For years, developer Bart Blatstein has been talking about achieving critical mass at his mixed-use development at the former Schmidt's site in Northern Liberties, which stretches from Girard Avenue south for several blocks along Second Street and Hancock Street.

From 2001, he set to work building the apartment/retail complex called Liberties Walk and over the years renovated former industrial buildings into apartments/offices.

The "meat" of the project is almost finished. That's a series of four apartment buildings, with ground-floor retail, bounded on three sides by Second Street, Germantown Avenue and Hancock Street. The interior courtyard, which he calls the Piazza, now sports a concert stage topped by 26-foot-by-16-foot HD LED screen (16mm resolution).

The Piazza project will include four food operations, all of which will open onto the Piazza.

• One, which Drew Lazor described last week in Mealticket, will be a diner called Darling's from the people behind Darling's Cheesecakes. It will go in the egg-shaped building clevely dubbed "The Egg," across Second Street from Bar Ferdinand and El Camino Real at Second and Germantown.
• There will be a pub at the southern end of the building on Second Street, and a lounge in the building on the Hancock and Germantown side; deals are not 100 percent final there.
• The fourth will be Vino Restaurant Lounge, coming to the northern end of the building along Second Street, across from Bar Ferdinand. Vino's owner, Michael Maglio, tells me that it will be a wine bar and lounge, "but not the kind of lounge that you only go to late at night. It'll be a comfortable atmosphere." The menu, from chef Glenn Albright, will focus on "aperitivo"-style small plates, $8 to $13, with pizzas and bread from a brick oven. He's shooting for early May.

As for the Girard Avenue end of the project, Blatstein says he is close to a deal with a supermarket.

Win and Sutida Somboonsong -- who own Mikado Thai Pepper in Ardmore, Flavor in Wayne, Azie in Media and Teikoku in Newtown Square -- just signed a deal for the old Roux 3 site, 4755 West Chester Pike, by the United Artists cineplex in Newtown Square.

It'll be an American-style steakhouse called Parker's Prime, after the Somboonsongs' youngest child, Parker. The wine list is being put together with the help of Italian winemaker and importer Gino Razzi of Penns Woods Winery.

A late summer/early fall 2009 opening is planned.
 

Meet Mark Caro, author of the book Foie Gras Wars, at a signing at Fairmount's London Grill, from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday.

Foie Gras Wars is a well-researched tale of how the delicacy has polarized the food world.

London's Terry Berch McNally and chef Michael McNally play central roles in the plot, as London was a frequent protest site. (Decorum prohibits me from describing what Caro wrote about Terry McNally's first impressions of protest leader Nick Cooney.)

Guess what's on the menu. London will also offer special prices on beer and sauterne to pair with the dishes.

Also due in the house will be representatives from foie gras producers Hudson Valley Foie Gras and D’Artagnan as well as chefs who fancy foie gras.

No reservations. Just show up.

Here comes Billy Wong again.

Wong has drawn a following from his days at Queen Village's Mustard Greens (1992). Every so often, he turns up -- perhaps "Wong" is a Cantonese transliteration of "Waldo." The last few years have found him at Billy Wong's in Old City and then in Northern Liberties with a short-lived place called Taste (it's now Modo Mio) and then at Ly Michael in Chinatown.

He's looking to revive the Billy Wong name in Warminster Shopping Center (340-342 York Rd.) next week. This place was David's and most recently Yazmin. (That's Yazmin, not Yasmin.)

Concept: affordable, fresh and delicate Chinese cuisine.

What'll be on the plate? Probably lots of beef. The timing of Monday night's $5,000-a-head fund-raiser for Gov. Rendell at Del Frisco's Double Eagle steakhouse comes at an interesting time.

Contractors who built the steakhouse -- who tend to roll in these political circles -- say they are still owed millions for their work. Eight court filings now surround the project, as fingers are pointing between Del Frisco's and its general contractor, Lorient LLC of Plainfield, Ill.

