tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50730949502450454802024-03-13T09:19:49.189-07:00Tasty Magazine- Thoughts on Food, Life and LifestylesThoughts on food in life, and lifestyles. I am a holistic nutritionist, struggling with food in these Covid times, while playing video games and thinking of how quickly time has flown by.John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.comBlogger448125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-51171259177561986052014-08-14T00:30:00.000-07:002014-08-14T00:30:00.766-07:00Bloomington/Normal Day 3: JJ's<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Blues Brothers". In that movie, the part when the brothers go to recruit Matt Guitar Murphy from his verbally abusive wife, played by Aretha Franklin, they go to a really run-down restaurant, resembling a hole in the wall. What I like about that scene, is that Aretha's character refers to their fried chicken as the "best fried chicken in the whole state." So, very similar, there is this awesome place in Bloomington called Super JJ's.<br />
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The place is small, has old ceiling tiles, has some old carpet and floor tiles, looks like this:<br />
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But there is the kicker: the food is freakin' amazing. The fried fish is so fresh and clean. The fries are delicious. I have ordered their wings before and they are so good they make me and anyone else want to take some "to go" and make the 2 hour drive back home with it. I ordered something new, which is on that sign in the middle of the counter, near the hot sauce squeeze bottle. I ordered a chicken sandwich.<br />
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It may not look like much, but that fried chicken sandwich was the best chicken sandwich I have ever eaten. This is a big deal considering that during my teenage years I had lived on a mix of the chicken sandwich from Burger King and Mcnuggets from McDonalds. It is amazing and perfectly cooked. An easy 3 out of 5 stars. Please look them up and go there. <br />
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<span itemprop="streetAddress">1510 W Market</span><br /><span itemprop="addressLocality">Bloomington</span>, <span itemprop="addressRegion">IL</span> <span itemprop="postalCode">61701</span>
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-7735637280503882302014-08-12T00:30:00.000-07:002014-08-12T00:30:00.890-07:00Bloomington/Normal Day 2: Destihl<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, Destihl is this brewery/restaurant that had told us the previous day that they only take reservations. So, I we made reservations and when we got there, we still had to wait for a table. I'm sure there is a Jerry Seinfeld episode about the purpose of having a reservation and this always reminds me of that. When I worked at a restaurant and I heard that we had a reservation coming in an hour or even coming at a certain time, I quickly went into action putting a table together. Under my supervision, I never had a reserved table wait. I'm not saying wait a few minutes or wait longer, but I mean that the party would come in, tell me their name and their reservation and I would sit them: that easy. <br />
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So, this place does what Schlafly does, for example. They have a brewery/restaurant combo. We sat down, ordered our food and was stuck in the curse of slow food and service, which we have been experiencing the whole trip so far then. So, besides the slow service, what did we get? The first item was deep fried bacon, tempura style.<br />
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Crispy crunchy fried batter on maple bacon. A 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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I ordered one of their signature dishes: Thai Fried Chicken.<br />
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It was a drumstick and breast piece, fried lightly with a thin coating and covered in these Thai flavors, like the flavors in a Phad Thai noodle dish. It was a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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So, it was an okay place, not very child friendly and if you are hungry and you want to order, get a beer and get food within 30-40 minutes, then this isn't the place for you. We also happened to seat in "Spot A" as I had mentioned earlier.<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'century gothic',applegothic,arial,sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><strong style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">DESTIHL<span style="font-size: 8px;">®</span></span></strong> - </span><i style="font-family: 'century gothic',applegothic,arial,sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">Opened November 2007</i><br />
318 S. Towanda Avenue <span style="color: black;"><br />
Normal, IL 61761 <br />
P: 309-862-2337 F: 866-381-0349</span></div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-54801992051103414452014-08-07T00:30:00.000-07:002014-08-07T00:30:00.347-07:00Bloomington/Normal Day 1: Flat Top<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For work, I was sent to Bloomington with my family. This meant that while my wife had meetings, I was allowed to take our two kids someplace and keep them busy. The last time I had gone to Bloomington, was about last year or so for the same reasons. Anyhow, on the first day, we were looking for dinner and decided to try out the restaurant right next door to our hotel, on Tonawanda Avenue. The restaurant was called Destihl and we walked in, asked for a seat for 5 and then the hostess asked if we had a reservation. I had said "no" and then she told me that they only take reservations and without a reservation it would be about an hour till we could have a table. <br />
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A personal peeve of mine, is when a restaurant hostess or seater tells me that there is a wait and then you look around yourself and see 3 or 4 booths open that could sit 2-4 each, and a large table/booth against the wall that could seat 6. We will call that table/booth combo "Spot A", because it will become important later on. So, we left and walked just across the street to a place that looks like a steak house, called FlatTop.<br />
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FlatTop is an interesting place. It is so interesting that it could work in other cities, like Saint Louis. You walk in, get a table and then order. Their special item is a food bowl, prepared on a giant flat top and then delivered to your table. <br />
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<br />So, what happens is that you grab a long wooden sign on a post and write your name on the sign. Then you go up to the very large bar where they have all kinds of rices, noodles, vegetables and meats and pick your stuff that goes into your bowl.<br />
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Not only did they have everything labeled nicely, but behind this bar, on the wall, they had a whole sign describing the calories of each prepared item or sauce along with the spicy level. So, you fill your bowl up and then take it to the bar surrounding the cooks. There you can make any last minute changes, like turn your bowl into a soup or a salad. Whichever change you make, you place a colored plastic stick into your food, so that the cooks know how you want it prepared. So, they cook it, and get it to you just as you had ordered it.<br />
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I would give the place, atmosphere, food and everything else a 3 out of 5 stars. The only issue we had with it was that since the flat top cooking area was a certain size and they have a lot of vegetables and things that appear to be raw, it takes a lot of time to get everything cooked. Since it is the only cooking method of the food there, it is possible that you may have your bowl at the cook's bar, ready to be cooked, fr as much as 5-15 minutes before there is a space on the cook-top to cook it. I went back for seconds after the first bowl was finished within 2-3 minutes. The second bowl sat there, waiting and waiting and after it was delivered to me, the rest of my table had eaten and was ready to go. I would give the service as far as the cooking is concerned, maybe a 2 and 1/2 stars out of 5. Someone has to know that this is a problem and they need to be thinking of solutions.<br />
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<br /><a href="http://www.flattopgrill.com/locations.html">http://www.flattopgrill.com/locations.html</a><br />
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-34639751640321713662014-08-05T00:30:00.000-07:002014-08-05T00:30:01.339-07:00Cafe Mochi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My wife used to think that there was a curse on South Grand, in St. Louis. This curse, was one best described as good food and bad service. There are some great places on South Grand. In fact, the only place that I have been, so far, that has good service and good food is called Meskerem. The other places; Natasha's, The Vine, Lemongrass, and Cafe Mochi, have good food and bad service.<br />
