Everyone, by this time, must know that Mabel Mercer sings nightly at the Byline Room (28 West 56th) in New York City and that Mabel is as inimitable as, say, Pearl Bailey or Piaf -- maybe even a little inimitabler. She has a great voice, or no voice, and we've heard both opinions offered, but either way she grows on you and certainly has a knack for choosing the best of all possible tunes for her repertory. (Ask for her calm, unruffled version of Just One of Those Things.) Host Eddie Ramshaw's generously varied cuisine is an a la carte symphony and not excessively priced: we found the coq au vin eminently edible at $2.95. The Byline's decor is modified Cecil Beaton in black-and-white, with a ceiling shaped not unlike two kidneys in tandem. Thoroughly Mercerized, we permitted barkeep Ralph Martell to indulge a certain liquid libation he calls The Headshrinker ("Two of them and you're ready for the couch"): 2 parts Pernod, 1 part Strega, 1/2 part Fior d'Alpi; use no ice and spray the top with a twist of lemon. The gliss-and-glide pianoforte of bearded Bob Prince responds to requests till Mercertime (10:30) and there's a minimum of $3.50 per sophisticate. Open from 5:00 P.M. till 4:00 A.M.; closed Sunday.
Next time you're in New Orleans, tear yourself away from Bourbon Street and head uptown to the Commander's Palace, 1403 Washington St. There, Frank and Elinor Moran will place before your jaded eye a soft-shell turtle stew that is unique in the entire 48. Reason? The Morans corner the market, buy up the entire soft-shell catch and use only the tender meat under the top four inches of Brother Turtle's shell. You can gobble it up, if you wish, on the patio recently added to the 100-year-old turreted and towered building that has long been a Crescent City landmark. Commander's dishes out its singing stew from 10:30 A.M. to midnight every night and if you must dine during rush hours, you'd be prudent to make reservations in advance.
Had we but world enough and time, we'd surely do a lot of our horsing around at the Scotch Mist (847 N. Wabash), a cozy little Chicago coach-house that's made good as a cocktail dispensary. The charcoal gray brick walls (matching a lot of the patrons' duds), a dazzling white bar and a galactic arrangement of rheostat-controlled lights (wild crowd, wild lights; soft crowd, soft lights) cook up a variety of moods that run from bedroom to bedlam. Claude Jones, no kitten on the keys, has obviously committed every good tune of the past 20 years to memory, is not at all bashful about lining out requests till dawn's early light. Class reunions and dancing are held upstairs to the caterwaulings of a juke box. Not without reason, the Scotch Mist cocktail is the favorite whistle-wetter in these parts: fill an Old Fashioned glass with lots of shaved ice, dump in two ounces of old smokey and twist in the omnipresent lemon peel. The pulsating portals of the Mist swing wide every night of the week from 3:00 P.M. until 2:00 A.M.; on Saturdays, the fun and games go on an extra hour.
