St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

Ibby's

Our review of Ibby's, the fine-dining option at Washington University, which is open to the public, is on Relish, the St. Louis Magazine's food blog. You can read it here. Who would have thought of a college campus as a location for outsiders to dine?

Shadowlands

Joan Didion's husband dropped dead at their dinner table. C. S. Lewis' wife died in a hospital after a three-year battle with cancer. Two stage versions of those tragedies have opened in the last fortnight, with "Shadowlands," the William Nicholson drama about the late-life romance between Lewis and American poet Joy Davidman Gresham, took the stage last night as a Mustard Seed Theatre production at Fontbonne University.

"Shadowlands," a powerful, brilliantly-acted tale,will run through Feb. 13. The plays are opposite in their approach. Didion talks about her life after his death. Nicholson follows Lewis as the confirmed bachelor befriends Gresham, protects her, marries her, learns to love her -- in that order.

Gary Wayne Barker, one of our city's finest actors, delivers as Lewis with power and polish. A cranky Christian, an Oxford don and a successful author, he lives with his brother, Warnie, a retired Army officer. The couple could have been the models for Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering in George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," and its much later musical version, "My Fair Lady." Richard Lewis is spot-on as Warnie and the two men interact perfectly with one another.

Kelley Ryan is excellent as Gresham, who has exactly the right tone in every conversation with Lewis and his friends, especially Christopher Riley, played as a perfectly pompous oaf by B. Weller. Gresham began a correspondence with Lewis, partly out of admiration, partly as something to add some brightness, even a few fantasies, to a life hobbled by an unhappy marriage. When she writes Lewis and mentions she will be coming to England, the consternation of the Lewises is palpable. Barker is like an 11-year-old boy dealing with the fact that his pretty math teacher, on whom he has a massive crush, is joining the family for Thanksgiving dinner. Lewis' facial expressions speak volumes.

When she shows up with her son, Douglas (Jackson Mabrey), Barker and Lewis are as nervous as a critic writing about an actor named Lewis playing a character named Lewis who is the brother of another character named Lewis, played by an actor named Barker, and doing it so readers know what is going on.

Mabrey shows the attitude and movements of the young boy in ideal style, but must project more. He was very difficult to hear.

Weller, Michael Brightman,Terry Meddows and Charlie Barron stand out as four friends of Lewis who act as sort of a Greek chorus of straight men. Brightman has the perfect body language, as he has shown in other productions, and Meddows was excellent as a smirking, smarmy, sneaky, snide, supercilious priest who also is hypocritical about his religion and about God.

This, of course, is at the core of C. S. Lewis' writing and his own approach to religion. As uptight as a caricature of an Oxford professor, and a very devout man, he questions God, even curses him, about why a supposedly kind God could let bad things happen to good people. The conundrum has been posed for centuries, and is no closer to being answered today than it ever has been.

Deanna Jent's direction is quiet, well-paced and with sensitivity to the difficult questions that are at the heart of the play. She uses the humor of the playwright to break the tension at the right times and the wardrobe (the first of Lewis' seven books in The Chronicles of Narnia is called "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe") upstage right stands as a looming presence of the author and also where Douglas Gresham finds peace. Courtney Sanazaro's set, Jane Sullivan's costumes and Michael Sullivan's lights are terrific.

Shadowlands, by William Nicholson, a production of the Mustard Seed Theatre, will be at the Fontbonne Theatre through Feb. 13

--Joe

The Illusionist

Jacques Tati (1907-1982), was born Jacques Tatischeff. He directed only six films. Four of them featured the writer-director as Mr. Hulot, a gawky, shambling man who smoked a pipe, wore a raincoat and carried an umbrella. The films were scant on dialogue, long on sight gags and sound effects, and genially lampooned the vagaries of French society. They were years ahead of their time. Though his father was a Russian emigre and his mother came from the Netherlands, Tati was born in France lived there for his entire life.

He was late to the movie industry, having been a mime, juggler, comedian and magician in the French equivalent of English music halls or American burlesque. His Hulot films, however, Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), My Uncle (1958), Play Time (1957) and Traffic (1971), have earned him a place in any Motion Picture pantheon of directors. Mr. Hulot's Holiday was an Academy award nominee for best original screenplay. My Uncle earned top honors at the Cannes Film Festival and won an Academy Award for best foreign-language film.