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Cafe Mochi is a nicely done restaurant, selling Japanese and Asian food, along South Grand. It may be the last restaurant in that area, on that side of the street. It was a nice day outside and we chose to sit outside. We noticed at least 3 people, wearing black, wondering around and talking to customers so I thought that there would be 3 servers at 10 tables which seems like a no-brainer. But, little did I know that there was only 1 server, and two bussers.<br />
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After ordering and waiting about 25 minutes, we got our food. I had ordered their Kabob dish. Be very careful when you order and look at the menu, because the way the menu was arranged, they had a list of specialty sushi rolls and then the last item in that list, was a Kabob platter. The plate was described and in no way mentioned anything of being a roll or a sushi. It just didn't make any sense. The plate I had received looked like this:<br />
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So, it at least looked good. The potatoes were seasoned and cooked, the salad was anemic, the meat was cooked thoroughly, the onions were still crunchy, the peppers were soft, the mushrooms were hard and the squash was hard. It seemed some items were cooked perfectly and others were not. The food was good and I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.</div>
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This is where the bad service gets displayed. This restaurant with the above mentioned ones, all have a habit of getting the customer their food and then disappearing. They never send a server or anyone to come back and ask how the food was, how we are doing or if they can get us anything else. They don't come back when someone spills their drink, they don't bring everything ordered and they basically just act like they took care of the customer and they sit back and wait for their tip. The problem we have with these types of servers, is that they don't get our normal tips. </div>
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I know that the cost of the food and labor and the main payments of the chefs are in the cost of the food. So, the amount I tip, goes to the server. If service was bad, I tip as low as 15% or even 10%. If the service is great, I'll go as high as 20%. In this place, when we ask the server a question, she would say "ok" and then not come back or not get us different drinks, or the food we had ordered, etc. It seemed that she thought that she would just deliver stuff and hide. Now, she paid a lot of attention to other tables, and even stood and talked at some, but at ours, she tried to stay away.</div>
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-17261689217854735732014-08-01T10:01:00.001-07:002014-08-01T10:01:09.126-07:00 Strange Donuts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think it best to show you how great it was, while we didn't pay attention to the movie, the food and food trucks were great, at Food Truck Friday at the Art Museum.<br />
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We tried food from Pie on the fly:</div>
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The pie slice was eaten, by me, before I took a picture of it. I'd say a 3 out of 5 stars. They are located about 20 feet down the street from Strange Donuts, on Sutton.</div>
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So, how many people show up at these nights on Art Hill, in Forest Park? Well...</div>
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Afterwards, as the mosquitoes started to come out and attack us, we visited Strange Donuts. This is Strange Donuts:</div>
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Let me try to explain the love for Strange Donuts: When I was young, my father used to take me or one of my other 3 brothers to the best donut shop in the city, called Donut Drive-in. The Donut Drive-in, was a smallish building with a tiny one lane drive through window. At times when there were no cars driving through, we used to walk up to the drive through window and look in and watch the older gentleman baker carefully make each donut batch, by hand. The smell of the baking process was incredible. After we watched, we went in and my dad would let us choose a donut that we wanted.</div>
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<a href="http://home.comcast.net/~bygonebyways/66MO-St._Louis-Donut_Drive-In.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://home.comcast.net/~bygonebyways/66MO-St._Louis-Donut_Drive-In.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
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This donut place, is featured on all sorts of Route 66 shows and cooking shows as the donuts win awards for the fact that they are hand-cut and cooked donuts. The bakers in this shop have been making these donuts for at least close to a hundred years, I would guess, since my father knew of it being there already in the 50's. Every trip that I took to this donut place was special, it was special time with my father and brothers as we would sit on the hood of his car, in the lot and eat our freshly cooked donuts. This was before fake flavors, high fructose corn syrup and any other preservatives. These donuts felt like a warm hug or the sunlight on your face on a cold day. They were incredible and I thought no other donut could come close. </div>
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But then there is Strange Donuts:</div>
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I am going to say it, but if the Donut Drive-in has the best donuts in the Metropolitan area, Strange Donuts has the second best. There are all kinds and flavors of donuts at Strange Donuts, but when a bite in any one of them brings back the memories of my childhood and the Donut Drive-In, while other donut places have been unable to do so, means that this place is that good. The flavors are varied and delicious and taste so old school that they must have found so classic or traditional recipes. I can't say that they are the best in Saint Louis. It would be to me as saying that there is a restaurant that makes a dish better than your grandmother or mother. Would you actually say that? This donut spot has been the location of so many happy food memories that only a really, really good donut place could come close to even being thought of next to it.</div>
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All the donuts, as weird as they were, were also all delicious. They were new as while I have made my own maple and bacon donut, I have never seen a gooey butter cake donut. I have to give them, at Strange Donuts, a 4 out of 5 stars. They are good and strange and weird and non of their flavors are half-thought of. I mean that if they wanted to do a Smores donut, they do so even with a marshmallow on top. I wish the guys at Strange Donuts the best of luck and happiness. I hope that they get spread out throughout the city and bring happy memories to those that they server and see.</div>
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-33515635277013303722014-07-31T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-31T00:30:01.639-07:00First time at Baxter's<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Baxter's is a restaurant in Lake Ozark, boasting a huge lake view, which it does have. Their website mentions that they are a restaurant the has a great bar and serves great American food. That is the idea and it seems to be close to what is really served. I went with my family and in-laws, we were seated at a table on the patio, overlooking the lake at sunset.<br />
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Now, first off, the food was good but nothing as interesting as other restaurants that hold the "fine dining" phrase in their name. I ordered the "Baxter's steak burger" and to the heartbreak of my father-in-law, who loves the food there, the burger was slightly dry. They describe it as "our special blend of striploin, ribeye and tenderloin freshly ground in house daily".<br />
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The problem wasn't that it didn't have flavor. The problem was that on a large bun with a piece of lettuce, slice of tomato and 3 rings of red onion, didn't add any moisture to the burger, which tasted like dry meatloaf in the center. So, the outside was seasoned properly but the inside was arid like a desert and it actually took the moisture out of my mouth, like a saltine cracker. Every bite I took, I had to take a sip of my drink. So, here I am about 1/3rd of the way through my burger and my mouth is still dry. I figure I would start to try some of my side dish. <br />
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I had chosen to have the "roasted red bliss potatoes", which probably meant something poetical to them. To me, it meant that they were steak cut fries, as seen in the picture, sprinkled with Kosher salt, dried parsley, and roasted in such a way that one of them could have a crispy outer shell and soft on the inside while another one could have a soft outside and be almost raw on the inside. I ate another fry and it was cooked well. It was like sticking your hand in a bag of black and white marbles and without looking, trying to pull out a black marble. You win or lose and it was or seemed completely random. I'd give the dish a 3 out of 5.<br />
