St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

Yesterdays: An Evening With Billie Holiday

Wasted by drugs and alcohol, the legendary Billie Holiday, Lady Day of song and story, took a Harlem gig in May, 1959. She was undependable and a risky hire, but she needed work and money to support her habit, and the club owner took a chance in the long-shot hopes of a good score.

The appearance, her last before she died in a New York hospital a few months later, was a disaster, according to playwright Reenie Upchurch, and watching it is often as painful as watching a train wreck. It unfolds on the Grandel Theatre stage as "Yesterdays: An Evening With Billie Holiday," which opened last night to run through March 14. Woodie King Jr. directs, with Vanessa Rubin as Holiday and a musical trio of Levi Barcourt, proper in his pork pie hat, on piano; Bernard Davis on drums and with a fill-in number after she leaves the stage; and David Jackson on bass, trying desperately to stay out of the line of fire.

Rubin, in a creamy white dress and with white gardenias in her hair, is excellent as the tortured singer, talking about her life in between songs. "Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married," she says in a line from her autobiography, "Lady Sings the Blues," and she adds, "He was 18, she was 16 and I was three." She talks of hearing Bessie Smith, of co-workers like Louis Armstrong and saxophonist Lester Young, a long-time close friend. She reportedly nicknamed him "Prez," and in return, he awarded her the title of "Lady Day." Her drug use brought her several prison sentences, and she died in poverty, with $750 in her purse, but only 70 cents in the bank.

She sings many of her songs, some of which Holiday wrote, although most include only one chorus or are otherwise slightly abbreviated in the interest of keeping the two-hour show from lasting all night. "Gimme a Pigfoot," "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child," three of her classics, are powerful, and "Them There Eyes," "Lover Man" and "Don't Explain" also were highly effective. I found the evening to be good entertainment but would have preferred more singing and less confession and stumbling around the stage, waving a drink like a flag. But those who prefer high-octane emotion will be more excited than I was.

A St. Louis Black Repertory Company Production at the Grandel Theatre through March 14

-Joe

The People's Violin

The search for identity, a study of the past and dealing with Mom and Dad are mainstay subjects of theater. Especially Jewish theater. "The People's Violin," which deals with all of them, handles them mostly well in the New Jewish Theatre's production that opened last night at the Clayton High School Little Theatre, where it will run through March 14.

It's a fierce drama by Charlie Varon, a San Francisco-based writer and actor. Sol Shankman (or Sol Shank or Sean Carver), failing in his career and his marriage almost simultaneously, looks for resurrection in those areas and many more at the age of 43. Varon performed all 18 roles in the original production, set in the mid-1990s, but someone (unfortunately uncredited) opened the play, and probably improved it, by adding three actors who do the other roles, and do them with style and grace.

Richard Strelinger scores as Sol/Sean, the same person regardless of name, and Richard Lewis is elegant as Sol's father, Sidney, and four of his contemporaries. Terry Meddows sparkles as eight different people, with the most power coming in his depictions of Lester Braun and Nathan Epps, whose stories are heart-rending. Ruth Heyman is all the women, but it's not easy to separate her performances as Sol's wife and mother, and as a patient of his father. She's more successful as a girl friend in his glory years as a director of television commercials. Lewis, with a commanding presence and a sense of entitlement about his life and career, also is impressive as Big Jack Carver.

Sol is trying to make a film about his father, a famous therapist, author of 19 books and a man noted for his work with Holocaust survivors, but the elder man will not cooperate, accusing his son the filmmaker of being a narcissist, a perfect diagnosis Sol will not accept. Strelinger is outstanding as an interviewer, trying to gain insight into a father he never really knew, and the more he learns, the more he realizes how much more he does not know, how much information was hidden from him. It's a well-polished performance.

Varon's drama falters in the second act, perhaps because he has introduced so much into the first act that he has raised our expectations too high for the second. Deanna Jent directs with excellent focus on Varon's script, and Dunsi Dai's simple set has a bare-bones quality that is adaptable to a variety of locations that have no distinguishing features. And since "The People's Violin," is about people, not places, that's enough.

In the end, Jewish identity, whether in Israel or in the United States, is not much different from any other religious, racial or ethnic identity. Meddows, playing an Israeli Army buddy of Sol's makes this clear in a discussion of courage and other Army things. Strelinger asks about the difference between the men.

