St. Louis Eats and Drinks

St. Louis in London?

Embarrassingly fortunate, I was in London again in late May after visiting my former neighbors outside Vevey, Switzerland - another story to be told there at another time. But having been reminded of its presence by running into another attendee at April's Chowzter conference, I went by the Covent Garden location of Danny Meyer's Shake Shack, and took a look.

I talk about it here on the St. Louis Magazine blog Relish.

The Good Pie

After more than a year's wait, The Good Pie has reopened in the Delmar Loop, moving from the orbit of St. Louis University to that of Washington University. And yet, if there were ever a not-your-college-pizza-joint, this is (still) it. With a new pizza oven, wood burning, a lovely robin's-egg blue, it's still turrning out the trademark crust, bubbles charred at the edges, chewy rather than crisp, and toppings that range from purist to "Gee...".

The decor, once dark and pleasantly saloon-like, is now modern wood, reminiscent of Japanese or Scandinavian restaurants. No word on who the Queen Alexandra-ish lady on the east wall is. Bar stools are modelled on antique tractor seats, large enough for bachelor farmers of yore but perhaps not so comfy for the lissome size 2s who come to investigate the intricate cocktails. The beer list is shorter than the aperitif options, both slightly esoteric. I'd be happier with a few more wines by the glass.

Starters include three salads, the arugula salad now no longer mostly arugula but a mixture of fresh local baby greens, the chopped with its spicy vinaigrette and a Caesar, almost classic but for the lack of croutons and a light shower of crumbled egg yolk. Not vegetarian, though; there's definite anchovy in the dressing.

The pies? One size, perhaps 10 inches across. Two kinds of margaritas, both, of course, with tomato and basil, but the primo choice is with buffalo mozzarella, the combination of the red, white and green in the mouth a sudden, joyous taste of high summer with its fresh basil. Salami andd salsicca are among other options, but also the idea of pork belly and sage and an egg seemed like a good one. The pork belly had been brined and cut into lardons, so it was almost batons of bacon, and the egg, yolk still runny as is the usual practice to allow for dipping of crust. The sage, however, was sharp, almost bitter, when bitten into, too rowdy for a civilized creation. Removing the sage left just its residual flavors and the balance was restored.

Toward the end of the week, from Thursday onward, there are small servings of pasta available. All made in-house, they're uncommon pairings priced to serve as they are in Italy, as a first course (although, in my experience, not at Italian pizza restaurants). A serving of blue corn spaghetti studded with bits of squid, capers, and red bud tree blossoms, dressed in a tart sauce that made one think it might be almost as tasty served as a cold salad. I hear the gnocchi are good, too, but that'll wait until next time.

They're making gelato, too, although that particular form of carb loading will have to wait, too.

 

The Good Pie

6665 Delmar, University City

314-899-9221

on  Facebook

Lunch and Dinner Tues.-Sun

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Goody Goody Diner

The recent announcement that Goody Goody Diner was being sold cause a ripple of anxiety among certain of us. The first time I ever went was around 1970, and my primary memory was of it being a hangout for the St. Louis Police Department's Mobile Reserve, making it safer even than Crown Candy. It's expanded since then - in many ways - and now is a St. Louis institution. Here's what I said about it in the May issue of St. Louis Magazine.

For A Good Time

Tired of all those food competitions that leave you salivating and hungry - because you can't eat what they're cooking? Well, there's a summer-long series of barbecue burn-offs - excuse me, cook-offs - that offer food, drink, music and a sense of higher purpose.

What began as a good-natured argument a couple of years ago between Tom Coghill of Iron Barley and his pal Mark Gray of The Famous Bar and turned into a rib-off that's become the stuff of legends has evolved into a series of charity events hosted by various food and drink establishments.

Now officially known as St. Louis Occasional Barbecue Society - that's SLOBS, for short - they're hosting the opening event at Iron Barley on Memorial Day, May 26, at Iron Barley. The following events go like this:

 

- June 21, Saturday: Doc's Harley Davidson, 930 S. Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood (Guess this doesn't qualify as a food and drink establishment, come to think of it.)

- July 27, Sunday: Keeton's Double Play, 4944 Christy Blvd.