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As far as service was concerned, the only thing that really stuck out was the fact that even the salads were dry. There was a teaspoon of dressing on a giant salad. So, when my wife asked for a little bowl of balsamic vinegar, to go on her salad, we were amazed at how quickly and nicely the waitress responded with a "yeah". Then we never heard from her again. Maybe she fell in the lake. That waitress, actually never got back to us, she didn't even bring the kids their ice creams that came with their meals. That was a different waitress. Our waitress vanished and I had us all asking, out loud, "was that our waitress?" Pointing at a server in the corner, then wondering as another waitress walked by and another. When a table loses their waitress and can't find her anywhere, then that is a problem.<br />
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Food okay overall, atmosphere was great with a great view. Menu and restaurant was kid friendly. It was a smoke free restaurant but there were people smoking on one of the lounge chairs while they were waiting for a table. But as I said, it was okay for the price.<br />
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<a href="http://baxterslakesidegrille.com/">http://baxterslakesidegrille.com/</a><br />
2124 Bagnell Dam Blvd, Lake Ozark, MO 65049<br />
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-29727337492179498032014-07-29T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-29T00:30:01.416-07:00It was the dog days, on the lake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was my second time there, but the first time that I had eaten on one of the tributaries from the main restaurant. Dog Days is a restaurant, situated on the Lake. Like other places, it has parking access for cars and docks for boats. It is shaped like a long line, with the main restaurant, then an outdoor deck like seating and eating area, a bar then a another seating area and then another covered area with bar and seats for eating again. It runs parallel with the shore of the lake and allows everyone who sits there, to see the lake, which is cool. The place had live music starting up while we finished our meal, on Thursday evening and was really starting to get busy, but had a lot of families there as well.<br />
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So, besides have great food for the kids and treating them really well, they have all sorts of other kinds of American style foods. I order a chicken burger, with avocado and bacon with a side of black beans and rice.<br />
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The last time were here, the rice was undercooked but this time, everything was perfect. The rice was mixed with onions and peppers with the beans and everything tasted great and was cooked properly. The burger was huge and with all of those fixin's, made for a filling lunch. I'd give this dish a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.<br />
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There are a lot of people here during the summer time and even though it was not very hot, probably in the high 70's, on this night, there was a lot of people getting drunk and a lot of kids having fun with their parents. So, basically, it seems that this a great place for everyone.<br />
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1232 Jeffries Rd, Osage Beach, MO 65065</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-1000609783490555352014-07-23T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-23T00:30:03.562-07:00Day 5 in Las Vegas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A great day out needs another one, right? So, it is Sunday and we fly out on Monday, so we take a break. We start the day with a trip over to the Caesar's Palace Hotel and Casino for some dining and shopping. We walked through the mall area and didn't find anything that really got our attention, so we noticed something and tried it: Mesa for brunch. We have eaten at Mesa before, but this was the first time we have eaten brunch there.<br />
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So, what type of food does Bobby Flay like to have at brunch and what does his place serve? Well, the usual Bobby Flay stuff. I don't mean this in a bad way, but people don't go to Bobby Flay's restaurant to eat spaetzle or chocolate chip cookies, so you wouldn't expect them to be sold there. So, they start us off with the basket. Other restaurants do break or chips or something and here they gave us basket of goodies:<br />
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Like all things Bobby Flay, there was a chocolate chip muffin, a cornbread slice, some blue corn something-er-other and jalapeno stuff and things and all very tasty, a bit dry, but very Bobby Flay. A 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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Proper tea service is strange and unusual in American restaurants. If you order hot tea, even at brunch, you should be presented with a kettle and everything you need. Therefore, if you finish your glass quickly, you don't have to wait on other factors like the water from the kitchen or the server to have another cup. It is all in your hands.<br />
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My wife had ordered a Spicy Scrambled eggs dish which had some sweet ham, spicy eggs and biscuits:<br />
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I would say it was a good 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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There was a side of grits as well:<br />
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Fine and good also at about a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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Then I ordered a side of mango bacon:<br />
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I know this may sound bad and a traitor to most of everyone I know, but I didn't like this bacon. I felt that the mango and citrus flavor on the bacon was too much and cut the fatty pork flavoring to existence so it just tasted like the Christmas ham that a relative would make with a pineapple slice on it. I didn't think it tasted at all like bacon. A 2 out of 5 stars from me.<br />
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The final thing was totally Bobby Flay. It was a blue corn waffle:<br />
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This tasted good, better than a buttermilk waffle and not as dry. It worked perfectly with the cream on top and it was just right. I'd give it a 4 out of 5 stars.<br />
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Since it was our last night in Vegas, we decided to go some place special. On our fifth anniversary, we went to RM Seafood and had the best dining experience ever. Last year, in July, we went to Rx and so we decided to go back again. Rick Moonen's places are easy winners.<br />
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I will not go into extreme detail at Rx. The server we had was perfect and even delved into 5-10 minute long conversations with my wife about nails, makeup and sewing. (She said she did cosplay and made her own clothes for her job at the restaurant.) We got our ipad, made our drink selection and then our food came out. <br />
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I forgot what our drink was called, but it was prepared using this cart, at our table. The drink was a special, made for two, drink:<br />
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Now, comes the food: </div>
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Mini-chicken pot pies: the gooey creaminess of the pies enclosed in pastry. A 4 out of 5 stars.<br />
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A pickle jar, a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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Mini-pastrami sandwiches, a 4 out of 5 stars.<br />
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Moonen tots: tater tots made from both potato chunks and mashed potatoes. A 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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A tomato and peach salad. A 3 out of 5 stars for me.<br />
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A macaroni and cheese cooked in a little dish and covered in cheese. I think my wife would give them a 4 out of 5 stars for this. </div>
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As I said, the food above at RX is always good and the service is excellent. However, I think the food at Rose.Rabbit.Lie may have been a better quality and have earned more stars. Please still check them out.<br />
<a href="http://rxboilerroom.com/">http://rxboilerroom.com/</a><br />
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Desert was at a different spot and yes, that means more pictures. My wife and I always wanted to try the food at the Red Square, but this night's dinner meant that we couldn't get food there, right? Well, we stopped in anyway for desert. The dining room in the Red Square is big and open and looks Russian or Eastern European. It has a walk-in vodka freezer room. It has a bar made with a layer of ice and snow on top. It has a huge chandelier hanging from the ceiling. They also had a large strawberry version of a baked Alaska:<br />
