St. Louis Eats and Drinks

Another Potato Salad

It's not too late. You can still do a very good potato salad for Labor  Day. The original potato salad I started out with (having grown up in a potato-salad-free home, I was left to my own devices) was a three-day affair, or at the least two, cooking the potatoes, seasoning them while still warm with vinegar, letting that sit overnight, and then dressing it the following day, preferably to be served the third day, or at least several hours later.

This version is much like the potato salads I first had at church barbecues on the north side of the city back in the Seventies, creamy rather than chunky, and with a good sweet-sour-spicy seasoning. I like it spicy, which is now how this recipe, which began with one in Jim Fobel's Big Flavors, evolved. His calls for mixed sweet pickles, which included pickles,cauliflower, pearl onions and red peppers. All I could find that first time was mixed hot dill pickles. I like dill but not so much dill pickles; nevertheless that was a hit. Of course, just like the lipstick color that was perfect, those pickles disappeared from the market, and I went on to other things. I subbed hot paprika for regular to add some heat, and, depending on who I was cooking for, even added some cayenne or Tabasco to the dressing. The batch currently mellowing in my fridge includes hot bread and butter pickles, which is nicely heretical. Early tasting is extremely promising.

3 pounds russet (baking) potatoes

Salt

3 large eggs, hard-cooked

1 Tbs. sugar (or substitute)

1 Tbs. cider or red wine vinegar

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. paprika

1/3 c. finely chopped pickles (see above)

1/3 c. finely chopped onion (green onion is nice)

Put a pot of water on to boil, and salt it generously. Cut the potatoes up in two or three pieces and add to the pan when it comes to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are fork-tender, which could be 15 to 30 minutes depending on the size of the chunks. Drain and set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, chop the eggs into a bowl. (A pastry blender is useful for this.) Mash a little with a fork, and stir in the mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, vinegar, pepper, paprika, pickles, onion and 2 tsp. salt. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to use.

Peel the potatoes, and mash them until they're somewhere between chunky and mashed. Pour the dressing over the potatoes and mix thoroughly. Taste for seasoning, and refrigerate  to chill for several hours.

When ready to serve, check seasoning again and readjust if needed. Serves 6-8.

 

Eclipse: Brunch

Eclipse has moved its brunch to the rooftop, probably a good idea, but this past weekend their elevators died so the assembled motorcyclists and Washington University dropping-off parents made do with the space-y dining room of the restaurant, no great hardship.

A fairly simple and reasonably priced ($15 for adults, including non-alcoholic beverages) brunch, but be reminded that this is a fairly serious bar, so when I asked for a Bellini, no one batted an eye. And a large, chilly one it was, too, nicely dry.

The cold table is pretty modest. A beautiful green salad - no bagged lettuce assortment here - sat (untouched, strangely, but it was early) with a Greek pasta salad and a platter of crudites. The pasta salad was unexciting, but there was, among others, what was surely a housemade onion dip with the raw vegetables and it was quite tasty.

On the hot side, the crowning dish is almost certainly biscuits and gravy. Those are words I never thought I'd be saying. I'm not a particular fan of the dish; good biscuits are hard to come by and really flavorful sausage gravies almost as rare - although that should be considerably easier to create. These biscuits are immense and incredibly, crumblingly tender. It's almost impossible to split and butter then without them falling apart. The gravy is smooth, not so thick as some, but seriously well seasoned, and nearly irresistible.

Pay attention to the small, very plump sausage patties. I suspect the sausage, too, is made in-house, and the thickness is smart. They stay moist that way. Good notes of black pepper and perhaps some sage as well. The only egg offering is scrambled; what else can you do on a buffet line that has no omelet station, but it's a cruelty to the hen fruit. Good bacon that suffered from a closed chafing dish.

Lunchness was represented by salmon with pineapple salsa and herb roasted chicken. The salmon, too, had the chafing dish consequences, not that anyone would expect rare salmon on a buffet line. But the pineapple salsa is a good idea, and lifted it above the usual St. Louis brunch fish dish. Chicken is happier in that sort of an environment, and stayed moist, but would have done better with more herbs.

Two kinds of potatoes, hash browns, which were the shreds, and garlic mashed potatoes. Never saw those on a brunch line before, but these were a delight, creamy and flavorful. I yearned for an egg over easy to match up with them.

