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Food and Drink: Standard Tap, 901 N. 2nd Street (2nd and Poplar)

If you have issues of loyalty concerning Bud or Heineken or Miller Lite, you might feel a bit awkward patronizing Standard Tap. This famed Northern Liberties institution only serves locally brewed drafts such as Yards, Dogfish Head, and Stoudt’s. For the uninitiated, I suggest the Victory Golden Monkey–a frothy golden ale with a warming herbal aroma. And leave your preconceived notions of bar food at the heavy wooden door, along with your brand-name bottled suds. The $9 lamb sandwich is a two-handed affair, its juicy chunks of deeply flavored lamb weighing down an already hefty sourdough roll. Also try the chicken pot pie, roasted vegetable soup, and chocolate bread pudding.

Theater: In the Heart of America, InterAct Theater Company, 2030 Sansom Street.

The setting is the Kuwaiti desert during the (first) Gulf War. Two male American soldiers–one the son of a Kentucky coal miner, the other a second generation Arab-American–fall in love in the midst of combat and their own raging inhibitions. A young Arab-American woman feels simultaneously drawn to and rejected by a homeland that she never knew. The ghosts of a Vietnamese victim of the My Lai Massacre and the American soldier who murdered her run into each other as they desperately try to attract the attentions of the living characters. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America evokes both the absurd and appalling natures of America’s long-term relationship with violence, and asks its audience to pay attention to the words we use to describe that which we cannot comprehend. Runs through March 14.

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