See my article from this morning's Inquirer.

One contractor circulated this e-mail last week:

In the past, I have donated thousands of dollars to Mr. Rendell’s campaign and because of that, I have been privileged to learn that I have been invited to his latest fundraiser. I urge all of you to make a large donation to the Governor’s good cause and if possible, attend this very special event. Fortunately, it is being held at The DelFrisco’s Double Eagle Steak House (borne out of the Lonestar Steakhouse fast food chain) where the food is hot, the drinks are cold, the artwork is beautiful, the décor is detailed, the environment is comfortable, the climate is perfect, the lighting is soothing and the dishes and glassware are spotless because the water is hot. The second and more inexplicable irony is that only approximately 60% of the cost for this venue is paid for to the companies who were hired to build it for them. And there are no scheduled future payments in sight even though some contractors who worked so hard to finish made it clear that they may go out of business as a result of this!! I sense DelFrisco’s needs our help and monetary donations as well despite their menu options. Maybe their other 26 locations can participate in helping the contractors as well.

You all may not know it, especially those who attended the opening ... but DelFrisco’s ownership was dedicated to the grand opening of this venue on November 20, 2008 beyond your understanding. They hired a national general contractor whom which they have used in the past for such hurried schedules (Lorient, LLC), an nationally known real estate and construction management consultant (Jones Lang LaSalle) and placed their own project management team on site to oversee the construction and the execution of that outrageously aggressive schedule. They had expressed the utmost confidence in us contractors and pushed us hard and heavy while they witnessed our people working “round-the-clock”. They knew that we were going to make that opening date and we did it. Maybe this Rendell fund raiser event would not happened without us?"

Tamala Edwards, co-anchor of Action News, announced her pregnancy this morning on Facebook.

Edwards, who turns 38 on April 7, married pastry chef Rocco Lugrine in September 2006.

The station's baby derby has begun, as she and Erin O'Hearn are due around the same time. Funny coincidence: Just as O'Hearn met husband Sal Paone Jr. when she did a story on him, Edwards met Lugrine when she did a piece about his work when he was at Le Bec-Fin.

Here's a neat mash-up: Tiffin, the Indian eatery near Seventh and Girard, is getting into the pizza business. Owner Munish Narula is taking over what was Star Pizza right next door (at 712 W. Girard) to do what he calls "something fun."

The menu will have about eight different specialty pizzas with Indian cuisine-inspired toppings such as tandoori chicken, paneer and green chilies and tandoori vegetables. He and his crew are experimenting. The eatery also will serve kati rolls, which in their basic form begins with a paratha with a layer of egg on it. Roasted vegetables or meat is roasted in butter and stuffed inside. Spices, red onion slivers and lime are sprinkled on top. He also intends to round off the menu off with Indian-influenced salads and wraps.

There's no name yet for the spot, and construction is to begin in late April.

Oh, and if you're in the Elkins Park area, know that Narula hopes to open another Tiffin in Elkins Park Square. The Tiffin location in Mount Airy is doing gangbusters.

Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer for the Franklin, will be a guest on Monday's edition of The Colbert Report (11:30 p.m., Comedy Central).

He'll be wearing a Panerai watch, made by Officine Panerai, a sponsor of the institute's forthcoming exhibition, "Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy."

Now there are no Feurys working at Maia.

Chef Patrick Feury, who opened Maia in Villanova with his brother Terence and a few other partners, says he's working full time now at Nectar, the high-style pan-Asian in Berwyn, where he also has an ownership interest. Terence Feury left Maia two months ago to become chef at Fork in Old City. The brothers still have financial ties to Maia.

Maia closed its upstairs room recently, and has brought in a new chef, around whom the upstairs room will be reconceptualized.

Meanwhile, Patrick Feury has brought Lindsay Criscuolo from Maia to Nectar as its new pastry chef. She attended the French Culinary Institute in New York City and then opened Bar Boulud in NYC as a pastry cook.