Cabaret at Avenue B and The Prime Rib

A few weeks ago, the Prince Music Theater’s cabaret convention was a resounding success, drawing not only “cabaret fans” but newcomers throughout the run. That means this city can handle the weight of worldly lyrics and weary tomes rippling forth from renowned singers like BJ Crosby, Christine Andreas and Andrea Marcovicci as well as vocal talent grown close to home. Now, more area spots are jumping on the cabaret bandwagon, including local restaurants Avenue B and The Prime Rib, which are going for standard songs with good taste that taste as good as their menus’ priciest items.

Neil Stein's Avenue B is set to be a haven where artists and models alike will want to hang out, get up and sing around his 100-year-old black baby grand Steinway.

Set amid B's gargantuan, frilly and sheer window treatments and sliplike curtains at its piano lounge entrance, Stein's cabaret is more Delano Hotel with pianist/singer Gerald Benson crooning than the classic Carlyle with Bobby Short whispering low to the Vanderbilts.

"I've always had a fascination for promoting talent," says Stein when asked what leads one of this town's busiest restaurateurs to start booking singers. "I like listening to someone play at a baby grand knowing that I sought out and hired them. Hopefully in the near future the second coming of Neil Stein will be booking live talent in Philadelphia. I think I'm doing a good job!" While it's sexy as hell to hear the classics of Ella and Billie through B's sound system, Benson's aching take on the standards

“I want the piano bar to take on its own personality,” says Stein of his Kimmel-neighboring bo#206te that gets an equal amount of sexy singles and youngish couples. “The way it will develop is through hiring the right talent for our customers and serving the right food, to have a comfortable ambience while still retaining the sexiness.”

(Rumor had one of his “hires” as Billy Joel, a Striped Bass visitor. To that Stein jokes, “The best thing that could happen to Billy Joel is, instead of dining at Striped Bass six times a week, dining at Avenue B and I’ll convince him to play the piano bar.”)

Several blocks from Avenue B, Garth Weldon is pacing the length of the tony Prime Rib in the Warwick that he opened five years ago. Like its Washington, D.C., and Baltimore counterparts, the richly appointed Prime Rib -- with its dark lacquered walls lined in gold trim, its masculine leather chairs and banquettes and leopard-spot carpeting -- features live piano (glass-top baby grands, yet) and bass nightly.

“The live music, while always a key part of our atmosphere, has become more essential in the last few years as restaurants and steakhouses have proliferated,” says Weldon. “It is now, along with our jackets-required policy, a principal element in what makes us unique.”

But now, on each and every Friday night, Weldon has added the mystique of the chanteuse into the Rib’s mix, with the light, breezy vocals of Jeannie Brooks and the duskier, lovely Barbara Montgomery -- two homegrown beauties Weldon switches off from week to week along with a coterie of players.

Weldon asks that his musicians feature the classic American songbook of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, with a lean toward the mid-to-up-tempo. “When you enter The Prime Rib, you step back in time to that era,” he says. “We’ve heard from many patrons who suggested that we have a vocal presence over the last five years say that now that it’s here, they can’t imagine the place without it.”

Taking a page from that old classic songbook, cabaret, like love, is here to stay.

Avenue B, 260 S. Broad St., 215-790-0705; The Prime Rib, 1701 Locust St., 215-772-1701.

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November 17, 2005
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