While the sweets table looks modest, there are some excellent options. Brownie bites are moist, chewy and decadent. And triangle-shaped lemon tarts had excellent shortbread-esque crust and a tart filling, rich enough to give more than the couple of bites their size might call for. The plate of tea breads and sweet rolls also seems to be done in-house, including exquisitely fresh Danish, hurray, and some golf-ball-sized sweet yeast rolls with a drizzle of frosting and a hit of cinnamon. Indulge.

We've got a couple of months where Sunday morning weather can be absolutely glorious; go investigate.

 

Eclipse

The Moonrise Hotel

6177 Delmar Blvd.

314-726-2222

www.eclipsestlouis.com

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Brunch: $15 (adults)

An Italian Chicken Salad

This is a very different sort of chicken salad. No dried cranberries, no curry powder, no slices of celery. I found it in some food magazine years and years ago, and they traced its ancestry to Harry's Bar in Venice, where it was used in little sandwiches, the Venetian tramezzini, crustless triangles with the filling a mound in the middle of the sandwiches. It's a richer chicken salad than many, and, yes, the recipe includes anchovies. People are funny about anchovies - the visuals seem to get them. But the salty little rascals are minced up, so that's not a problem here. This has been really popular with folks I've fed with it.

 

1 c. finely chopped cooked chicken

4 hard-cooked eggs, finely chopped

1 can (2 ounces) flat fillets of anchovy in oil, drained and finely chopped

1 small onion, grated

1/4 tsp. fresh-ground pepper

1/3 c. mayonnaise

 

Mix together, and taste the mixture - I sometimes find it needs more black pepper. Perhaps more mayo?

 

Makes about 2 1/2 cups chicken salad. I prefer it on a bread that's tender rather than chewy, but that's a call for you.

Wolf Public House

Looking for something casual out west?  Try The Wolf:

 

http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/June-2013/The-Well-Seasoned-Life-The-Wolf-Public-House/

Iceland

A stunning trip, and the food wasn't bad:

http://www.laduenews.com/diversions/travel/ln-travel-iceland/article_a46b8e26-1898-5b0d-9c96-974fa2e123a4.html

(Be sure to look at the photos.)

Bacon-Tomato Dip

Yes, another dip recipe. This is remarkably good as-is, but lends itself to changing around. Bacon and tomatoes, just like the sandwich. but there's no reason why one couldn't use Ro-Tel for a little heat, sub Miracle Whip for the mayo, use Greek olives instead of the bacon, add onion or chives - you get the idea.

But the basic game works like this:

 

1 lb. bacon

1 c. mayonnaise (I used reduced-fat)

1 c. sour cream (and reduced-fat here, too)

1 tomato, chopped and seeded.

 

Cook the bacon (it needn't be perfectly crisp), drain well, and chop or break it up. While the bacon is cooking, stir togther the mayo and sour cream. Add the bacon pieces and stir in, then the tomato. Makes about 3 cups.

 

I prefer to do this beforehand, to allow the bacon's smokiness to permeate the dip better. (At first, the mayo predominated.) I stirred the tomato in close to when I served it, thinking it would leach out liquid and get sloppy. Since I'd removed the seeds and all the liquid with them, that didn't happen, and it was fine the following day. I did season it with a few grinds of black pepper - most bacons are sufficiently salty that you won't need salt.

 

Very chunky, and fairly stiff; this works well with bagel chips. And someone muttered about putting it on top of a burger, which sounds good, too.

A Fast Bite at 5 Star Burgers

Sometimes I come across a dish that's worth passing on, as regular readers may have noted. In this case, it's a remarkable burger that's vegetarian. At least it's a sort of burger. Steve Gontram at Five Star Burgers is offering a portobello mushroom burger that's an absolute winner. He's topping it with strips of roasted pepper and grilled onions, and finishing things off with blue cheese. Moist, a little oozy, it's absolutely delicious, giving a fine example of why meat isn't a requirement to make food satisfying.

And the August burger of the month is the Caprese, beef topped with roasted tomato, fresh mozzarella and pesto mayonnaise. Seasonal food, even for a burger.