"The Illusionist," which opens today, comes from a 1956 Tati screenplay adapted, animated and directed by Sylvain Chomet, and an Oscar nominee for best animated feature. Chomet, who directed the wonderful "The Triplets of Belleville" a few years ago, again has brought forth a stylish, insightful, entertaining motion picture. It's also extremely sad in that it follows a man like Tati himself as his career and dreams crumble around him.

A girl named Alice, dressed niftily in red Mary Janes, befriends him while he is on tour in Scotland, and therein lies another tale. Tati fathered a daughter at least 30 years ago in an extra-marital affair but they almost never saw one another. Is Alice an effort by Tati to recognize another child, an attempt for him to try to expiate his sin? Or is it an effort to pay tribute to a younger daughter, Sophie, who worked with him for many years, and gave the screenplay to Chomet a year or so before she died?

"The Illusionist" is a fascinating tale with a lot of back story to whet the imagination and extend what is seen on the screen.

The Illusionist opens today at the Tivoli

--Joe

White Material

Isabelle Huppert brings a fierce performance to "White Material," as she desperately hangs on to the shreds of the past. She owns a coffee plantation somewhere in Africa, but the men and women who have worked there for generations are aflame with the fires of change and they seem to care little whether the change is for the better.

French director Clare Denis, who wrote the screenplay with Marie N'Diaye, opens strongly, showing Huppert, in a well-worn pink dress on a dusty road in the African heat, desperately trying to get a ride home to the plantation. When a truck driver allows her to struggle for space among the crowded natives in the rear, she hangs on with a desperate effort.

There is revolt in the unnamed nation, and like so many similar situations in the real world, we never learn who is fighting whom, and for what, or why. Guerilla fighters, some of them only children, are empowered by weapons, but at the end of the day, they remain children.

Huppert is trying to find enough workers to bring in the harvest, and while she does endorse the revolt, she is friendly with the men who used to work for her, like a revolutionary named The Boxer (Isaach De Bankole), who needs a hideout. And there are relationships with her former husband (Christophe Lambert), her son (Nicolas Duvauchelle) and the plantation manager (Michel Subor). The acting is first-rate, and Denis directs in a manner that emphasizes the heat, the confusion and the feeling that the world is changing.

White Material opens today at the Plaza Frontenac

--Joe

Hamburger Havens

We're part of the search for the best hamburgers in town that St. Louis Magazine's current issue has. You can read part of it (which is only referred to in the print edition) here.

Prime 1000

Prime 1000 has taken on the question of whether St. Louis needs yet another steakhouse. The market, of course, will ultimately decide, but in the meanwhile, things are roaring along at 10^th and Washington. Located in a marvelous space that feels like it could be lower Manhattan with its high ceilings and huge windows, Prime 1000 is a perfect place for the sort of dining group that mixes the just-gimme-meat-and-potatoes crowd with folks who start painting picket signs at the very thought of a menu without microgreens and hand-fed beef.

Happily, those high ceilings don't mean dining room noise levels at absurd heights; whoever designed this restaurant did a fine job with acoustics. Diners range in age from late grade school to those who were visiting steakhouses in the Eisenhower Administration, and on our visit, couples were far outnumbered by larger parties.

Considerable distraction on the part of our server seemed to be the reason we got nothing more than water and menus for more than 20 minutes after we were seated, albeit on a busy Saturday night. Neither drinks nor wine list offered, just an passing remark of “something from the bar?” as he turned around and sped away. When our drink order was taken, he fled before we could discuss anything. Meanwhile, a couple next to us had been seated, ordered, received drinks and a first course, thanks to their zippy server with a spangled red tie.

Things finally settled down and when the bread arrived, two kinds, hot and crisp, it was accompanied by a saffron butter, perfect with the herbed rolls, and a butter made from goat milk, its delicate goatiness melting luxuriously into the French rolls. Nice presentation, too; we began to relax.

The purist could begin with a Caesar salad or oysters on the half shell. We reacted positively when the menu offered salt-and-pepper fried squid, something seen on many Chinese menus. We received deep-fried breaded squid, soggy instead of crisp, without hint of salt or pepper, and cooler than room temperature. The presentation was charming, but as is said in the theater, you can't go home whistling the scenery. The aioli alongside had a good shot of garlic, and the butter sauce had uni, or sea urchin, blended into it, but was so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable. The most remarkable item on the plate was half a lime that had been popped under the grill, face to the fire. Amazing flavor from a little caramelization to offset the tartness.