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Not only was it very big and filling, but very strawberry and very tasty. It was perfectly sweet but not too sweet and I'd give it a good 4 out of 5 stars as a desert. Again, this was at Red Square and go check them out: <a href="http://www.redsquarelasvegas.com/?gclid=Cj0KEQjw6J2eBRCpqaW0857k9p4BEiQAWarYbO-m0IvF52x0VaajfEz0vSXvPmT_2-RLPIwN1w7pS9oaArB48P8HAQ">http://www.redsquarelasvegas.com</a></div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-68394693127508107442014-07-22T00:30:00.001-07:002014-07-22T00:30:01.625-07:00Day 4 of Las Vegas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With the okay buffet at the Bellagio and the bad service at the bar at the Wynn, we wanted a day where we knew that we would have a good time. This started with a lunch that my wife was looking forward to for the whole trip:<br />
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Hot n Juicy has the best tasting hot and garlic sauce that we have ever had. So my wife got a lobster and mussels and I ordered the Cajun fries and a basket of potatoes and sausage.<br />
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Cajun fries were crispy and spicy. A 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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I placed the potatoes and sausage on the fries, so any sauce would drip on them and make them tastier. Again, a 4 out of 5 as being good. The thing with this place is that the food is always good. It is well worth a trip for people who like seafood and sausage and things like this. <a href="http://hotnjuicycrawfish.com/">http://hotnjuicycrawfish.com/</a><br />
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My wife wanted to check out a tea store and we went to this place on the same road called Tea Station.<br />
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It was a simple place inside, seats for maybe 20 people, and a bar where the guy behind it would make all of the tea and tea drinks. My wife ordered a honeydew milk tea and the cup smelled like fresh cut honeydew, a 3 out of 5 stars. <br />
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She ordered a desert for the two of us to share, I did not know it would be huge:<br />
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What this is: is a giant shaved ice desert. It has a huge mound of shaved ice in the middle. It had red beans on top, grass jelly to the left, some boba to the right and the foreground has some agar balls made with rice, purple potato and sweet potato. There was a small shot glass of warmed up sweetened condensed milk that was poured on top of everything. Everything turned into something very sweet and yet most of it was very low calories. It was delicious and an easy 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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That night, we had reservations for the Foundation Room: (<a href="http://www.houseofblues.com/lasvegas/fr">http://www.houseofblues.com/lasvegas/fr</a>)<br />
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The food here is not expensive, but not cheap either. The service was as good as Rose.Rabbit.Lie and they were very interesting and knowledgeable. We ordered some pork belly:<br />
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An easy 4 out of 5 stars.<br />
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We ordered a side of grilled asparagus, which was a 3 out of 5 stars:<br />
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My wife had ordered two appetizer dishes as her main course: The yellow tail tartar bruschetta and the Stefano Farms burrata:<br />
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She loved both and would give a 4 out of 5 stars.<br />
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I ordered an 8 oz steak with a horseradish crust:<br />
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This very good, but not super. I do eat some horseradish and spicy foods, but this crust was very spicy and had my scraping it off of the top of the steak to cut it. It was tender, perfectly cooked to medium rare and completely seasoned. I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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The Foundation Room is a special members only or paid access club at the top of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. The bar area has music and some dancing space for the DJ, there is a balcony overlooking the strip and on the other side is the restaurant, which was good enough for us to return. Check it out if you go there and please wear something nice, no chubbies and flip-flops.<br />
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-62751704845318130502014-07-18T05:06:00.001-07:002014-07-18T11:55:20.256-07:00Day 3 of Las Vegas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Day 3 was the 11th of July. This was a Friday and the Strip was full of tourists, taxis and people who don't know to press the gas when the light is green.<br />
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So we wander through the Venetian and the Canal Shops, we find a quick little spot to get lunch called something Torretta or something like that. My phone took some blurry photos and I forget what it was now. What a horrible restaurant writer I am, right? <br />
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They had a real simple lunch special and so I get a simple pizza Neapolitan and am happy with how it comes out to me.<br />
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The pizza crust was perfectly tasting and crisp and crunchy and not too much and not burnt. It was perfect. There was just the right amount of cheese, the sauce had flavors and spices so that it tasted of something other than tomatoes and the shreds of basil on top added that bit of herbyness required to keep everything balanced in this dish. I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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We were going to a show that evening, so we needed to go somewhere and try something new. On our honeymoon, also in Las Vegas, we ate at the buffet at the Paris Paris. This night, we went for dinner at the Grand Buffet at the Bellagio. (<a href="https://www.bellagio.com/restaurants/the-buffet.aspx">https://www.bellagio.com/restaurants/the-buffet.aspx</a>) What follows is a large assortment of almost every dish I ate at the Buffet:<br />
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Starting at the 12 o'clock position and going around, we have herbed potatoes, some cilantro rice under that, chicken curry, a dinner roll, some pork belly, a whole wheat dinner roll, some pesto mashed potatoes and some curried cauliflower.<br />
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Same as above, starting at 12 o'clock and moving around: panchetta, salami, pasta with vegetable sauce, a sesame dinner roll, some wagyu beef, some regular mashed potatoes with gravy and a slice of beef wellington with sauce.<br />
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I understand that it is not a great picture, but this was one of my wife's plates. She got some tuna salad, some sushi pieces, a spicy tuna hand roll, some caviar and other things.<br />
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I didn't eat much because I knew there was a huge bar of deserts. We have a pecan pie tart, a chocolate tart, a chocolate truffle tart, a strawberry thing, a lemon thing, a tiny key lime pie, a coconut macaroon and a strawberry cake cookie thing in the middle.<br />
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I forget what these were, some lemon tart a tiramisu thing and something else.<br />
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There is a fruit tart, a chocolate brownie, a chocolate mousse thing, a flan, and a creme brule'.<br />
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All of the food was okay, much better quality that Old Country Buffet and much tastier and better looking. I didn't leave hungry, but we both felt that the combined cost of the two of us, almost $90 was a bit much for any buffet. I'd give the entire buffet, as a whole, a 3 out of 5 stars.<br />
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When we had finished and later that evening as we waited for our show, we went to this great little lakeside bar they had called Parasol Down, at the Wynn. (<a href="http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/Restaurants/BarLounges/ParasolDown">http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/Restaurants/BarLounges/ParasolDown</a>) They only served cocktails and it was outside this huge wall of glass windows, facing a waterfall and a pool with color changing lights around and dancing it in. We thought we had a perfect spot, with view of the waterfall, and a server that came quickly over to us.<br />
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The first problem we had here is that there was one server. My wife ordered a drink and I decided to not order one. The server then tells us that there is a one drink minimum per customer. This seemed like a big thing as most people won't go someplace if they are required to get a drink, and water didn't count. So, I fall back and order a sugar free red bull. So, it is 8:00 when we get a seat and we have a show, also at the Wynn at 9:00. So, we think that there should be no problem getting our drink, relaxing and then going upstairs to our show, right? Well, there was a problem. The only way I can think of as an explanation, is that a black hole had suddenly manifested itself next to the bar and sucked in all of the bartenders for about 30 minutes. We waited out there, for 30 minutes before our server came back to us and told us that are drinks were on the way and their bar got backed up. Well, as we saw later as we left, there were 4 bartenders. So, somehow, in an empty bar, 4 bartenders got backed up...<br />
