The Scoop: New to-go shop opens tomorrow
Look for Saint Louis Cellars to debut Saint Louis Cellars Food and Wine, the Maplewood wine shop’s culinary arm, tomorrow morning at 9. Stop in at 2640 S. Big Bend Blvd. to check it out for yourself.
The Scoop: Mango’s new digs
Mango Peruvian Restaurant is on the move: The popular eatery – STL’s only Peruvian restaurant – will swap its Shrewsbury location for the space at 1101 Lucas Ave., home to Mosaic before it moved around the corner, by the end of the summer. Owners Jorge and Nora Calvo and partners Paul and Sherri Sawchack plan…
Eating locally
When award-winning journalist Michael Pollan came to town last Friday to promote his latest book, In Defense of Food, he dined at The Crossing in Clayton. Chef and owner Jim Fiala served up asparagus and ricotta, ravioli with farm-fresh egg and porcini sauce, and grass-fed beef with collard greens. The produce, eggs and meat were…
Explicit taste
One more reason not to miss the big, bad Beer & Brats Festival on Saturday at Westport Plaza: Charleville will be introducing Explicit American Pale Ale. The Ste. Genevieve microbrewery also will be pouring its Half-Wit Wheat, Hoptimistic IPA and Tornado Alley Amber. Charleville is planning a release party for Explicit in a few weeks…
Salads With Good Sense: Easy ways to enjoy the taste, smell and sounds of spring
If one were to write a treatise on salad-making, it would be that the essence of a good salad is all about the senses. Eating a salad should be a multisensory affair, a harmony of taste, texture, color, smell, even sound. Greens are a basic building block for a springtime tossed salad. Frilly chicory, melt-in-your-mouth…
Halloween in May
Chicago’s All Candy Expo is one of the most exciting and delicious events of the year. Yesterday I spent seven hours at McCormick Place eating the latest and best in chocolate, candy, salty snacks and other confections. This year over 450 confectionery and snack companies unveiled more than 2,000 new sweet and savory products in…
The Scoop: Benton Park bummer
McLozzi Deli, the Benton Park eatery that was home to The Gobbler (pictured), which featured Thanksgiving dinner – from turkey to cranberry sauce – in sandwich form, shuttered earlier this month. Co-owner Dan Krankeola put the closing down to, “in a nutshell, [the] state of the economy.” Photo by Ashley Gieseking
The Scoop: Chefs on the move
Miso on Meramec has a new chef at the helm: Eliott Harris, a Johnson and Wales grad whose résumé includes sushi restaurants in San Francisco and Miami, has been named executive sushi chef. The Clayton eatery recently debuted a new menu that includes a section of Miso classics as well as several new items created…
Food icon coming to St. Louis
Michael Pollan, the copiously laureled journalist and food pundit, will be speaking at the St. Louis County Library headquarters on May 22 at 7 p.m. (Doors open at 6.) Pollan will also be signing copies of his 2006 blockbuster The Omnivore’s Dilemma and last year’s In Defense of Food. We got up to speed with…
Greens in The Grove
A new community produce market is set to open June 16 in The Grove neighborhood. City Greens Produce, located in the Midtown Catholic Charities building at 1202 S. Boyle Ave., will operate on Tuesdays from noon to 6 p.m. and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It will offer wholesale pricing on produce from…
Memphis in May
Gina and Patrick Neely, Food Network stars and owners of Memphis-style barbecue restaurants in Tennessee, will sign copies of their new cookbook at the Schnucks at Chesterfield Hilltown Village on May 30 from 4 to 6 p.m. Down Home With the Neelys: A Southern Family Cookbook is set for release tomorrow. Schnucks expects to have…
Potatoheads
“Oh, no!” was our response when Joe Zykan of Spudmaster ColossalChips appeared at the Sauce office today. It’s not that we don’t love Spudmaster – dear God, we do – but we have absolutely no willpower against the ginormous, delicious “crack chips.” But Zykan brought an even harder beatdown: Spudmaster’s new Shazam flavor. Shazam is…
Room to Grow: If you’ve got a little extra space, pick these herbs