"You're an American Jew," says Meddows, and ends the discussion. Good play, well-acted. Many things to think about, all of which transcend mere religion.

A production of the New Jewish Theatre at the Clayton High School Little Theatre, through March 14.

-Joe

The White Ribbon

This is a scary movie. No, make that a very scary movie.

"The White Ribbon," written and directed by German-born Michael Haneke, is set in a small German town shortly before the outbreak of World War I, a time when the rumbles of change marking the arrival of the 20th century were just beginning to shake everyone's equilibrium.

But not yet in Haneke's town, where the Baron, the Pastor, the Doctor and the Steward hold absolute power while conditions are basically the same as they have been for centuries on the hard-scrabble farms and in the clean-but-shabby homes. The leaders have frustrations, too, but they have a choice of escapes. The poor exist to serve, and the symbolic quartet exercises complete control. And this control moves to the next generation, composed of the children. One of Haneke's points is that a generation down the road, in the early 1930s, these children were in the perfect position to be the nucleus of the Nazi party.

On one level, "The White Ribbon" is a paean to sadism and masochism, sometimes in a sexual context, sometimes as just a glorification of pain, either as giver or receiver. The Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) prays as he canes his children, then humiliates them by forcing them to wear white ribbons, even to school. The Steward (Josef Bierbichler) glories in punishing his, even as he exudes a feeling that it is the Baron (Ulrich Tukur) who is on the receiving end.

The Teacher (Christian Fredel), who also serves as narrator along with Ernst Jacobi in the later going, is too young and basically too weak and insecure to hold real power, but he sees things, even if he does not understand them, and his courtship of Eva (Leonie Benesch) provides the most innocent and charming scenes in the movie. And Haneke spares no one in his vicious tale. Even the Doctor (Rainer Bock) is involved in some kinky goings-on with his Midwife (Susanne Lothar).

When the children are not being beaten or molested, they turn on the weaker children, or they torture animals, or set sneaky traps to hurt the adults, and in one symbolic scene of what Haneke sees, there is a vicious attack on a field of cabbages.

Good acting, fine direction and writing. "The White Ribbon" is an Oscar nominee in the Best Foreign Language category, and Christian Berger is a nominee for Best Cinematographer. The camera work is marvelous, and the ghostly, washed-out, almost black-and-white look comes from Berger shooting the film in color, then bleaching out most of that color. It's fascinating.

Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac

-Joe

44 Inch Chest

Macho gets highly manic in "44 Inch Chest," not a cinematic biography of Jayne Mansfield or Anna Nicole Smith but a tale of English would-be tough guys trying to make certain that a pal gets nasty revenge against the younger man who seduced his wife, not only into bed, but also out of their marriage.

Malcolm Venville's film, from a screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (who also wrote the powerful "Sexy Beast"), is strong stuff, more in terms of violent language and fierce threats than actual mayhem, although there's a little of that. But it's a first-rate, powerful story with a team of excellent actors plus the exceptional Joanne Whalley as the wandering wife. Her husband, Colin, is played by Ray Winstone, showing a wide range of testosterone-laced emotions. He is devastated by her calm report that she has found someone else, screams for bloody revenge, weeps in frustration, tries to figure out which partner in the infidelity deserves the most pain, then comes to a halt, whipsawed by so many internal conflicts he cannot decide what to do first.

The great John Hurt is Old Man Peanut, the loudest of the avenging non-angels, the most vulgar in his language, the first to back away when invited to put his money where his mouth is. Ian McShane is the black-suited, suave Meredith, tossing up hypothetical situations and alternatives like a tennis player on service and Tom Wilkinson, such a marvelous actor, is Archie, who still lives with Mum. Stephen Dillane is Mal, who would have been putting moves on Whalley were it not for the presence of his friend, Colin, and perhaps a little fear of its outcome.

And Melvil Poupaud is the seducer, known only as Loverboy, used as a derogatory description. A waiter in a French restaurant, he spends most of his screen time tied to a chair yet does quite a bit of acting, all of it good.

Venville tends to let his actors sit in barely furnished rooms in bare buildings, but he takes us on journeys into fantasy and dreams, in moments of imagination for the future and of memories of the past, with a conclusion that seems very strange, but one soon realizes that the ending is perfect for the story, and the actors handle it in a proper manner.

I could not find an explanation for the title, but perhaps Venville, or the authors, think it's appropriate advertising to bring a few extra people--mostly men--into the theater.

