Quick, While the Weather is Nice!

One of the city's best patios may finally -- finally -- be ready to live up to its potential.

Poste, in the historic Hotel Monaco, has a gem of a outdoor space: a private courtyard accessed through a long, covered passage from Eighth Street. The thick building means that you're isolated from the busy neighborhood's noise.

In the past, the restaurant simply put a few metal tables and chairs out onto a terrace in the courtyard and left it at that. For 2006, though, they've decided to reinvent the marble courtyard as a private living room, adding sofas, plush carpets, lighting and a soundtrack of downtempo electronica and acid jazz. (If you can, grab one of the seats that looks like an egg cup topped with a section of a fabric slinky.)

I spent some time at Poste earlier this week after work, enjoying the sun and the bar's excellent cocktails. No reservations are needed to grab a table outside, whether you're just in for drinks or want a full meal, but since I never saw servers coming outside, I wound up going back inside to the bar every time more drinks were needed.

Good thing I did, too. The chalkboard next to the bar has a couple of drinks that are perfect for the season: The Cool Cucumber is a bracing concoction with Hendricks, the cucumber-infused gin, topped with pickled bits of cucumber. Even more refreshing is the Cranberry Fizz, which combined cranberry-infused Ketel One vodka (made in-house) with vanilla and club soda for a sparkly effect. I was tempted by the Eye of the Storm -- a Dark and Stormy made with ginger-infused Cane 10 rum.

Happy hour, which runs from 4 to 7 during the week, includes $4 glasses of selected wines and $4 cones of the restaurant's awesome truffle fries. However, $4 for a bottle of Sam Adams doesn't seem like much of a special to me.

-- Fritz