And then there were the crispy sweetbreads. Sweetbreads have a mild flavor and go well with lots of things, and these guys, in their crispy coating, nestled in a strip of rich brown pan sauce seasoned with truffle, foam (yes, it's here!) of artichokes, and nuggets of marvelous smoky bacon. Convert a non-sweetbread fancier with a bite of this.

 
Yes, there's chicken and fish and dry aged pork chops, and even a couple of pasta dishes, including a vegetarian one. But we wanted steak, and there were plenty of options for that, too. American grass-fed beef, American Wagyu beef, and prime dry-aged beef. A prime 10-ounce ribeye, without a bone, was gently trimmed and expertly cooked. Our grass-fed strip steak was less successful. While its flavor was slightly deeper, it also displayed more fat than it should have, but both pieces of beef were incredibly tasty, with the excellence that induces grunts of pleasure for more than just the first mouthful. From a number of available sauces, we tried the green peppercorn and the wild mushroom and balsamic vinegar. They were okay, but totally superfluous. Meat this good needs nothing but a knife and fork.

Creamed spinach and baked potatoes come with truffle oil and as  twice-baked,  respectively, but we looked farther afield. A dish of charred peppers was deeply satisfying, utilizing shishito peppers, little-finger sized, bright green and a little spicy, and some baby yellow peppers. They arrived in their juices, ready to remove the stems off and pop into the mouth, a brightness of flavor that contrasted beautifully with the beef.

Sweet potatoes at Prime don't make us think of Thanksgiving dinner, just of good dinner. While we don't normally pair them with beef, a gratin with maple and chipotle pepper sounded too intriguing to pass. We were rewarded with another shockingly good dish, quite spicy and sweet-smoky, an almost buttery richness, all arriving in an iron cocotte which kept them properly hot.

The sorbets are housemade; the night of our visit, the serving was a small scoop each of cherry, chocolate and pink grapefruit. Grapefruit lovers, go no farther. Probably the best version we've had of this outside of France, it was sweet-bitter-tart, just like the fruit. The chocolate, too, was great, dark and rich without creaminess. Maybe the cherry would have been better if its platemates hadn't been so exquisite. But it also suffered from flavor that was a little too artificial and maraschino-like for us. We also saw it going by on orders of chocolate cake. And speaking of cakes, we indulged in a glorious black pepper spice cake. The pepper added a fine depth of flavor to the tanginess of the single layer, topped with a cream cheese frosting, all sauced with a generous dribble of salted caramel, some blueberries and candied peanuts. Certainly an uncommon combination, but well worth diving into.

 

The wine list was a major disappointment, lacking any first-rate French Burgundy or Bordeaux, and with no more than a half-dozen choices of each. Disgraceful for a fine beef restaurant. There are many wines from all over the world, with prices on the high side and labels on the low. One of the least expensive on the list, a Kenwood Zinfandel from Lodi ($32), was a satisfactory bottle. The wine list had company in a demeaning cocktail menu that included "Bourbon and Vernors" for about $8. Vernors is a Michigan-based company that makes ginger ale and other types of soda pop. Bourbon and ginger ale! A cocktail! Absurd. Might as well have a really fancy drink like Scotch and Soda.

The service did, indeed, settle down and the meal was properly paced. Since runners bring food from the kitchen, there was a who-gets-the-ribeye moment, which should not happen at restaurants where $75 per person probably will be a starting point. However, once things started to roll, all was well, and the meal was so good that we can almost forgive the errors in the early going.

 

Prime 1000

1000 Washington Ave.

314-241-1000

www.prime1000.com

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

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Difficult

Smoking: No

Entrees: $22-$58

The Company Men

If schadenfreude, or taking pleasure from someone else's misfortune, is your thing, run, do not walk, to "The Company Men," and get a fix watching the rich and powerful take a financial and psychological beating by being fired. It's fitting emotional revenge for so many of us who have seen employees sacrificed on the altar of a CEO's salary.

We're in Boston, where a big-time, high-profile firm is in the throes of corporate despondency because the bottom line is heading toward the bottom. Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) and his comfortable, six-figure salary, have been escorted out the door. He's only the first in John Wells' excellent film about top executives fighting for seats in the lifeboat as the ship goes down.

Wells, who is responsible for some excellent TV work as a producer of "West Wing," "ER" and other shows, makes his big-screen writing and directing debut in a fast-paced manner and with an excellent cast. Affleck is first-rate as the first to fall, but Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper take charge as co-founders of GTX, top executives and good friends for many years. Jones is Gene McClary, whose loyalty to his workers is paramount,, and Cooper is Phil Woodward, watching age creep up on him. Riding herd is James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), brilliant as the big boss, totally unfeeling about anything except his own salary of $22 million.