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We finally get our drinks at 8:40. We complain at the server telling her that we have a show in 20 minutes and we have to leave. She suggests taking our drinks back and placing them into to-go cups. So, my wife ordered a $16 cocktail only to have it for her to enjoy in a plastic cup, thanks to some slow people. We get the bill then:<br />
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Her drink was $16, my red bull now also in a plastic cup, was $6. We spent as much money as we could have at a restaurant eating food brought to our table on time, on two late drinks from a server blaming her problems on the 4 (four) bartenders. We paid and left and this was the worst. We are chugging down our drinks as we walk to our show. Had we not been in a rush, we would have asked for a manager and wanted our money back. Worst bar ever. Don't go there.<br />
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With the show and things, this turned out to be a great night.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-15043823890365679672014-07-17T05:56:00.001-07:002014-07-17T05:56:56.936-07:00Day 2 in Las Vegas <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, the 10th of July was our first real day this year in Las Vegas and our real anniversary. Ten years ago from that day, we were married at 2pm on a hot summer day. The wedding was at St. Raymond's, downtown in St. Louis, but then our photos with the wedding party, were at the Botanical Garden, in the heat and sun. I think it got to 100 degrees or so that day and while my wife was in multiple layers with her dress, myself and my groomsmen were also in multiple layers of shirts, vests and jackets. Now, just like 10 years ago, we are spending the time in Las Vegas, also in 100 degree plus weather.<br />
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For the day, we went over to the Planet Hollywood Casino and mall. We had to drop off a refill inventory or my jewelry to be sold at Club Tattoo in the Miracle Mile shops and while in there, we stopped for lunch at a place called the Earl of Sandwich. I've never eaten there, but the food seemed very familiar.<br />
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My sandwich was a toasted BLT with avocado. It was nice, silky, fatty and salty. It was warm and crunchy and herby. It had all of the good parts of the pieces like the crispy and saltiness of the bacon, the fatty and creamy-ness of the avocado and the juiciness. I'd give the place and their sandwich a 3 out of 5 stars. It was good, almost very good, but not awesome good.<br />
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For our night out to celebrate, we happened upon the best kept secret in Las Vegas. Hidden inside of the Cosmopolitan is an experience called Rose.Rabbit.Lie. RRL, is a complete experience. Upon entry, you are brought past the host station to a room with 4 doors. The room is void of design or interest and these 4 large doors look imposing. The host picks a door and opens it and you enter a themed room. We sat in The Music Room, and it was a room with a large piano, bar and few booths lining the wall. The walls are made of frosted glass windows and helped divide the room and keep it separate but when there is a small show, in each of these four rooms, the windows retract all of the way down into a half wall and allow the patrons in each room to see through and access the others.<br />
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So, we sat down at a booth/table and were greeted by our server, Patrick. We had no complaints with our server at all. Patrick was nice, just the right amount of talkative (not too much and not too little). He was very knowledgeable about everything on the menu, everything about the venue and even the drinks. It was like getting a dining room manager as a server. Everything that had to deal with Patrick and our service there was perfect. He is why I would give him a 5 out of 5 stars for his service and friendly demeanor just made us so happy.<br />
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So, with Patrick's help and recommendations we ordered our dishes and it started with the first one: "Heavenly Eggs". This was a single egg dish, so we ordered two. This had an egg custard in the bottom and then the truffles and sauce on top. A single scoop of this dish, was filled with this warm feeling of the truffles, with a creaminess of the smoothest ice cream and the sweetness of the best dessert, while still being savory. Each bite felt like a warm hug with a loved one. They were awesome and they made me want to make a whole night of eating these and only these. I'd give a 5 out of 5 on these.<br />
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So, our next dish was a Curry spiced carrot dish. These perfectly cooked carrots and tomatoes were just perfectly spiced, like a curry or Middle eastern flavored spiced sauce, with perfectly cooked vegetables. The sauce was the real star and this was an easy 4 out of 5 stars.</div>
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This was the "Orange Fennel salad". This salad, resembled a cole slaw recipe, or at least reminded me of one. It was shown with shaved fennel and had orange slices on top. My wife loved this and I'd give it a 3 out of 5 stars. It was just the right amount of strong and subtle flavors to work well with each other.</div>
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Next we had ordered these "Herb Brioche rolls", which as you can see, came heavily herbed with rosemary and thyme and a sweet butter. These were hot, almost flaky and moist at the same time and very delicious. As a "carbs" person, these were a great addition to our meal. I'd give them a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.</div>
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Next came the pork dish, which was perfectly rich and fat on fat pork. The dish had a simple sauce, and some vegetables around it and was not a really salty dish, yet I felt that there was too much fat and needed some acid to break it up. I'd still give it a 3 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.</div>
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Rabbit is a funny thing because as a chef, you don't want to lose the game flavor and you don't want to elevate it to make it inedible. This rabbit dish called "Rabbit Fricassee", had just the right amount of everything. It was a perfect balance. You knew you were eating rabbit, but it didn't taste to strong like rabbit. It was very mild and tender. There were rose petals, greens, carrots and it reminded me of a dish I had seen elsewhere. It looks like the thing to do with animals, when cooked and prepared and plated, is to present them with things that they belong with. Not suggesting a natural environment or surroundings, but in the case of the rabbit here, presenting and cooking it with rose petals or carrots, which it could have eaten when alive, seems like a good idea. This was very good and I give it a 4 out of 5 stars. </div>
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Now for desert, we did something different. By the end of all of these dishes, I was getting full and didn't really want to get a dessert at all. But, when you are in Vegas, celebrating your anniversary and you are there to do it right and do it big, then go big. We picked the largest item on the desert menu, something so large that it normally would be ideal for many people to share, but the idea was so interesting that we couldn't back down. It was the "chocolate Terrarium". </div>
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This is what our server Patrick brought to our table. This was huge, with this glass dome probably standing at least 18 inches high. The plate or dish was at least 14 inches in diameter. As you can see from the picture, there was some branches of lavender, a single edible rose and some smaller plant fronds. A single candle sat inside the dome as well. Now, when the dome was lifted, this is how we had it in front of us:</div>
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So, where do I begin? We removed the plant material and took a closer look at the 'dirt'. Those solid looking parts were giant pieces of chocolate cookie. There was large chunks of chocolate brownie underneath a crumbled chocolate cake, as dirt. The white parts were actually ice cream and marshmallow creme. It was just crazy, the amount of chocolate and hidden things we found as we dug deeper in this dish. This is the ultimate desert experience and I recommend this to everyone. This received a 5 out of 5 stars as well.</div>
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Now, over the course of eating, there are small shows that take place in each room, as I had mentioned. We sat a juggler doing a balance act as well, an aerialist, a singer and many other acts, in the dining area. When we had finished, we watched a show in the 4th room, which has a larger stage and then after the show, it turns into a nightclub with perhaps the best MC I have seen and heard anywhere and a great DJ.</div>
