Oh, don't get me wrong. I've experienced my share of terrible meals over the last year. There was the bowl of seafood pescatore with limp noodles and so much sand in the shellfish that I declined to eat it at Pescatore in Bala Cynwyd, where the outgoing server was genuinely sympathetic but the chef begrudgingly took it off the bill in a huff only after we rejected the weak offering of an unwanted tiramisu. There was the soggy, greasy, plate-eclipsing paddle of a "big-ass chicken Parm" at the Ugly Duckling, which collapsed under the weight of its own problems within just a few months. And then there is Mad Rex, which is so mind-numbingly boring for an apocalypse-themed restaurant, it's essentially Applebee's with hot rocks and lots of gas masks. Am I surprised lines wait to slurp insipidly sweet cocktails from IV bags with virtual reality glasses on? No. The Old City party crowd has clearly begun to drift to the river's edge of Fishtown.