We figured you would be, so we asked our favorite new hangout, The Dinky Bar & Kitchen in Princeton, to mix us up a stern cocktail that could hold up to a bitter chill and was low-maintenance enough that we couldn’t screw it up when we went to replicate it at home later on. This is what they offered up. The Coffee Cocktail looks like a latté and tastes like one, too. But you’ll notice the total lack of coffee. Magic. At least, it was in 1887, when this recipe was published in the reprint of Jerry Thomas’ seminal tome, How to Mix Drinks.
And that’s what we love about The Dinky: Everything old is new again. Which seems to be the predominant theme among this set of pages. The bar sits across the street from the McCarter in a 1918 stone building that housed a Dinky train station for the better part of a century. There’s still plenty of the original character there to encourage a deeper exploration of an impressively wide-ranging drinks menu that reaches from sake and hard-to-find ciders to smartly crafted cocktails like this one. Basically, there’s no going wrong. Here, either.
The Dinky’s Coffee Cocktail
1½ ounces port 1 ounce brandy ½ ounce simple syrup 1 whole egg 1 dash Angostura bitters Freshly ground nutmeg, for garnish
Combine the ingredients, shake hard, then strain into a wine glass. Garnish with nutmeg.
Bethlehem-based fashion designer Lauren Midlam is nurturing a devout following through her subtle-but-empowering collections.
By Sean Downey
Butter Knit Ruched Dress in sapphire, $218, and Butter Knit Wrap in blue topaz, $198
Caught between Philadelphia and New York, as we are, it’s easy to fall into the trap that stipulates that all forms of modern culture—music, cooking, fashion, for starters—worth serious consideration must be tethered to one or the other. Sure, that once held. But this is a different day. And Lauren Midlam is walking proof.
Classic Window Pane Dress in navy and carbon, $328
Her focus, when she launched in 2012, was online sales, namely because it didn’t require much infrastructure. But the Internet has never served subtlety particularly well. “I found out it was hard to gain traction that way because consumers couldn’t touch and feel the fabric and fit, which are two of the biggest differentiating factors in my clothes,” Midlam says.
LM StyleBar’s collections are built around tailored, minimalist, foundational pieces—dresses, pencil skirts, jackets—that can be seamlessly incorporated into a wardrobe and just as easily become its staples. “I use a lot of standard colors and clean lines that stand the test of time,” Midlam says, “so when you buy something in one season, you can match it with something from the next.”
Like life in general, the fashion houses with the brashest patterns and most aggressive silhouettes tend to receive most of our attention. But to truly appreciate Midlam’s designs, we need to run our fingers down a blazer’s silk charmeuse lining and eye up the princess seams, or notice the total lack of a side seam in a pencil skirt. All of it is a study in subtly. The results, though, are anything but: fabric that caresses you skin and forms that look downright bespoke.
Ponte Knit Classic Dress with three-quarter sleeves in carbon, $325.
Which is to say Midlam’s fortunes changed dramatically once her label started getting picked up by local boutiques.
“Fabric plays a huge role in an item’s look and a wearer’s attitude,” says Midlam, who likes to mix silk with synthetic fibers, like viscose and spandex. Together, they mold to a figure and then move, fluidly, with it. Which seems to be emboldening said figures in ways once reserved for those sporting oversized, gold Gucci clasps and screaming Dolce & Gabbana prints. “My customers,” she says, “have been requesting larger and larger sizes, which tells me that they appreciate clothes that show off their curves.”
Imagine that: Fashion that enhances self-image, instead of masking it.
You like a good scare, but you’d prefer not to wet your pants. Follow us.
By Christine Olley
Halloween, like salsa, is an occasion that’s served at various intensities. Some of us may kick back with The Wizard of Oz and then call it a night. Black-and-white if we’re feeling brave (or buzzed), Technicolor if we’re alone and especially paranoid, with all those trick-or-treaters roaming around. Others may opt for a haunted hayride. Just enough of a fright to cause a spike or two of adrenaline, but never too threatening. And then there are those whose every action over the coming weeks suggests that Halloween is, in fact, the dawning of the end of times.
Our compilation of some of the coolest Halloween attractions now playing favors the mild-to-moderate side of the palate. We figured if you were seeking something hot, you weren’t going to refer to a magazine called Home + Table. Still, there are ample reasons to feel afraid. Just think more along the lines of goosebumps than night terrors.
If you tend to weather your hauntings better on a full stomach, the Nassau Inn, which sits across from Princeton University, in charming Palmer Square, is offering private dinners for groups of 20 or more chased by a tour of the campus’s most notoriously haunted nooks. ($75 per person.) You’ll be armed with EMF meters, dousing rods and night-vision flashlights and fed lots of graphic stories for dessert.
If not for Halloween, we’d likely never realize that we’re surrounded by so many turn-of-the-century asylums and orphanages. And thanks to whichever reality TV-ghost hunter you favor, we’re all now well aware of the horrific treatment that played out within their walls. So what we have here at Malfate Manor, a.k.a. The House in the Hollow, is the perfect storm: Our own ridiculous preconceptions colliding, head-on, with lots of dark corners and costumed teenagers jumping out from them.
Imagine a haunted house where you and your friends are the attraction. That’s the idea behind Waldorf’s newest scene, the Zombie Escape Room. You’ll be offered refuge from the encroaching apocalypse and then given a half-hour to figure out the clues that’ll lead to the exit. Think “The Walking Dead,” but without the armfuls of guns. If there are enough of you—10 are admitted per turn—make a game of it. Slowest to exit buys dinner. Then align with your Type A friends.
The legend has it that Damon DeMonio returned home after fighting in the Civil War only to discover that his new wife was, um, nurturing an army of her own. He lost his head. The result was not pretty. Skip ahead 150 years: An actual freemasons lodge sits atop the plot where DeMonio’s home once stood. Strange things, reportedly, happen there, like freemasonry. Also: a three-story haunted house. But, really, freemasonry is plenty creepy enough.
When you’re moaning your way up a small hill, barely maintaining a walking pace, do you ever think, What could make this jog even better? A bulky, awkward-fitting costume? Yes! Then the Costume Dash is just the opportunity you’ve been looking for to further sabotage your fitness. And if that wasn’t already a weird enough site, there’s a pub crawl afterward. Nothing says, “You’re a man now,” to a 10-year-old like forcing him to witness Iron Man and his super friends stumble out of a bar in the middle of the afternoon.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is hosting a “Stranger Things”-themed party (Will!) October 19, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., (free with museum admission; registration required) complete with pumpkin decorating (resistance is futile) and tarot card readings (find out when you’re going to die through a party game!). There’s also going to be ghost tours of the galleries, including one of Fernando Orellana’s ghost machines. It’s a site-specific installation where Orellana’s configured four robotic machines through which he’s attempting to interact with the ghost of Thomas Eakins.
Photos courtesy (from the top) Waldorf Estate of Fear; Nassau Inn; Waldorf Estate of Fear; Costume Dash
