers Ltd. (she did Striped Bass and Rouge), will feature "16 kinds of red," Stein says.

Rouge = red. Yes, we get it.

No chef is on board yet.

"Amazing," Stein keeps saying in all our recent conversations. "It's the most exciting project I've ever done." He hopes to be open by early summer.