dresese

1111 Mississippi

When I was in St. Louis, Greta and I ate out with our friends Brian, Amanda, and Greg (who, in the linked picture, has the "1000 yard stare"). We decided to go to a hip little restaurant 1111 Mississippi, a self-described "wine country bistro" which was in the very nice Lafayette Square neighborhood. The menu was quite interesting, and had lots of stuff I would love to try. We ordered two bottles of Saint Gregory wine (which turned out to be very nice). For an appetizer, we had a selection of "regional cheeses", which I thought meant Missouri cheese, but evidently it merely means the cheese came from some region in the world. Not very meaningful.

For dinner, I couldn't resist ordering the "Red Deer Osso Bucco". Anytime you eat deer, it is an interesting experience, however, it tends to be dry and tough. Part of the osso busco was indeed dry and tough, although with a nice flavor. However, other parts of the meet were nice and tender. And the marrow was great. I'm not sure I can recommend the dish, but if you have wanted to try venison, it's not a bad thing to try.

This was a nice place, definitely. They paid attention to their ingredients, and offered interesting dishes. I think what would make it better would be a stronger focus on local ingredients, and perhaps rethinking some of the items like the venison. But I'd love to go back and try out some of the other items.

Ted Drewes

My next culinary stop on the St. Louis trip was Gino's, a great old Italian restaurant near the Hill. After that meal, my family and I went to Ted Drewes, which is one of my favorite places to go in St. Louis. And I'm not even an ice-cream junkie. But the great thing about Ted Drewes is that everyone comes here from all over St. Louis, it's always crowded, and on a hot August night you can stand there with everyone else and cool down by eating a delicious concrete. It's just one of the great communal experiences in St. Louis. When I was there, I saw all sorts of people, including a just-crowned beauty queen chowing down on some ice-cream (I can only imagine how long she had been waiting to do that).

Ted Drewes evidently invented the concrete, when a particular customer kept asking for a shake made thicker and thicker. Concretes are now all over the midwest, and I'm sure that the origin story I've heard is hotly contested. It's even in New York now, in Danny Meyer's Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.

So, next time you are in St. Louis, Ted Drewes is a must. Until then, I leave with only a picture of the wonderful concrete:

Lion's Choice

Last weekend Greta, the twins, and I went to St. Louis to visit my family. I have lots of different posting to make about the trip, but none of the postings could be done in St. Louis, mostly because a huge storm hit the area on Saturday, and my parent's house had no power. When I left on Monday, it still had no power.

First off, I went to Lion's Choice, which I go to every time I'm in St. Louis.

Lion's Choice is the absolute best fast-food burger-like option I know of. It specializes in roast beef sandwiches. The roast beef is cooked medium-rare, and is densely piled on a sesame bun. The beef is beefy, tender, and nicely salted. Eating it, you will be amazed at the difference between a good fast-food roast beef sandwich, and Arby's.

Au jus sauce is offered as a condiment as well as ketchup and mustard. Stick with the au jus sauce. One sandwich costs around $2.50, but you probably want to eat two. If you are in St. Louis, I highly recommend this place.

Logan's Run

This week I watched Logan's Run, which was showing on TCM. I saw this before when I was much younger, and I seem to remember that it was a good sci-fi film. Hence, I was happy to watch it again. However, I was quickly disappointed.

The first thing wrong: the special effects, which are completely ridiculous. From the obvious scale-model city, to a gunfight where the gun seems to only emit sparks, the effects were awful. Not that there's that much wrong with that. A good story could have made up for it.

Ah, the story. A world where everyone over 30 is killed. They evidently have a chance to get "renewed", if they take part in a ceremony where they wear robes, revolve in a circle, and eventually float into the air. Then they are shot. All this takes place in full view of everyone. No one ever renews, but no one has ever realized that. Amazing. Could you imagine, for instance, if today no football team had ever scored a touchdown? And that no one ever noticed?

Finally, the stupid sci-fi ending of all, where someone tells a computer something the computer doesn't expect, and it causes the computer to self-destruct. It doesn't just crash, it explodes. In fact, it causes parts of the city to collapse, even. And then, the people of the city, whose entire civilization has collapsed, decide what they are really in the mood for is going to surface and hugging an old man.

What's worse, it looks like they are remaking it. However, perhaps this time it will be less stupid. Also, I wouldn't mind reading the novel it was based on, I hear the movie is almost completely different from it.