- August 24, Sunday - Kilderkin's Pub, 108 Hilltop Village, Eureka

- September 21, Sunday - Dylan's Sports Bar, 674 Jeffco Blvd., Arnold

- October 12, Sunday - PM BBQ, 121 Long Road, Chesterfield

- November 2 , Sunday - Highway 61 Roadhouse, 34 S. Old Orchard Ave., Webster Groves

 

For more information - times, costs, and who each shindig benefits, go to www.slobsbbq.com or their Facebook page.

Grapevine Grill

America, the land of the Great Open Road, has just about left behind the idea of a pleasant drive in the country to achieve destination dining. Maybe it was all a figment of Hollywood's imagination, back when movies were the drivers of our fantasies. Those couples in convertibles gaily heading off to some quaint inn out of The City all seemed to be having such a lighthearted time.

Some of those drives, at least in times past, were necessity. I grew up less than thirty miles from The Grapevine Grill at Chaumette Vineyards & Winery. If the grownups wanted a really nice dinner out and didn't want to make the then-almost-two-hour drive into St. Louis, the place to go was the hotel in Ste. Genevieve for prime rib. No longer. When owner Hank Johnson brought Adam Lambay to the kitchen, things got cranked up a notch. Or ten. Lambay, who's worked at a number of notable St. Louis restaurants, is not only running the kitchen, he's running the garden that produces much of what's on the Grill's tables, and is using lots of local suppliers for his meat, eggs, cheese and additional vegetables and fruits.

So what's to eat?  A number of the first course are sharing-sized, like cheese plates, meant to go with a bottle of Chaumette wine, of course. But others lure in a more complex direction, like grilled asparagus with house-smoked pork jowl. Smoked jowl, for those not familiar with it, is essentially bacon, just from a different part of the hog. It's dressed with  a sauce that's onion and bacon and lemon, slightly warm to go with the vegetable. Absolutely killer, very sophisticated - and then a taste memory may hit some of us. It's much like the warm dressing some families dressed a spring or summer lettuce salad with, and no less tasty for that.

Then there's the chicken and the egg. Well, that's not actually what it's called. It's the Flieg and Ladd, but that's because it's a devilled Flieg Farm egg and roasted Ladd Family Farm chicken, over some arugula and garnished with crisp chicken cracklings and diced pickled radish or beet. My only quibble might be a little more vinaigrette over the moist chunks of thigh meat.

And speaking of poultry, consider the quail, a perfect entree for this rural auberge. Lightly breaded and panfried, it appears in a mound of mashed potatoes that are as buttery as any ever found in a restaurant kitchen. "Skillet gravy" is the descriptor for the sauce, light years away from the gluey white stuff of some skillets of yore that traumatized fledgling Eaters. No, barely thickened, tasting of browned bits and meat juices, it was succulent lily gilding. More tiny asparagus, roasted, rode shotgun on the plate.

A shoulder of Berkshire pork from Meyer Farm was cured in-house and roasted along with the last of winter's root vegetables - carrots, potatoes, some onion. Very tender, as shoulders should be, and very flavorful, it suffered, alas, from too much saltiness, the only major misstep we came across.

It's a relief to some of us to see biryani on the menu. Adam, whose father is Indian, cooked for a while at Rasoi in the Central West End when its menu was a mixture of classical chef's training and the Indian dishes that result. It's great that he hasn't left that food by the wayside - in fact, he's catered Indian weddings at Chaumette. He did a pop-up restaurant a few months ago at the winery that served nothing but Indian food, and it sold out for the length of its run.  There's always at least one Indian dish on the menu here, more on Saturday nights. The biryani's rice was markedly fluffy, with more pieces of vegetable in it than average, and the accompanying chicken kebab had been rubbed with tandoori seasoning to give it a nice lift. The cooling yogurt sauce, raita, went beyond the expected cumin/onion/cucumber riffs with a little hit of mint and perhaps some black pepper. And speaking of seasoning, they're asking "How hot?" Asking for "somewhere between medium and hot" brought just that, pretty spicy but no flames on exhaling.