Opens today at the Tivoli.

-Joe

Franco

In the last quarter of the last century, it became quite the norm for the interiors of old industrial buildings to be remodeled for the installation of new, handsome businesses and residences. So Franco, with its sleek post-modern décor, located in an ancient baby carriage factory, seems unremarkable on that score. But many restaurateurs would be envious of its proximity to a centuries-old farmers market, even though many of the contemporary merchants there don't grow their wares themselves. Alas, Franco is not open at the correct time to allow us one of our great delights, breakfast at the market, but they're open for lunch during the week, so on Friday when Soulard Market gathers speed, that's a possibility.

There are those who hear the name and think of the late dictator of Spain (who, we remind you, is still dead, per Saturday Night Live), but the name refers to the food coming from the kitchen of executive chef Matthew Abeshouse. Yes, it's French, but it's more French-ish, with authentic contemporary American notes like a bit of maple in a salad with greens, apples, and blue cheese. The interior hints at nothing French-y, its high ceilings baffled by wavy hangings designed to bring the eye down, with plenty of brick and steel. The room is noisy when a crowd gathers, but on a weeknight, it's quiet enough for business conversations—that, in fact, could be overheard easily a table away.

Franco seems to be making its own bread. The resulting baguette is less the crusty, full-of-holes version than a fine-crumbed pain de mie, which the French often use for sandwiches. It's tasty, just a surprise to see it. A biscuit made with pepperjack cheese sported some green onion as well and displayed a texture more like a scone than a biscuit, crumbly with richness but slightly dry. A plate of country-fried frog legs brought three of them in a light batter laced with black pepper, the meat moist and tender. Alongside came grits with lashings of cream or butter, so rich were they, some excellent greens cooked with bacon, and a bit of red wine pan gravy. It's hard to say which was best, the frog legs, the grits or the greens.

This is a perfect time of year for cassoulet, the meat-and-bean dish much loved and much argued over in the southwestern part of France. We'll spare you the details of the discourse, but what we're talking is white beans, several meat options, slow cooking in an oven and a crusty top. Like a lot of bean dishes, it's not a particularly photogenic dish, but its flavor can be exquisite, and Franco's is darn close to that. The sausage, made in-house, is tangy and delicious, and anything that has duck confit as an ingredient is swell in our book. But it's the beans themselves that brought the wow factor. Tender, perfect, incredibly well-seasoned...sublime, absolutely sublime. (And it led us to wonder: Is Granny's ham and beans a descendant of cassoulet?)

Ann will eat lamb shanks in any weather, so she needed no excuse. This lovely piece of meat, as tidily trimmed as an expensive French chapeau, arrived with a risotto, roasted carrots, turnips and parsnips and the pan juices. Not cooked to death but a texture that yielded to a fork, the flavor was of the meat, not a riot of competing herbs, and the pan juices were the same way. While the risotto lacked creaminess and was dangerously close to just rice with sauce, the roasted vegetables' caramelized natural sugars came into play nicely, especially the parsnip, a root we are coming to appreciate more and more via its innate sweetness.

We've eaten tarte tatin several times lately, and while we were curious about how Franco does it, we figured our readers might be getting tired of it. And while we were tempted by profiteroles filled with chocolate mousse and topped with a caramel glaze, we ended up with a tangerine-lemon tart and some truffles. The tart's filling was properly creamy but lacked much citrus zip. The crust, made of a short pastry (like a cookie) rather than the flaky sort, was more interesting than the filling. Truffles were chocolate ganache with fig, white chocolate with lemon and a dark chocolate with peanut butter and bacon. The textures were silky, but we'd have liked more fig in the first one, and more lemon in the second. Only the dark chocolate, with its enrobed center of peanut butter and a little smoky bacon gave bang for the bite.

The wine list, while not exclusively French, is much deeper on the European options than the American ones, and offered some good values. Service is highly professional.

Franco

1535 S. Eighth St.

314-436-2500

www.eatatfranco.com

Lunch Mon.- Fri, Dinner Mon.- Sat.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: No

Smoking: Yes

Entrees: $18-$28

 

H.M.S. Pinafore

The glorious Gilbert & Sullivan operetta, "H.M.S. Pinafore," sailed up the Mississippi yesterday, gathering "Showboat" and the Goldenrod show boat in its wake before it docked at the Touhill Performing Arts Center and added a perfect ending to a perfect early-spring day.