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It is called Rose.Rabbit.Lie. and if you are looking for something romantic or to impress or just have an awesome time in Las Vegas, check them out. </div>
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<a href="http://roserabbitlie.com/#/about">http://roserabbitlie.com/#/about</a></div>
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-43172754346041621122014-07-16T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-16T06:13:16.148-07:00Day 1 of Las Vegas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My wife is correct in that it seems like this was all a dream. For our tenth wedding anniversary, my in-laws had not only bought us round trip tickets in first class to fly out to Las Vegas, not only allow us to use their extra condo, just minutes from the Strip, but also take our two little boys on their own vacation for fun. So, for five days going over our anniversary date, we had an incredible Las Vegas vacation, worry free and child free.<br />
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We got in Wednesday evening and that meant that we had a late flight, with First Class seating meaning that we were fed a glorious dinner menu on American Airlines.<br />
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Well, this isn't what the normal person gets, considering we had First Class tickets, but this looks pretty good for a dinner of airline food. This was a baked lemon and pepper chicken, with a rice dish, some vegetables, and a salad with a dinner roll. My roll didn't arrive yet. For airplane food, again, it was okay. I'd give it a 2 and 1/2 out of 5, maybe. The rice mix was okay, it was a bit al dente, it was salty, it has some spice flavors, it was nice. The chicken was cooked, it wasn't like rubber and it wasn't solid and there was a lot of lemon pepper on it so it had some flavoring. There was a lemon and butter sauce, which tasted like the fake and imitation butter we used to cook with at Old Country Buffet. The vegetables, like the snap peas and carrots were mush. The salad was made almost entirely of the core of the lettuce and the other inedible parts and the ranch sauce was like pure fatty thick ranch dressing. The roll was hard on the outside and crumbly on the inside, all a result of heating frozen food. It was better than a pack of nuts or pretzels. A 2 and 1/2 out of me.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-37541599024170330202014-07-15T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-15T00:30:03.840-07:00Shady Gators<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over the 4th of July weekend, my in-laws took my family to the Ozarks. We drove separately but we all stayed in their condo, which is cool, because there are no expenses really, on our part. While there, on Friday afternoon, we took their boat out and went for a ride up and down the lake and finally settles at Shady Gators for lunch. This place is huge. It has its own dock to park your boat as well as parking lot for those taking cars. It looks like a three story deck, sticking on posts out of the lake. This was the view from our table:<br />
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On Friday, it was sunny, warm (not hot) and a nice day to sit back, wait for food and take in the view of the boats and the lake. The area that we sat near, was across from a bar, with people there, but everything looked rough, unclean, and very lazy, which is part of the theme.<br />
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So, we order some fried fish, for the table to snack on as we wait for food and I ordered the chicken gumbo. The fish comes out first. It is a sweet white fish, covered in corn flakes, and served hot, dripping in honey. I ate more than I normally do, of fish. It didn't taste of fish. It tasted of honey and corn flakes. It was good and I'd give it a 4 out of 5 stars, because I would go back and order it and eat it all.<br />
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My dish, was the chicken gumbo. They had some alligator items on the menu, and I think they thought they should also stick with a Cajun style because most people associate alligator with Cajun food. I didn't order any of that. But I did order the chicken gumbo and it came with a small salad and a piece of cornbread. Now, I'm thinking to myself that I should have no problem eating the appetizer fish and my course, because for the prices, it can't be that big. My dish was huge.<br />
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I know it looks small, because it is just a picture, but I would say that the center area where the gumbo was, was actually about 8 inches across and an inch down. This was just filled with perfectly cooked rice, big chunks of chicken, a piece or two of sausage and a rich and flavorful tomato broth. It was shocking both how large this entree was and how tasty it was. It also received a 4 out of 5 from me. <br />
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<a href="http://www.shadygators.com/">http://www.shadygators.com/</a><br />
<span class="phone">(573) 365-6464<br />
</span><span class="times">Located on the Lucky 7MM<br />
at Lazy Gator Point!</span> <br />
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-54561935488307307842014-07-10T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-10T00:30:01.694-07:00The Bombay food truck<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Bombay food junkies truck is awesome and it is as simple as that. What you have here, is a food truck, not filled with young men cooking on the line, but some older Indian women, working love into the food they sell. Everything is home made or at least made from scratch and while the truck is entirely meat free, it can make a carnivore seriously consider becoming a vegetarian.<br />
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The food is amazing and when I had ordered, the woman asked me if I wanted a little spicy or a lot of spicy. I said "a lot of spicy". Most of the time, the spiciness contributes to the overall flavor, when in moderation. When my brother-in-law orders his pad Thai at our favorite Thai restaurant, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thai-House-Inc/197625453617318">The Thai House</a>, and orders spicy level 50, I don't see how it could possible improve the flavors, or if his numb tongue can even distinguish flavors at that point. But, at this truck, the spicy levels are there just to add a hotter context to the food along with additional flavorings. Spicy food was perfect and the items were had ordered were perfect as well. Meaning: that I have ordered and or tried at least 2/3rds of their menu and have liked every bit of it. I highly suggest finding them and ordering some food of your own after looking at these pictures:<br />
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Find them and eat their food for a 4 out of 5 stars experience.<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BombayFoodJunkies">https://www.facebook.com/BombayFoodJunkies</a></div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-88027263760722502942014-07-08T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-08T00:30:01.958-07:00Hard to keep up with the family legacy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, my surname is "Bauer", which means "Farmer" in German. Good, we got that out of the way. So, I think I may have mentioned this before, but I found a census card, filled out, from 1854, in Corondelet, Missouri, from my ancestors. They had $1,600 worth of farm land. Now the area where this would be now, is where Corondelet is now, with factories and houses and stores. That area, is where my family had a farm. I'm sure also that land was cheaper then and that amount in that time could get a good amount of items and things. What is important though, is that they held that farm as it was until they needed to sell it. When they did, it was the grandson of the farm owner, who was my grandfather. <br />
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So, my grandfather didn't grow up on a farm, but at least saw one, when he visited his grandparents. When my grandfather came back from World War 2, he went to college on the G.I. Bill and got a degree of chemistry and worked at Monsanto. (But back then, they didn't try to poison the world.) He still worked on seeds and fertilizers and such. So, he took his work home. He and my grandmother started a farm, in their backyard. Their house, a large, two family flat on Virginia Avenue, had a big backyard for the house's size, maybe a quarter of an acre, and they converted half of that, into a successful garden.<br />
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A few years after we had moved into our new house, on Terri Lynn Drive, my father had started to plow a small stretch of ground in our backyard, for a garden as well. This area was probably no more than 50 square feet of space, but he was able grow huge tomato plants, carrots, broccoli, and beets. I remembered that every spring, we would plant and by mid summer we would be harvesting. We would grow just items that we used and always had plenty. <br />