 

Five Star Burgers

8125 Maryland Ave., Clayton

314-720-4350

www.5starburgersstl.com

Lunch & Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Difficult

Smoking: No

Burgers, etc.: $8-$12

Feta Dip

"Just bring something." That's the refrain many of us hear. Whether it's a meeting, a social gathering or goodness knows what, eventually our fall-back recipe, whether it's devilled eggs or Julia's mushrooms alla Grecque, doesn't wow 'em any more. Or, just as likely, it doesn't wow you any more. There's only so many times you can make almost anything before it becomes a chore, not a gift to the people you're feeding.

I'm a big believer in dips. In catering circles, sometimes they're referred to as slathers, served with those short, fat spreaders and small slices of bread, and that's fine, but most folks think of them as going with chips or crudites. In fact, one non-cooking bachelor friend of ours I've always encouraged to bring vegetables to this sort of function so I can have an excuse to bring a couple of dips. (Chips are great, and I love them, but cutting up vegetables to go with dip is my idea of punishment.)

And so I've come up with a couple of new options, both of which went over well with my most recent testing group. This is the simpler of the two.

I kept reading that Bulgarian feta is the best, so I got some at Global Foods in Kirkwood. And it's just what I think of when I dream of feta, creamy and rich and soft but not falling apart. And I had no qualms about using reduced fat sour cream with this. I can imagine this going well with cucumbers or cherry tomatoes, in particular.

 

FETA DIP

8 oz. feta cheese

1 c. sour cream

3 very thinly sliced green onions (save some of the green for a garnish)

 

Break up the feta with a fork or a pastry blender (at last: another use for them!). It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth, but smaller lumps are what you're aiming for. Stir in the sour cream until it's well mixed and then most of the onions.

I can't imagine you'll need more salt, but you might consider lemon juice, black pepper or a very light shot of Tabasco to season this with. Just taste and consider.

Yields about a cup and a half.

Cancelled!

The St. Louis Chefs Wine Country Barbeque planned for September 15 has been cancelled. No word on why - or how to get reimbursed for your purchased tickets. If I know more, I'll pass it on.

Tripel

There's an old show biz line that goes something like, "No one ever walked out of a theater whistling the scenery." The corrolary in restaurants, I suppose, is "No one ever walked out of a restaurant saying how delicious the decor was." And yet - well, the food at Tripel is often quite good, but it's the decor that strikes one upon arrival.

From the very handsome door (and surely there's a good explanation for why there's no ramp to get in it) to the painted Art Moderne ceiling and the etched glass panels, this is a brasserie in the fine old style. Even the small mismatched bread plates, which may appear ktischy, fall into the little-European-restaurant style one still finds, mostly in smaller cities and towns.

Beer lovers will know that this is a Belgian brasserie, not a French one, although there's French influence here and there. So there are new dishes and some new words for St. Louisans, along with more familiar things.

Are those escargot French? Set free from shells and parsley, Tripel nestles them - and a little garlic butter; let's not get too radical - in the hollow of a split marrow bone and places a strip of marrow atop before they're placed in a hot oven. Absolutely succulent, with a couple of slices of grilled bread to stretch out the very rich fun.

The pate of the day was chicken. Given its very pale pinky-beige color, my guess is that it was white meat and chicken liver. Very mild, almost perfectly smooth save for a slight graininess, a light hit of brandy, the only off-note was the pate jar's top layer with what appeared to be tomato aspic, but with no discernible flavor at all. Fine tomatoes alongside, though, and a few leaves of lightly dressed salad.

How many antelope roam in Belgium? Not many, but a strong recommendation to Tripel's work with them. Slices medium rare as ordered, lean, quite tender and very juicy, garnished with lardons of bacon and slices of crisply fried garlic, plus a few roasted Brussels sprouts and frites. Instead of the frites, diners can opt for stoemp, mashed potatoes with unnamed vegetables. (Traditionally, they're root vegetables.) But Belgium is known for its french fries, traditionally served with mayonnaise and one feels certain obligations in these circumstances.

Like all the entrees from the "grilled" section of the menu, there was a choice of sauces. Bearnaise is irresistible; the version here is thick, lightly tarragon-ed and only lightly touched with any acidity, but still, as always, a perfect foil for the fries. But what the menu called an au poivre sauce was a reddish brown tasting of beef broth and the only discernible pepper was in a slight aftertaste, no cream, no brandy, nothing of the classic au poivre. The odd sauce made no difference, this was still a fine plate of food.