Like the rest of the menu, things range from the classics like carrot cake and a brownie (topped by a reduction of Norton wine)  to a pear shortcake with a goat cheese mousse. Restricted diets can find a gluten-free cherry crisp or a sugar free cheesecake, all this made in-house, of course. What called, however, was a blackberry buckle. Here, too, the old and the new - this is serious blackberry country (although blueberries are now cultivated in nearby St. Francois County), but they're traditionally for cobblers. A buckle, using cake batter, is innovative. But the rich and moist with the juices from the berries, the whipped cream really superfluous, it was a winner.

This is a casual restaurant, not a formal one, but service was attentive and knowledgeable. Various nights of the week, they may serve family style meals, but details for that are on their website.

 

The Grapevine Grill

Chaumette Vineyards and Winery

24345 Route WW, Ste. Genevieve

573-747-1000

www.chaumette.com

Lunch & Dinner Wed.-Sun, Brunch Sun.

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Entrees: $20-$24

Old Jews Telling Jokes

When you're young, you think about Old People as being stiff, arthritic in both their movement and their thinking. And then you realize thirty years have passed, and you're more like Them, except you don't feel like Them. I suspect that's universal. I once asked my feisty mother-in-law, when she was 95 or so (and still living in her own apartment, thank you), how old she felt in her mind. Hannah looked thoughtful, and then said, "Oh, fifty or so."

This by way of partial preparation for discussing "Old Jews Telling Jokes", the last production of this season for The New Jewish Theatre. Jewish humor became the benchmark for a couple of generations, thanks to the early years of television, even though most of us didn't know it was "Jewish humor" - it was just all over the screen. From Jack Benny through Sid Caesar, standup comedians like Woody Allen and Shelly Berman on variety shows, and the late-night talk show guests like Selma Diamond and Morey Amsterdam, it was everywhere. Much thanks to what became humor's minor leagues, the Catskills resorts feeding in to New York and Los Angeles.  And not just the US, either. A friend of mine in Cardiff, Wales, has vivid memories of Alan Sherman and "Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah", for instance. So the non-Jews in a potential audience will rock on with this material, especially if they picked up the occasional word of Yiddish as they sat in front of the television.

"Old Jews Telling Jokes" is considerably rowdier than anything on television back then, though. And for all you who think older audiences are more easily offended, it's not so with this material. Both the F words. Lots of sex jokes. No walk-outs, no eye-rolling or head-shaking that I could see.

The format is almost a variety show without jugglers. A couple of songs are interspersed with lots of one-liners and very short skits. Director Ed Coffield's pacing is terrific. He's got good material and a fine cast with which to work. Primus inter pares, first among equals, is Bobby Miller, wielding a cigar like David Robertson does a baton. Stellie Siteman does deadpan like she'd gotten a wholesale deal on Botox. Be sure to watch Johanna Elkana-Hale's movement, sometimes as funny as the punch lines, graceful but as pointed as a glare or a glance. Dave Cooperstein covers bits from the bar mitzvah boy to a woman on a park bench, and Craig Neuman, who says he hasn't acted in 22 years, shows no sign of rustiness, with great timing and flair.

This is not modern, politically correct humor. Some of it is sexist and it does fall into the stereotypes sometimes. But it's funny, often in that unexpected way that makes it even funnier. My guess is this will be a hot ticket. Act accordingly.

 

Old Jews Telling Jokes

through June 1

New Jewish Theatre

2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur

314-442-3283

www.newjewishtheatre.org

London: Two Meals at Dishoom

It's taken me three years to get to Dishoom. After eating very trad food on the last short visit to London, it was time to enjoy the Indian food the British Isles offer in such variety. I'd read about it before our 2011 visit, but an unexpected funeral to attend ended that idea. Now my best Curry Mate was in London in graduate school, and arriving a day early for the Chowzter confab gave me the chance. Two chances, in fact.

Don't get the idea this is one of those basement-level tables-jammed together spots that can be found throughout London. Nope. Two locations, although at least the Shoreditch location, where I went, also uses the basement are both large and roomy-feeling. Fascinating decor - Dishoom is inspired by the Parsi-owned cafes in Mumbai, and the food carries that theme to some degree, too.