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So, my wife and I get our new house, after being married and living in an apartment for a year. After getting things squared away, we buy some large rose bushes and plant them in the backyard, which almost looks to be about 1,400 square feet of dried up, uneven landfill. So, the roses do awesome, but the next year we move them into the front yard for a flower garden to help the front of the house look nice. The area where they were, in the back yard, seemed like a good spot for a garden and after I had purchased and assembled some raised garden beds, I placed those in the back as well. I filled them with the best garden soil that my Home Depot credit card could buy and placed tomatoes, corn and even some carrots and onions out there. What I didn't plan on, was the hot and dry climate near my subdivision. In a subdivision, so young, with no large trees in anyone's yard, there is full sun on these garden spots. Combine that with a serious drainage issue, means that the tomato plants were getting dried out as the fruit was being eaten by insects, the corn was getting moldy as the plant's roots dried out and the carrots never grew past little sprouts in the ground.<br />
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I want a garden so bad, having a garden would be awesome and so much fun. We had a cherry tomato plant, in our front yard, in our flower garden and we harvested so many tomatoes that we were giving bag fulls to friends and family. However, we got called out by a troublesome neighbor, and in our HOA contract, we are not allowed to grow food in the front yard. So, I miss having a garden produce something in such large amounts that it can sustain us, or help us out.<br />
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Then we come to this:<br />
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This is a garden spot, raised up by my brother-in-law, on land owned by my in-laws. It was a garden last year, I think, growing salad vegetables. So, this year, on one hot day, I came down with my kids and let them play as I started to get to work. This area, probably a 10 foot by 10 foot square, took my about an hour to dig and till and clean up. It now holds a lot of weeds, but also about 10 surviving tomato plants. I ordered some plants from Burpee and was hooked on the notion of getting an 8 pound tomato. Whether that happens or not, is up in the air. But, whether this works or not, it will at least get the ground ready for a next year batch and so forth and maybe, I might have a garden that can produce food that I can be proud of. Now considering that the land that my in-laws own, was at one point fertile farmland, and farmers to this day continue to farm their land around this parcel, indicates that the land can support a good sized garden. In a few years we will build a house on this land and hope to have a bigger garden.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-56956301394461832142014-07-03T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-03T00:30:01.974-07:00A suprise meal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Everyone knows about Eckert's farm and store and restaurant, right? If not, here is a quick summary of what you have been missing: Long ago at a galaxy far and away, my grandparent's used to take my brothers and I, to Eckert's to go apple picking in the fall. They would drive out and we would do the apple picking and then we would enter the country store, which I recall at the time, being nothing more than a large barn. We would go in, get a wooden basket, go out and get apples, and then bring them back where they would weigh them and you would pay pennies for each pound of picked apples. This was great. Now, within the past few years, or year, they changed everything. <br />
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This is what the Country store looked like a bit ago, with the restaurant to the left of it. Then they did this:<br />
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You can tell that this farm is doing well when they can tear down their old store and make a huge one. This store is very much on the inside, as high-tech as a Whole Foods or Schnucks. As for the restaurant, it used to be tiny, country-style decorated and could sit maybe 50 people. Now, the place is huge and can easily seat a few hundred. <br />
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Now, while the family is still running the farm and businesses, these 6th and 7th generation Eckert's have created a memorable and delicious menu for their restaurant to boast and surpass their apple and other produce picking.<br />
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My favorite item of all, is chicken and dumplings. What I love about the chicken and dumplings at the Eckert's restaurant is: first of all, it is bottomless and second of all, it tastes just like my grandma used to make. Well, first off, they call it "bottomless" on the menu and what that means is that if you have an awesome server, like we did, he will notice when you are remotely close to the bottom of the large bowl of chicken and dumplings and then he will come out with another large bowl and take the old one. That's right, a wonderful server will come and replenish your ambrosia, before you can flinch, all for $10. What made our time there even better, is that when I took what was left to go home, our cool server not only refilled my bowl and placed it into a to-go container, but then he filled up a second container for me. Awesome.<br />
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Now, what about my grandma? Well, she is of German ancestry. Her parents came from Germany and started a horse farm near Sullivan, Missouri. As time went on and she became older, her parents sold the farm for a flat in St. Louis. Then, she went to work at a shoe company, on Washington Avenue. Every day, her mother and grandmother (whom lived with them), would make their dinner, which I lust for because it was awesome German food. Now, my grandmother made two kinds of dumplings: One was a potato dumpling and then other was a spaetzle dumpling. What I find most often called "dumplings" when paired with chicken, is the spaetzle ones, which are made with flour, water and some egg. These are what proper dumpling became to be and as my brothers and I grew older, the spaetzle dumplings paired with chicken<br />
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So, the chicken and dumplings I ordered at the restaurant, tasted just like the ones my grandma used to make, which means, the original recipe they make to sell, must be similar in cultural or ethnic region. Anyways; the famous fried chicken, which is also served and sold as an all-you-can-eat option, is also incredible and juicy and moist with a super crispy coating.<br />
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So, my thoughts? Service, atmosphere and food, all get a 4 out of 5 stars for me.<br />
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Go there and give it a shot.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-2209033969751115862014-07-02T00:30:00.000-07:002014-07-02T07:14:05.903-07:00What it is really like being a chef or working at a restaurant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I saw this online and it only started to bring back memories:<br />
<a href="http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/understanding-cooks-best-kitchen-advice?ref=facebook-868">http://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/understanding-cooks-best-kitchen-advice?ref=facebook-868</a><br />
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From the time that I was 16 years old, I started to work at a restaurant. When I think back to this place, from seeing and dining in so many other restaurants, it really didn't seem like a true restaurant, but it was. I did so because it was easy work and fun when your friends worked there as well. My older brother worked there and as such it helped me get my job there. I didn't think of it at the time, but it helped light the fuse for my love of food and cooking. I tried to avoid the kitchen as best as I could because I was young and 16 and didn't want to do anything back there that pulled me away from my friends and the windows looking upon the outside world. There were a couple of times that my brother was pulled into the back to help and when he came out at the end of the day, he looked drained and smelled like a trashcan. I just didn't want that and I did try really hard to avoid it, and did so at that location. What happened when I was about 18, was that while school was one thing and I had friends there, my friends did not live by me and work with me. The friends I had acquired at this one location, in Shrewsbury, were the friends I would go out and party with on summer nights, weekends and vacations. That was my social network, it was Facebook and Myspace before those sites were even invented. I don't try to sound old and ancient, but before there was the internet and even cell phones that did anything other than make and receive calls, there was a physical meeting of people at locations. <br />
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My friends were all together and we were making friends with managers and then all of a sudden, they moved my favorite manager. They transfer managers and move them around like chess pieces. (Wait, maybe not because that implies that the district supervisors who manage whole city's worth of restaurant locations would be capable of any intelligent thought.) But my favorite manager was sent to another location, on Manchester Road, in West County and I was still stuck here in Shrewsbury.<br />