Waterzoois are the traditional Belgian stews, often made with fish but certainly seen in other iterations. Tripel offers them with chicken or vegetables, and what arrived were a leg quarter and a trimmed breast quarter topped with an array of seemingly roasted vegetables. And in a sauce boat came the gravy from the waterzooi, pale and creamy-looking - it's traditionally thickened with cream and sometimes egg. The chicken was very good, the white meat perfectly cooked, done but not dry, the dark meat a little more relaxed from its journey through the heat. But they didn't look as though they'd been in a stew - perhaps a delicate braise, but not a stew. The gravy added to the puzzle, with very little flavor, but it was superfluous. The young carrots stretched along the side of the dish, little new potatoes and a bit of zucchini, all chimed in. This may just be one of those "our interpretation of" waterzooi deals.

And, in answer to a question I've already gotten, there are mussels. Six versions, in fact. You can't have even a semi-Belgian restaurant without mussels.

And for dessert? Baba au rhum. For those new to this, it's a yeast-based cake, rich with eggs, often made in little individual molds and soaked in a sweet rum syrup. Here it arrived as a couple of slices from a ring mold, topped with macerated chopped dried fruit, which is traditional, and a large bottle of Myer's Rum to add more rum. Interestingly, that did not make it too boozy, although this really is an essentially adult dessert. The texture was wonderful, tender but remaining firm, the flavors mellow. I only wonder what the baba would be like topped with fresh summer fruit - rum and peaches, for instance, sound like a good idea.

A young server who was obliging but still learning the menu a little - and an extra point to her for managing that gracefully.

Not perfect, but interesting and worth a return visit for mussels and a chocolate dessert. Along with the baba au rhum, that is.

 

Tripel

1801 Park Ave.

314-678-7787

www.tripelstl.com

Dinner Tues.-Sat.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Poor

Smoking: No

Entrees: $12-$26

The Publican

Two nights in Chicago: How to choose restaurants? I began the usual research, but when I was in DC in June, mentioned the trip to a fellow grape nut, the esteemed and multi-talented Lou Marmon, who reported a dream of a meal at The Publican. "Go," he responded in an uncharacteristically peremptory manner. "Trust me. You'll like it." Unaccustomed as I am to following directions, I did so.

The Publican, in Chicago's old meatpacking district, belongs to a small group of restaurants (something Chicago seems to do well over the years) that include Blackbird and Avec, among others, a lineage that augurs well. It's large and spare, with several looooong tables that provide communal seating. While there are many individual tables, the big tables are clearly part of the experience here, lots of groups of five or more were having a swell time at them. Yes, noise levels are high; outside tables fared better, since there was little street traffic.

Plenty of local produce, and meat via their sibling, Publican Quality Meats, a shop and catering venue across the street. (It also does food on the weekends.) A serious beer list, fittingly, as well as some interesting wine. They credit the farmer's market in Evanston, one of the older suburbs for inspiration and supplies.

Like The Agrarian this past spring, they're offering tastes of different ham as a starter, and it was a temptation, but we went in another directions, after much discussion. Many interesting things but we succumbed to temptation and had a chicken liver pate. This may have been the best example of the classic we've come across in decades. Rich and unctuous, as smooth as George Clooney, tasting of brandy that had been flamed, it was indecently good. A blueberry garnish was a nice contrast, not acidic, just a little punch of sweetness. And it was a remarkably generous serving.

Another clear winner was the frites, or fries, served Belgian style in a cone of newspaper with some mayonnaise for dipping, or, to be more accurate, lily-gilding. They're also available with eggs, presumably soft-cooked for dipping, but it's hard to imagine even the finest farm-fresh eggs - which I'm sure they are - could do much improving on these guys, hot, crisp, tasting of actual potato, a sterling example of tuberosity.

For entrees, we passed on the fresh sardines frpm Monterey Bay, a mistake I'm still muttering about. (The following night would be seafood at Shaw's Crab House, which didn't come up to its previous standards, as it turned out.) A vegetarian dish of romano beans with small heirloom tomatoes, farro and farmers cheese was happily satisfying, the flat green beans more flavorful than their more common cousins, and the farro giving a nice toothy chew to the dish.

The dish titled "country rib" intrigued me; The meaty and sometimes bone-free versions we find in supermarkets here never seem to make it onto restaurant menus, and here was...well, something with the same name, at least. It definitely wasn't the same cut, less lean, more connective tissue and rather erratic bone pieces, and less than an inch thick. But it was juicy and piggy in flavor, rubbed with a little coriander that played well off its sidekicks, seasonal peaches that were sweet-tart and rings of ripe Fresno pepper, a fine combination of flavors to play off the pork.