Say “kitchen garden” and think of tomato vines loaded with slow-ripening fruits, tidy rows of frilly green lettuce, ferny carrot tops signaling great happenings below, cucumbers dangling from groaning trellises. Or think a little differently. The most important plants in your kitchen garden may be the culinary herbs. Fortunately, you don’t need a backyard to…
High-powered pork
Have you ever thought, “I’ve made bacon ice cream and bacon vodka and eaten bacon wrapped in caramel hanging from a trapeze, but I’ve never melted a cookie sheet in half using a welding torch made from bacon”? (That last one caught your attention, didn’t it?) Well, in my personal quest to bring you all…
Jicama Salad
8 to 10 servings
A Cinco de Mayo must
Planning a Cinco de Mayo fiesta? Get ready to wow your partygoers with a jicama salad. Jicama root is mildly sweet with a surefire crunch that pairs well with mellow-tasting wet veggies and fruits like cucumbers and cantaloupe. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a platter of enchiladas, a bowl of chips and fiery hot salsa,…
Some like it hottest
Thai peppers are hot, habeñeros are hotter and bhut jolokias are the hottest. Says who? Jason Bayer and the Scoville scale. “I bought 10 seeds for 10 plants on eBay from a guy in the Caribbean,” said Bayer, proprietor of Bayer’s Garden Shop in Imperial, Mo., and South City. Currently, he has around 75 one-gallon…
An honor no matter how you slice it
The James Beard Foundation Awards were held Monday night at Lincoln Center in New York, and although Gerard Craft of Niche Restaurant in Benton Park was not named Best Chef in the Midwest, we’re still overjoyed that he was nominated. (The title went to Tim McKee of La Belle Vie in Minneapolis.) Craft was the…
Kristen Hinman of the Riverfront Times wins her second James Beard award
Congratulations to Kristen Hinman of the Riverfront Times, who was awarded a James Beard Foundation Media Award last night in New York. Hinman’s The Pope of Pork won in the category of newspaper feature writing without recipes. This is her second James Beard award. In related news, Gerard Craft, chef and owner of Niche Restaurant…
Cocktails for dinner, anyone?
Flavor aficionados Ted Kilgore (pictured) and Joshua Galliano of Monarch Restaurant in Maplewood are offering an exclusive cocktail dinner on Wednesday – but don’t plan to sip and nibble at this five-course pairing affair. The occasion: World Cocktail Week. The hosts’ inspiration: New Orleans, home to The Museum of the American Cocktail. Based on gin,…
Recipe: Cardwell’s at the Plaza’s Burger Meister Burger
Light your fires, grillers, it’s burger season. Everyone’s got a tried-and-true recipe, but the title of burger champ has to go to Bill Cardwell, whose famous Burger Meister Burger has graced Cardwell’s at the Plaza’s menu since 1994. Quality ingredients make the difference here – Niman Ranch beef, applewood-smoked bacon, buns from Companion and a…
Review: The International Tap House in Chesterfield
It’s Saturday night at the International Tap House in Chesterfield and I’m jammed, without a doubt, into the worst place to stand in the entire bar. Between the waitresses pushing past me with drink orders every few minutes and the endless string of yahoos nudging my back to contend for space at the bar, I…
Review: La Dolce Via Bakery and Cafe in St. Louis
People were worried this past January and February. Tanking economy and dissolving retirement savings aside, it was the closing of La Dolce Via, if even for remodeling, that had people biting their nails. Given the state of said economy, not to mention a recent spate of restaurants abruptly closing, they feared the popular Forest Park…
Recipes for Fresh Peas This Spring
For dedicated shoppers of local farmers’ markets, May brings a rush of green and a taste of picked-this-day goodness. First greens – the delicate spring mixes, baby spinach, the herbs in tiny pots and the lithe scallions. Next, the thin spears of asparagus, chard and the baby beets. The last two or three weeks, if…
Manhattan
1 cocktail
Sazerac
1
Passion Fruit Juice
1 serving
Cardwell’s at the Plaza’s Spiced Tomato Relish