The Parsis were a community of Zoroastrians who migrated out of what loosely is today's Iran about a thousand years ago. After that long in an area, the culinary traditions are mostly pretty blended, but that wasn't the main thing that drew me originally. It was the fact that they served breakfast that made them stand out. And now I found myself staying at a hotel three blocks away. In my jet-lagged daze, I didn't think to make a reservation and I couldn't wait for breakfast. Still, Curry Mate and I had had a really late lunch and thankfully, she was willing to indulge me and wait for a dinner table.

Because we did have to wait. The line was long but it was a nice night, we had lots of catching up to do and the restaurant came down the line every so often offering small glasses of Pimm's Cup to assuage any anxieties. Shoreditch is sort of like Brooklyn - discovered by the creative types, and now followed by businesses of all sorts in a very mixed use neighborhood, clubs next to ad agencies next to hire car services. And all of these folks like to hang out, drink, eat and talk, seemingly, which means popular spots are loud and late.

The star of the evening was the lamb raan. Legs of lamb are marinated in garlic, ginger and chili, then braised overnight in more spices. We opted for the smaller serving of it, generously piled on a bun. Dazzlingly delicious, not unlike pulled pork in moistness and consistency but with the Indian seasonings, it's won plaudits locally, and for good reason. Alongside are served the house slaw, very mild, and a wee dish of matchstick-sized crisply fried potatoes. The server suggested putting them on top of the lamb, and it provided good textural contrast. A few slices of deep-fried chiles had also been sprinkled on top, adding a little heat but very mild by Indian standards.

Sheekh kebab, ground lamb with cumin and coriander, is pressed around a skewer and grilled; two large pieces, each the size of a fat bratwurst, were the serving, with a single roasted chile as garnish. Alongside, we'd gotten some tomato-onion salad with a little cucumber, bruised to bring out the juices, plenty of cilantro (which is called coriander in the UK) and the near-ubiquitous lime, a wondrous daal, dark red and perhaps the most complexly spiced version of this common dish I've ever had, and some roti, the thin bread cooked to order, arriving hot and ready to scoop up bits of meat or daal or salad or some combination of those. Good Indian bread is irresistible, and this was wonderful.

Dessert? A mixture of modern and not. Chocolate mousse spiked with a little chili and salt, topped with shrikand, an Indian yogurt-based creamy dessert was rich and left lots of flavors waltzing around the tongue. The second, called kala khatta gola ice, was flakes of ice moistened with kokum juice, a fruit similar to the tangy tamarind, but dark red in color, the ice then topped with blueberries, chili and two kinds of salt. Startling - in fact, the menu acknowledges the "first spoonful tastes bizarre" - and intriguing, but difficult for most Western palates.

I returned the next morning for breakfast, the noise gone, and a chance to really look around. Again, the menu makes it difficult to choose. And were they really squeezing orange juice to order?

Yes, they were, and a large glass, to boot. Chai instead of coffee this morning for me, a glass of noticeably stronger and creamier qualities than I've found elsewhere, with less of an emphasis on the sweeter spices and a quiet note of black pepper in the back, not spicy-hot, but hot and satisfying.

A day of serious eating was ahead of me, so I held back (a little) and got the bacon naan roll. English bacon is, of course, leaner and not cooked to the crispness of its American equivalent, so think of a slice of ham, grilled and put into a freshly baked naan bread which had been spread with a little cream cheese, some minced herbs and some sweet chili tomato jam. (One can add a fried egg to this if desired. ) Again, little if any noticeable heat in the spicing, but the sort of dish that should make the Egg McMuffin shred its wrapper in shame.

 

Dishoom

7 Boundary Street, London E2

020 7420 9324

www.dishoom.com

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Poor

 

also

12 Upper St. Martin's Lane, London WC@

020 7420 9320

What I Did On My Spring Break

In London with food bloggers from four continents at a weekend planning (and tasting) conference for the website www.chowzter.com, which I'm starting to do work for.  The Wall Street Journal had something to say about it:

http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2014/04/30/bangkok-named-foodiest-city-in-fast-feasts-battle/