The company is doing poorly for all the usual reasons and the word is out that Nelson is sharpening the axe. Affleck, his psyche badly bruised from the experience, goes to happy-talk exit seminars and job fairs. Finally, he accepts an offer from his brother-in-law (Kevin Costner) to be a gopher and apprentice in construction. Costner and Affleck have an edgy relationship, but Costner steps up out of family loyalty. An interesting situation.

Wells has a good eye for details. A stroll on abandoned pier focuses closely on Jones and Cooper. And speaking of Cooper, he offers a marvelous reaction when a good-hearted but unthinking co-worker suggests he dye his hair.

"The Company Men" makes a good companion piece to last year's George Clooney film, "Up in the Air," which looked at the same men in similar circumstances from a different point of view.

The Company Men opens today on several screens

--Joe

Summer Wars

Japanese animation, or anime, has been a stylistic gem in the movie industry about 30 years, and it's done so well it's staggering. "Summer Wars" is a charming tale, successful as a contemporary film and in its artistic creativity.

Mamoru Hosada is the drector, Satoko Okudera the writer. Our hero is a pre-teen boy named Kenji, a student (middle school probably, perhaps high school) with a deep crush on Natsuki. He gets a summer job where Natsuki's family goes on holiday, and gets involved, including an invitation to her great-grandmother's birthday party.

While fooling around, Kenji discovers an alternative universe, and is off on a lot of nifty adventures.

The animation is bright, the technique of excellent quality. Aimed mainly at teenagers, but also good fun for those much older. As the circus ringmaster's introduction goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages. . . ."

Opens today at the Tivoli

--Joe

Ichigo Modern Japanese

Ichigo Modern offers several things usually not found in Clayton restaurants, but the first to meet the eye is the huge amount of free parking to the east side of the building. Located in the postwar- modern Washington University building erected to house Famous-Barr as the first department store branch to leave downtown, its main entrance faces the parking area. A smaller one faces Forsyth. (What does it say about St. Louis that people fuss so much over parking, anyway?)

There's a lunch buffet, something many Asian restaurants seem to consider vital to their prosperity, and it includes sushi, but we went for dinner, when things are much quieter. The space seems more suited for night, anyway, with a high ceiling and darkish walls providing a nicely dramatic setting for a charming meal. A few soft spots, to be sure, but mostly imaginative and tasty, with an elegant presentation.

Parts of its website still refer to the former occupant, Sekisui Pacific Rim, but the focus now is on a wider appeal. Yes, sushi and tempura, but with the addition of quite a few new rolls and what can only be described as Japanese fusion cooking. In terms of sushi, besides our favorites of yellowtail, tuna and salmon roe, we were taken by the Toro Dynamite, a roll with two colors of glistening roe, looking like tiny glass beads sparkling atop the rice.

Dinner includes miso soup, a salad and rice; we substituted the mushroom broth, and received a tasty, beefy broth with several kinds of mushrooms and some green onions floating on top, far more interesting than the rather ordinary miso. The house salad also is unremarkable, with listless iceberg lettuce and a sweet ginger dressing. On the other hand, the tongue-tingling Luau salad was delicious. The name probably salutes the fact that it contained poke, the Hawaiian dish of diced raw fish dressed with salt, soy and sesame that's close to a tuna tartare. The fish, accompanied by iceberg lettuce, a little tomato and some radish sprouts were topped with a spicy soy dressing that really stood out. A dab of aioli was nice but mostly unnecessary. A similar, slightly less piquant dressing came atop tiger beef, described as “seared raw beef” with lettuce, cucumber, onion and cilantro. The combination was excellent, although the beef was far from raw. No pink to the rather tough, thin slices.

An appetizer of golden mussels brought five large New Zealand green lips (unfortunately not completely detached from their shells) that had been topped with more of the aioli mixed with some golden tobiko roe, the whole flash-baked. A superior combination, although messy to eat.

An off-menu item at many Japanese restaurants is grilled fish jaw, usually from salmon, mackerel or yellowtail. The flesh is tender and succulent, slightly difficult to remove from the bone, and it's the same sort of delicacy as beef or veal cheeks. We asked what was available, and were told salmon. Salmon arrived, however, as small fins--or wings-- that offered the same pleasure. As a pre-teen boy, sent to the delicatessen for lox and bagels on a Sunday morning, I always hoped, and sometimes planned, based on the length of the line, to have the deli-man slicing my order as he reached the wings, which he would cut off and add to the package. If "lagniappe" had been translated from New Orleans to Brooklyn, that's what it was. The Ichigo version was perfectly cooked and very rich, with a garlicky soy sauce alongside for dipping.