Vacherin is not just the name of two cheeses made in France and Switzerland. It's also the name of a classic dessert, now seldom seen but just the sort of thing to make a comeback these days, when desserts at a certain price level must consist of several different items made separately and then put together (sort of a pie ala mode graduate school project). The vacherin begins with a crisp meringue shell, and is filled with fruit and/or whipped cream and/or ice cream. The publican's wore three kinds of ice cream, raspberry, vanilla and passionfruit, whipped cream, gigantic raspberries and a little candied lemon peel. The crunchy meringue is a fine contrast to the smooth and the cool and the fruit. We should see more variations on the vacherin.

A considerable amount of online muttering about service here, but things were very busy and we mostly were taken very good care of, water glasses kept full, tables bussed, almost none of the dreaded hundred-mile stare - and considering how many tables our server was covering, it may have just been surveying that couple across the room.

I went. I trusted. I liked it.

 

The Publican

837 W. Fulton Market, Chicago

312-733-9555

www.thepublicanrestaurant.com

Dinner nightly, Brunch Sat.-Sun.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Fair

Smoking: No

Entrees: $21-$42

It's a Trifecta:

The winner of the 2013 Governor's Cup for  the best Missouri wine this year is the 2011 Stone Hill Estate Bottled Norton. In addition, it took the Best of Class Dry Red and the C. V. Riley Award for best Norton. For more of the awards, you can click here.

A Few Words on Chicago

Just back from a brief run to Chicago to see the Lascaux Caves exhibit at the wonderful Field Museum. Between my long-standing love affair with the Art Institute of Chicago and secondary affection for the Museum of Science and Industry, I'd never made it there before. Where else can you see paleontologists taking dirt from a dig, a coffee measure at a time, and going through it bit by bit under a microscope?

No restaurants nearby; my pal and I ate at the museum's outpost of The Corner Bakery. A sign promised local tomatoes and lettuce on their BLT plus BACON (their caps) yielding, therefore a BBLT. One of the sides was a bruschetta salad. The salad - no bread - used chopped tomatoes, halved cherry tomatoes, diced mozzarella and a little arugula, all in a basil-laced vinaigrette, very good.

But the blowout was the BBLT. Grilled sourdough and a balsamic black pepper mayonnaise, yes, but also excellent tomatoes and plenty of really good bacon. It's a summer special at The Corner Bakery - this could make Crown Candy a little uneasy if there were TCB stores in St. Louis.

More: Glazed and Infused, just west of the legendary Billy Goat Tavern, has a walkup window upen until the wee hours on the weekend. Doughnuts to soak up partying, yes, but also a brisk business with morning commuters for both lattes and carbs. The maple bacon bar has an entire strip of black pepper bacon for the good fo man- and womankind. Also creme brulee doughnuts, and bismarks, like jelly doughnuts, du jour; I had a lemon curd with raspberry frosting.

Shaw's Crab House, a longtime favorite of ours, is on the same block. I am surprised to report a softshell crab special gave almost flavorless crabs overwhelmed by a very tart (? underripe ?) fresh tomato coulis. But the steamed king crab legs, a house classic, were great and so was key lime pie, raspberry pie and a creme brulee godo enough to remind us how this classic-turned-cliche ought to be done, with tender custard and a crunchy, toasted-marshmallow-flavor top. More on a visit to The Publican soon.

Central Table Market Hall

The day after the Riverfront Times and the day the Post-Dispatch both reviewed Central Table Food Hall was when I last visited there. This usually proves to be a bad idea, given the glowing words that both publications had for the newest resident of South Euclid. But plans had been made. There was a reservation, of course, and it's a very large restaurant, so onward, curious to see how it went.

The outside tables were booming - it was one of those incredibly benign nights we've been luxuriating in lately. Inside, perhaps fewer than half the tables were occupied, although the number grew as it passed 7:30, and the low level of noise was the hum of a well-oiled machine.

As with many of the new places around town, this is a menu that lends itself to nibbling here and there rather than the 3-course meal. There were, on our visit, five main courses, chicken, steak, salmon, scallops and pork, but that's on a large two-sided menu that doesn't include beverages or desserts.