NYGASP, or the New York Gilbert And Sullivan Players, is a group very strong in music and acting, strong enough in dance and with the intelligence to play the work of the great English musical theater creators in perfect light-hearted manner, emphasizing the humor of the book, the superb trickiness of the lyrics and the farcical style of the subject matter.

The group repeats today, at 3 p.m., with its final St. Louis performance. Run, don't walk.

NYGASP (love the acronym) is a strong professional group, a full Equity company, run by Albert Bergerert, one of its founders in 1974. He also directs, runs auditions and wears a Cabernet Sauvignon-colored bow tie as he conducts the pit orchestra. Yes, a real pit orchestra that plays a real overture. The singers, many who also sing with opera companies, are excellent, whether individually or in groups, and while I might have missed something, I saw no miking, which the Touhill's excellent acoustics happily made unnecessary.

The story, poking fun at a foppish social climber who rises to become the First Lord of the Admiralty (comparable to the American Secretary of the Navy), is piled high with weird coincidences, marital and nursery mix-ups and six marriages (well, there are three couples, but six people get married). And speaking of English writers, it's like a Shakespeare comedy, where everyone gets married at the end.

Stephen Quint is the Rt. Hon. (Right Honorable) Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B. (Knight Commander of the Bath), and the little guy with the white wig is terrific, especially on the patter songs, long a G&S trademark. He also clowns, dances and generally has a good time. So do the other cast members, if to a lesser degree because of insistence by the script and the director.

Laurelyn Watson Chase is a delight as Josephine, the captain's daughter who is betrothed to Porter, but loves able seaman Ralph Rackstraw (Colm Fitzmaurice). She offers a superior soprano voice, bell-clear and with great charm. Fitzmaurice was right there with her in duets, and was involved in a delightful trio, "A British Tar," teaming with William Whitefield and glorious bass Quinto Ott. All the principals stood tall, including Keith Jurosko as the ship's captain, Angela Smith as Little Buttercup, Louis Dall'Ava as villainous Dick Deadeye and Victoria Devany as Hebe, one of Porter's many female admirers, listed as sisters, cousins and aunts, and memorialized as "his sisters and his cousins, whom he reckons by the dozens, and his aunts." A perfectly delightful evening, ideal for the entire family.

H.M.S. Pinafore, by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. Final performance at 3 p.m. Sunday

-Joe

The Shape of Things

Neil LaBute writes with savage, biting humor that is anything but funny to the person who is its target. It's dangerous humor, too, because he comes very close to exposing what's far below the surface, down where primal emotions churn like vicious undertow beneath the surface of what look like quiet seas. The play opened last night at the Gaslight Theater as a production of St. Louis Actors' Studio, and will run through March 7.

Director Alec Wild keeps tension building nicely, and he gets both laughs and gut-crackling nervousness out of the interaction of the principals. It's good theater.

Shanara Gabrielle, with dimples deep enough to drown in, is Evelyn, a self-proclaimed artist we first meet in a museum, thinking about spray-painting a statue because it does not meet her standards. A guard, Adam, interrupts her. The Adam-Eve(lyn) linking is so obvious that it appears LaBute thinks his audience is as much a nebbish as Adam, but he thankfully has more respect for his audience as the play goes on. And speaking of Adam, Billy Kelly's approach is delightful and he plays nebbish nicely. Gabrielle plays sexy, sneaky and vicious to a fare-thee-well. Their discussion of art and honesty soon descends into a discussion of sex, and they're off for a roll in the hay, something Adam has had too little experience with, especially considering he's 22 years old and not noticeably disfigured.

When she sets up a video camera in the corner of the bedroom, it immediately brings up "Chekhov's gun," a tactic that a playwright who brings a gun on stage must have a character fire it before the play ends. Here the video camera plays the same role.

Adam has a friend named Phillip (Christian Vieira), who has a fiancee named Jenny (Ann Ashby), but except for the fact that he argues fiercely with Adam and Evelyn (perhaps he's the snake), and she hangs around, neither character has much development, though they do serve LaBute's play and help move things along once or twice. Scott Neale's minimalist set is extremely effective, but with hardly a change it would work for "Art," which the Black Rep will produce in May. Garth Dunbar's costumes are nicely in character, but his dress for Evelyn's climactic scenes could have been a little less dowdy and more dramatic.