Makes about 5 cups
Breakfast Sausage
10 to 12
Sazerac
1
The Scoop: Lineup changes at Fifteen
Hard-hitter Joshua Roland has resigned from Jim Edmond’s downtown restaurant Fifteen. Peter Beberman, with whom Roland shared the title of executive chef, has taken over the helm. A press release said Roland intends to focus his attention on developing a “unique restaurant concept.” No word yet on what that will be or where it will…
Mushroom Mann
Ron Mann’s new documentary Know Your Mushrooms is a real trip – and not just for the reason you’re thinking. Shot at the Telluride Mushroom Festival in Colorado, the film explores the, er, recreational uses of fungi along with their medicinal and culinary prowess. You’ll also collect concrete foraging tips watching master mycologists Gary Lincoff…
He Said/She Said: Margarita time
Steve: Chilly Margaritas are a quick way to start a fiesta. April: I can’t tell if I’m invited. My glass keeps disappearing. S: Sorry, this warm-weather cocktail is just the ultimate thirst quencher. A: I totally agree. Now would you mind, um, sliding my drink back? Steve’s Margarita profile: Tequila always mixes well with…
All smiles in Olivette
Parenting is like roller-skating on an ice rink most of the time, and dining out with kids can be like trying to catch a couple of greased pigs … on an ice rink … while wearing roller skates. So if you’re a bit nervous about going out with the kids to a restaurant where your…
Sazerac
1 serving ¼ oz. Absente 2½ oz. (ri)1 ¾ oz. simple syrup 3 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters 1 lemon twist • Pour Absente into a rocks glass and roll the liquor around the glass to coat all sides, then dump out the remaining liquor. • Combine the whiskey, simple syrup and bitters in a mixing glass…
Shack-tastic
For me, the draw of outdoor summer markets is the food prepared right in front of you. Be it pork rinds or doughnuts, crêpes or kabobs, there’s something to be said for food served on the spot from behind a table, through a window, or, in the case of the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market, out of…
Local Alliances: Farmers and chefs on why relationships matter
The flavor of our food starts at the farm. Nobody realizes this more than chefs. Relationships between local producers and culinary pros spring up by way of chance meetings, word of mouth and good old-fashioned door knocking. Eliminating the middleman has proverbial benefits from a business perspective, though in the kitchens of the ambitious, shopping…
Back from the brink
What’s true in fashion is also true in the world of spirits: If you wait long enough, everything comes back in style. Mixologists these days are looking back in order to move forward, reviving the art of classic-cocktail crafting. And as venerable drinks like the Sazerac and the Manhattan become more popular, the ingredients used…
Blended tradition
When Banh Mi Boba Tea & Crêperie closed its doors for remodeling several months ago, Asian-food junkies were all atwitter about whether or not the tiny eatery would actually reopen. Nowhere else in town could you get an eel crêpe, that’s for sure, and customers eagerly watched the small Central West End storefront for signs…
More chocolate in store
Kakao Chocolate is packing up its luxurious truffles, barks and bars and moving into its very own store in Fox Park. The chocolatier, currently run from a commercial kitchen on Cherokee Street, will add retail space in its new larger digs at 2301 S. Jefferson Ave. A grand opening is set for May 30, but…
The kiss-off
My friend Mimi suggested a McDonald’s Happy Meal with the toy removed. “Or … or … or,” she sputtered, “how about leftover pizza on a paper plate?” We were discussing what I should serve a man for what she called “the kiss-off dinner.” I had been dating Paul for a little while, and though he…
Small list packs a big punch
I must confess that I first thought going to a bakery to review a wine list would be either a waste of time or a major miss. I am very happy to say that both positions were wrong. Yes, La Dolce Via offers beautiful coffees and an exciting menu of lunch, brunch and weekend dinner…