Speaking of salmon, the "salmon pagoda" offered slices of grilled fish glazed with miso, then piled  in a stack that began with rice, continued with seasoned spinach, and layered the salmon with thin crescents of kabocha squash. The lightly sweet squash was a fine contrast to the savory miso-dressed fish. More of the squash appeared, along with asparagus, onion, and broccoli, in the shrimp-and-vegetable tempura, the light and crunchy batter near-perfect.

A nightly special of grilled mackerel couldn't be ignored. A fillet had been brushed with soy and properly grilled, arriving alongside a ponzu soy sauce for a little piquancy. Sea bass,also brushed with miso, was served with black beans, a little asparagus and a few slices of avocado, the fish moist and tender. And the red snapper Ichigo had been marinated in a soy-apple mixture, and came with some corn and sweet potato fries. Interesting, rewarding flavors.

Servers were pleasant and patient, especially dealing with folks like us who had trouble deciding what to choose from the large menu. Green tea kept coming on a cold night, and we left smiling.

 

 Ichigo Modern Japanese

7443 Forsyth Blvd., Clayton

314-726-0033

www.ichigomodern.com

 Lunch Mon.-Fri., Dinner nightly

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Entrees: $8-$19

The Year of Magical Thinking

There's a considerable amount of magic in the Rep's Studio Theatre these days, led by Fontaine Syer. The co-founder and long-time artistic director of the Theatre Project Company returned to a St. Louis stage and offers a brilliant re-creation of Joan Didion in "The Year of Magical Thinking," which will run through Jan. 30.

Didion's Pulitzer Prize-winning book deals with her response to the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, who collapsed and died at their dinner table on Nov. 30, 2003. At the time, they had returned from a hospital visit to their only child, Quintana, critically ill and suffering from septic shock. A few months later, after an apparent recovery, she was felled by a brain hematoma, and died, in the summer of 2005, from acute pancreatitis.

The book, written in an amazing 88 days, was published before the death of Quintana, and when Didion adapted it into a one-woman play, she added a discussion of the death of her daughter. Despite Syer's splendid performance, this addition undermines the play's strength. As Quintana's story emerges, it weakens that of John, and one wonders which person was the more important to the writer.

Didion's opening grabs the audience with its power, shrouded in simplicity.

"This happened on November 30, 2003," she writes. "That may seem a while ago, but it won't when it happens to you. And it will happen to you." Syer delivers as simply as it sounds, but the words are a left hook to the heart, and one does not recover.

The "magical thinking" of the title is Didion's way of describing her use of denial, and of the offering of a sacrifice as if that will bring his return. "If I finish my cereal, he'll be back," she more-or-less says to herself, using her behavior as the general idea for a sacrifice or bargain to create this miracle, as children do for many errors of commission or omission. It may be "if I shine my shoes," or, "if I sit very still." It's a game we've all played. None of us ever won.

Didion tells us very little about herself and Dunne in terms of meeting, courtship, early lives together. It's mostly about her; her thoughts, her actions, her responses; her living in Hawaii, in Malibu, in New York. But she does write of arguments. "Why do you always have to be right?" she quotes him as saying, then adding, "Why do you always have to have the last word?" When she writes of her daughter, there is more of Quintana.

Listening to her deal with hospitals, doctors, administrators makes his questions seem reasonable.

Syer has total command of Didion's persona, though she is a larger woman than the 5-foot-2, 95-pound one she portrays. She's immediately recognizable, the same fine features and attractive style. I had not seen her since 2002, when we ran into one another at a Philadelphia theater production during a conference of the American Theatre Critics Association that I was attending. At the time, she was artistic director of the Delaware State Theater, a post she left a few years later. She's at Indiana University today, teaching acting and directing, and this production ran in Indiananpolis in the spring of 2009. Priscilla Lindsay directed then, and reprises it here. Rob Koharchik designed the simple set, his twin brother, Ryan, the lights.

The New York production, directed by David Hare and starring Vanessa Redgrave, ran for five months in the spring and summer of 2007.

It's a strong role, and Syer performs it excellently. It's a pleasure to have her back on a St. Louis stage. If only the play were better. . . .

The Year of Magical Thinking is on stage at the Studio Theatre of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, through Jan. 30

--Joe