The story belongs to Adam and Evelyn, in the throes of deep lust, sometimes verging on rapture, always just a step away from another imaginative and stimulatingly dangerous location for a quickie. Meanwhile, Evelyn continually works on Adam to change--his hair, his glasses, his jacket. . . . Adam gobbles up all this attention; he's in awe of this beautiful creature and he will do anything to curry favor. This much curry can produce major indigestion.

"The Shape of Things," by St. Louis Actors' Studio at the Gaslight Theater through March 7.

-Joe

The Last Station

Leo Tolstoy was a genius, one of history's great writers. Sofya Tolstoy, his wife, is harder to describe, but she was married to him for 48 years, bore him 13 children -- and made six hand-written copies of "War and Peace." The tale of the last days of his life, "The Last Station," which opens today, would be a hands-down winner in any scenery-chewing competition.

Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren play the loving--and warring--couple. Both are outstanding actors, and exceedingly histrionic as well. Add Paul Giamatti, as Vladimir Chirtkov, his acolyte and her enemy, and we're over the top most of the way.

Michael Hoffman wrote and directed, basing the screenplay on a novel by Jay Parini, and he gives his cast lines that can be spoken, or screamed. Unfortunately, there's just too much of the latter. James McAvoy, who starts the action by arriving at Tolstoy's estate, Yasnaya Polyana, to become the great man's secretary, is about the only person to remain under control.

Tolstoy is not well, but Chirtkov, his former secretary and now a publisher is busily trying to convince him to change his will to support a sort of writers' commune. Sofya violently opposes this; after his death, she will still have children to raise and her own extravagant lifestyle to support.

The film is a very mixed bag. There are scenes when Plummer and Mirren display a very special love for one another. And there are scenes when they rage like the furies. No self-control at all. This could have been a wonderful movie, but Hoffman let the actors take over the story.

Opens today at the Plaza Frontenac.

-Joe

Oscar-Nominated Shorts

This being the run-up time to the Academy Awards, we're up to here with information and hype for the nominees. But we don't hear much about the films contending for short-subject honors, and we have only a brief opportunity to see them. Ten films are nominated, five with live actors and five that are animated. However, St. Louis movie buffs get a break--at the Tivoli, beginning today, all 10 nominees will be screened as a single show.

For some reason, most of them are bleak and rather painful, tragic, nasty. Not pleasant, which probably reflects the mood of the world. We'll look at them in random order, starting with live action. All are good, some a little better than others.

KAVI--A film shot by students and faculty at USC, this one looks at child slavery, in India, where Kavi and his parents make bricks. Sagar Salunke is Kavi, trapped in long, arduous work to become another generation of indentured servants, sweated laborers. Most of the children know their place, as it were, but Kavi wants to know why other children go to school and play cricket. He soon learns. Gregg Helvey wrote a strong story, and got good performances from his India-based cast.

THE DOOR-- A terribly bleak little story, dedicated to a real person whose child died in the aftermath of Chenobyl, filmed in Kiev by Irish filmmaker Juanita Wilson, who wrote and directed. In a movie that is dark and filled with unrelieved grief, we see a man break into an abandoned housing project and take a door. Later, we begin to understand the symbolism behind his action, and we grieve with him.

MIRACLE FISH--An Australian film, written and directed by Luke Doolan and starring a little boy named Karl Beattie, who shows pain, and an over-riding sense of wonder in a lovely performance. Bullied at school, he finds solace in its infirmary, falls asleep and wakes up after everyone has left. He wanders the school, investigating this and that, finding a cut-out paper fish. He then finds trouble, and Doolan builds tension in a gripping manner.

THE NEW TENANTS--Vincent D'Onofrio, from "Law and Order: Criminal Intent," shows up in this Danish tale of drugs, duplicity and ignorance, written by Anders Thomas Jensen and directed by Joachim Back. A couple of slackers rent an apartment in a run-down, nearly barren housing development. When a neighbor asks to borrow a cup of flour, one of the men remembers seeing a package of white stuff in a kitchen cabinet and gives it to her. When a drug dealer comes looking for his package, attitudes change. Rapidly.

INSTEAD OF ABRACADABRA--A Swedish film, written and directed by Patrik Eklund, this black, bizarre comedy revolves around a young man still living at home and trying to become a magician, resisting his father's efforts to convince him that another line of work would be less dangerous and more profitable. When he fixates on an attractive single neighbor

and offers to perform for her son's birthday party, we know trouble is in the air, and as the old saying goes, it's downhill from there. The title? This guy wants a substitute for "abracabra," and uses "chimay," but his magic works as if he has over-indulged on the Belgian beer whose name he has selected.