The second side of the menu is all about the sushi bar. While my pal muttered about being unfaithful to his favorite sushi chef, we did succumb to the magic mushroom maki, a string of mushroom caps stuffed with seafood, avocado, pickled burdock root, more mushrooms and a little chili mayonnaise before being popped into a hot oven for just a bit to glaze the mayo and warm things very slightly. Amazingly good, and as a side note, one of the few good uses of the now-ubiquitous mayonnaise found in sushi on both sides of the Pacific.

This isn't a case of a kitchen that does sushi and pizza - there are several kitchens working besides the sushi chef, one devoted to the pizza and pasta workings of two chefs from Brooklyn, plenty of floor show for those who care to watch. Thus the pizze are New York-style, medium crust, nicely chewy. The diavolo was not quite as devilish as it could have been, the spicy tomatoes just pleasantly cranked up, a good amount of roasted garlic, and sausage here and there. More unusual was the gooseberry and lamb. Lamb bacon, goat cheese, honey and black pepper we understood. But these gooseberries were orange. Well, they're not exactly gooseberries the way at least Midwesterners know gooseberries. They're physalis, or ground cherries, but occasionally known as Cape gooseberries, thus the usage - apparently they were known to the Pilgrims. They're egg-yolk orange, not as tart as their green-pink name twin, and they surely work on the pizza with the other ingredients bringing tart-salty-spicy-sweet all to the pleasure of the diner.

Two different seafood options, both somewhat unusual, excelled. Spanish octopus, in the form of a single, grilled tentacle, lay gracefully surrounded by grilled peaches, shiso, which is sort of minty, and a couple of paper-thin slices of lardo. (If you haven't had it, no, it's not lard, it's cured back fat from a hog.) Far from rubbery, it was tender, a little chewy where the grill had really browned it, the octopus was excellent, the lardo adding a little richness to things and the shiso and peach a zinginess. And then there was the cuttlefish. This surely is their first appearance on a St. Louis menu. Think smaller rings of the tenderest imaginable calimari in a see-through veil of breading, probably with a little lime zest in it. The sauce was more assertively lime, a mayonnaise with lime juice rather than lemon and a light hit of cayenne to punch it up even a bit more. Superb.

Tempura vegetables had a batter only slightly more dense and arrived bone-dry of oil, shimmering hot with things like haricots and slices of beet as well as the more expected vegetables. Only an order of mussels fell short. Ordinarily, they would have been quite good, but the rest of the meal had shown high standards and these guys lacked the promised chorizo in their broth. We missed the chorizo, it left not even a message to say farewell....

Popcorn panna cotta and browned butter ice cream with housemade caramel corn? Fascinating, richly flavored, and something I'll order again, but not until the temperature is below freezing. This is a dessert for a cold night with a fireplace, so autumnal is the feeling.
Great service, no surprise; regular restaurant-goers of the area should see several familiar faces moving quickly and checking tables. Lunch here is more casual; order and pay at the various counters. And now they're doing brunch. More to come, for sure.

 

Central Table Market Hall

23 S. Euclid

314-932-5595

www.centraltablestl.com

Lunch Mon.-Fri., Dinner nightly, Brunch Sun.

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Entrees:$21-$26

St. Louis Chefs Wine Country Barbeque

September brings to mind lots of things. In many ways, it really is the beginning of a new year. Besides the backpacks and the resumed schedules and the last gasp0 of sun blocker, for many years it's been the month for another ritual.

The St. Louis Chefs wine country Barbeque at Mount Pleasant Winery in Augusta will be held September 15 this year. Running from 1 until 5 in the afternoon, it features fine chefs from area restaurants and private clubs, all offering their specialties and some surprises, as well. When it first began, it was a function of the St. Louis Chapter of the James Beard Society. After that disbanded, the function continued as a fundraiser for the Chefs de Cuisine Education Foundation and the American Culinary Foundation's Chef and Child Foundation.

It's basically a giant buffet with lots of schmoozing among fellow food lovers and the folks that produce what they love. It's also a chance to try new things and hear about new restaurants. $50 per person general admission, $55 for reserved seating and an early-bird special of $45 for general admission before September 1. This does not include wine, which is, not surprisingly, available for purchase.

Reservations at Mount Pleasant Winery, www.mountpleasant.com or 1-800-467-WINE.