Table Talk: R2L to toast new year before starting first year

R2L

- Daniel Stern's contemporary American on the 37th floor of Two Liberty Place (50 S. 16th St., 215-564-5337) - doesn't open till Jan. 21. Its coming out will be New Year's Eve for a $150-a-head cocktail party.

A few highlights of a tour last week:

Fourteen sumptuous banquettes have true window seats for spectacular but not vertigo-inducing south and west views. A hanging sculpture of cutlery catches the setting sun. Walls of wine storage, plus private wine lockers, for sommelier Ryan Davis.

The open kitchen - where chef de cuisine Alex Ureña (recently at Pamplona in New York) does his thing - is big enough to throw a dance party. There's a similarly spacious pastry kitchen, with a window, for pastry chef Peter Scarola, who won raves at the Inn at St. Peter's Village.

Horseradish ice cream - the cool accompaniment for the oysters on the New Year's Eve menu, along with shrimp, lobster cocktail dogs, house-made cocktail franks with blankets, grilled truffle pizza, chicken, and veggie cheesesteaks, plus desserts, including "shooters" of tapioca, grapefruit, and juniper, and top-shelf open bar while DJ Panther spins. Great fireworks views, too.

More photos at http://go.philly.com/R2L.

University City saw two openings last week.

Tom Drinker's West

(3900 Chestnut St.), an offshoot of the Old City and Rittenhouse Square operations, is a TV-heavy pub in the high-ceilinged former O'Hara's. It's open from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 2 a.m. weekends.

Sang Kee Noodle House (3549 Chestnut St., 215-387-8808), in the Sheraton University City, is a moderate-priced companion to Michael Chow's Chinatown mainstay and Wynnewood bistro. The six-seat noodle bar has three small TVs embedded within.

Mike Jackson, chef/founder of Blue Sage, the vegetarian destination in Southampton, Bucks County, has taken the space at 1033 Spring Garden St. that was last Root and previously Palate. He'll call it

Thoreau

- similar to Blue Sage in price and concept - and the adjacent vacant lot will be prettied up. He expects to open in January.

Cafe Maurice, a French bistro, is being built for a spring opening at 114 S. 12th St. in Washington Square West, which has been a series of restaurants such as Odeon, Bistro Bix, and Les Bons Temps. Edward Bianchini - a Mount Airy native who for 18 years operated Les Muscadins, a restaurant/hotel in the south of France - has hired chef David Cunningham (Yardley Inn, Old Original Bookbinder's, plus New York's Petrossian and Lenox Room).

Wash West will get a different sort of Japanese eatery in January. Maru Global Takoyaki (255 S. 10th St.) will feature the round pancakes known as takoyaki that are a Japanese street-food staple. Chef Ryo Igarashi (a veteran of Jose Garces' orbit) and his wife, Nicole (whose family owns Walt's King of Crabs), are behind it. Ryo Igarashi will prepare takoyaki, stuffed with bits of seafood, meat, or cheese, and grilled to order. The couple says ingredients will be locally farmed, organic, and sustainable.

John Mims has closed Johnny's New Orleans Pizza Kitchen, next to his New Orleans BYOB

Daddy Mims

at 150 Bridge St. in Phoenixville. Daddy Mims has been expanded into the pizzeria's space.

Jake's Philadelphia Cheesesteaks, inside the food court at Liberty Place, has added ghost pepper hot sauce as a free sandwich add-on. Guinness deemed ghost pepper (or bhut jolokia chili) to be the hottest pepper in the world in 2007 - twice the intensity of the red savina habanero, and 125 times the hotness of mere jalapeños. Those who order four, six, or eight droplets of the hot sauce per sandwich have to sign a waiver.