The animated films, displaying skillful use of various types of art, also have an underlying air of things not going quite right. Pessimism rules.

GRANNY O'GRIMM'S SLEEPING BEAUTY--An Irish entry, directed by Nicky Phelan, written and performed by Kathleen O'Rourke, deals with a slightly different twist on the traditional tale, and features a witch in a walker.

LOGORAMA--My favorite in this division was this French tale, set in Los Angeles, that mocked billboards, corporate logos,commercials, freeways and a long list of advertising symbols from the Michelin Man to Ronald McDonald and the old song, "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (I just want to start a flame in your heart.)"

THE LADY AND THE REAPER--The Grim Reaper and the Old Lady do battle in a Spanish film, with a doctor helping the latter and coming across as a major sex symbol. And as the battle rages, we hear Vera Lynn and the 1939 World War II song, "We'll meet again," also used in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb," which puts Javier Garcia's film somewhere between farce and tragedy.

A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH--Wallace and Gromit, English favorites created by Nick Park and Bob Baker, strew bad puns in a story perhaps inspired by "Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe." Wallace is a baker who falls for the Bake-O-Lite Queen. She wants to eliminate her rivals. Wallace falls for her, so Gromit takes over.

FRENCH ROAST--A Parisian enters a cafe, orders coffee, then realizes he left his wallet at home. How to solve the problem? The drawing, and Fabrice Joubert's direction, are successful on several levels, but the French film is only fitfully entertaining.

Opens today at the Tivoli.

-Joe

Royal Chinese BBQ

 Whenever we discuss the Royal Chinese BBQ, always high on our where-to-go list for a quiet dinner, we smile at the ducks that greet customers upon entry. These ducks will never be taken for the AFLAC spokesduck. No, no, these hang glistening from a rod, awaiting diners' pleasure. They always make us recall Chinatown in San Francisco, where hanging fowl greet all customers. Below the ducks are strips of pork, cooked in almost the same glaze, the Chinese equivalent of barbecue. If there are other Chinese restaurants in our town that display their wares this way, we haven't seen them. Behind them is the kitchen, steaming and sizzling.

We succumb to the duck or the pork on nearly every visit, but there are other excellent things to be had. On a cold, depressing night, the hot and sour soup was enough for two, warming the gullet and charming the tongue. An appetizer order of the barbecued pork, tender, slightly sweet, with no extraneous fat, arrived with the soup. We had never tried the steamed dumplings here; apparently the thought of roast duck dulls our curiosity. But that's now changed permanently; these small, thin-skinned babes have a real homemade look, slightly irregular, fine with or without the soy sauce-vinegar mix for people to mix on the plate depending on personal flavor preference.

When it comes to main courses, this is a fine spot to try a hot pot. And they really are hot, in temperature if not in spicing. The clay pot arrives bubbling madly, and the servers' exhortations to be careful should be taken very seriously. Our pork and oysters came with mushrooms and other vegetables in a thick, aromatic brown sauce dense with the flavors of ginger and garlic. The pork was not quite falling-apart tender, but close, yet the oysters weren't overcooked.

Recommended by a reader and one-time softball teammate, we tried something not on the menu called butter lobster. (Lobster? Butter? What could be bad?) A whole lobster arrived, cleaved into pieces that were actually manageable without anything extra to crack the shells. The pieces were barely battered, the coating as thin as expensive silk chiffon. Atop the nicely arranged pile of lobster chunks were loads of minced garlic and scallions, and strips of the green ends of the scallions. Like nearly all lobster, this wasn't tidy eating, but it certainly was delicious and different. Market price; on this night, the dish was a little less than $40.

Green beans in XO sauce were a fine foil for the lobster, a stir-fry leaving them still slightly chewy, the seasoning spicy-hot, evidence of charring adding an extra dash of savor. The leftovers ended up in a batch of scrambled eggs, and were just as good, perhaps better, in their new surroundings.

Service is good enough, but right now, the buspersons have very limited English. However, everyone there is delighted to see the universal smile the food brings to customers' faces.

Royal Chinese BBQ

8406 Olive Blvd., University City

314-991-1888

Lunch & Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Fair

Smoking: No

Entrees: $ $8-$25