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I begged to be moved there and when I was, I noticed that things seemed different and there, I did volunteer my services to the kitchen when they had a cook call in sick. I thought it was really cool that 2 guys would run the cook's line and maybe 3 on a busy day and there would be as much as 10-15 in the front of the house just working on the products of those on the cook's line. So one day I was working and the cook called in sick. There was a certified trainer back there and they needed someone to go back and I took the chance. I slapped a hairnet on, a cap, a thick apron and went to the cook's line. I worked there in what seemed like perfect harmony with the other cook. He was on the ovens and I had steamer and fryer. I was having trouble keeping up with the food taking and when the manager, probably in a drunken stupor came before me and pulled me over away from the cook's line.<br />
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"John," he says. "Recipes are just instructions. If you can read, just do what they say and everything will be fine."<br />
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That is all it takes and that thought, that saying, coming from an a-hole such as he was, was the most remarkable thing I ever heard about cooking food. That and my co-worker that night, Terrell, told me that cooking was "just having fun."<br />
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The rest is history but I can tell you this; the restaurant I worked for, Old County Buffet, was an all-you-can-eat restaurant. People would pay as much as $10 for dinner and eat $100 worth of food. I was frying 4 chickens at once in one fryer and about a pound of french fries in the other, while mixing 4 pounds of mashed potatoes in a large stand mixer. My steamer was filled with 10 pound trays of corn, green beans and carrots and that was the tough part. On a busy Friday or Saturday night, the line servers were taking food out of the Sham faster than I could cook it. <br />
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The feeling and thoughts and memories, all came back when reading that article. So, let's look at my favorites from that site:<br />
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[<b>It gets really hot]- </b>At the locations where I cooked, and at the restaurant itself, they did not have AC in the back of the house. So, whether you were working on the oven and the grill or getting a burning facial with the fryers and steamers, there was no saving your body from the heat. What we did, was use the meat freezer. About 10 feet from the oven side, against a wall, was the meat freezer. All of the meat was there, frozen, along with boxes of other stuff like vegetables to be steamed and so forth. Let me tell you this: working for 8 hours on steamer side and then walking into a freezer is amazing. It is so cold that the sweat on your hands actually starts to turn into frost after a few seconds and it feels wonderful. It was a great pick me up during those hot summer days on the line.<br />
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[<b>No matter how hot it is, don't drop it]- </b>What a great piece of advice. I have dropped a large sheet pan full of baked chicken before. It was so hot, out of the oven, that I burned myself on one of the doors on the side of my arm. I dropped one side of the sheet pan and it fell down, as hot, molten, chicken fat and juices ran all down my apron and my leg and on my shoe. While that sounds like I could have been saved, I wasn't. The lava was so hot that I besides the food costs I wasted, I had to run around the corner, get my arm fixed up and take my shoe off to make sure and stop everything from burning my foot and leg. What a day.<br />
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[<b>Even in scratch kitchens, 98% of everything is prepared ahead of time]- </b>Every night, before we closed and locked up, the cooks would prep for the next day's crew and shifts. On steamer side, you had to get about 2 boxes of frozen vegetables and get them into some quarter pans to prep for the next day. The oven side cook would get his chicken laid out and on pans for the freezer to be ready for the next morning.<br />
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[<b>You must over-communicate]- </b>My line, which was the cooks I worked with whether I was scheduled to cook or if I was sent back to help as kitchen supervisor, always spoke clearly and loud. I had my guys yell when coming around a corner. When you have dishwashers placing cleaned pans on a rack that is the same rack where my cooks were going to get food going, and having guys with grease and food stuff on the bottoms of their shoes walking into a wet and soapy area, it makes a huge difference between being quiet and yelling "coming around!" When you had something hot, you yelled "hot coming around!" And when my team or myself opened a steamer or oven, customers in the dining room could hear us. For good purpose because my team, had a flawless injury streak.<br />
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Also, a good one on here for people who are in this line of work or thinking about it: <b>Don't date outside of your house. </b>This just means that if you are on the cook's line or dishwasher (back of the house), don't try dating someone who is in the front of the house, like a cashier, line server, or server. It will make it very difficult to communicate and keep appointments.<br />
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-88943804036696688522014-05-29T07:56:00.000-07:002014-05-29T07:56:00.107-07:00Minecraft birthday party<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Let me share my experience and information so that you or anyone else wanting to do a minecraft themed party, could have some ideas. This is what we did for my son, a 6 year old. <br />
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So, let me explain what we did:<br />
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First off, we made and printed out little snack cards showing different items from the games, like below:<br />
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Then we took some clear, square plates and filled them with some items represented by items in the game. We had fish, cookies, green M&M's, pretzel sticks, rice crispy treats, and Rolo candies. We bought some apple juice bottles and ripped the label off. I then printed out the words "Healing Potion" and stuck them onto the adhesive strips left on the bottles from where the labels were. I got some red and blue rock candy and used them in clear round cups for the Diamonds and Red Stones. The crafting work was done by making that Creeper face and printing out about 20 Creeper head papercrafts and getting them all together as party favors. I also then got 20 brown bags and printed out a picture of the chest, cut it out and glued it on the bags, so they were like the chest in minecraft, which is where you put your stuff. Oh yeah, we took Twizzlers and stuck them in cups labeled "TNT". <br />
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For party games, we played a game where you have a contest to see who can keep two balloons up in the air the longest. I made a large Minecraft pig using pink construction paper and we did a 'pin the tail on the pig'. We also then made a bean bag toss game. I took a rectangle box and we spray-painted it green as I cut out the eyes and mouth of a Creeper. I taped them back in as flaps and then filled four ziploc bags with about a cup of dried beans. I duct taped over the bags completely with blue duct tape making bean bags. So, we had it so each kid went behind a line and would see who would get the most points.<br />
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While this was a quickly planned birthday party, I do hope that something we did would either inspire you or help you prepare and plan for your next minecraft party. </div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-36256800163749521952014-05-27T07:28:00.004-07:002014-06-06T14:34:42.749-07:00Bioshock Infinite and its perfect representation of America<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The game: Bioshock Infinite, is by far my favorite game of all time, slowly beating out Myst. (Yes, I still love that game!) The world that is created in the fictional floating city of Columbia, seems so familiar and so interesting while being a frightening world in reality. The thing is, I have seen some places in America that have parts of what is being represented in that game, but no where comes as close to the similarity than Silver Dollar City. Silver Dollar City is an amusement park set up within the outskirts of Branson, Missouri. It has most of the city representing a fictional time they call the "World Exposition of 1882". History buffs will quickly remember that there was no 1882 Exposition in America, so the concept is already flawed, but they go along with it. Silver Dollar City, as I mentioned earlier, has a very large portion of its park, designed to look like it is from the year 1882, complete with an enormously large amount of modern American flags, along with their original mid 1800's counterparts. There are many buildings set up to resemble those from the 1800's, complete with craftsmen inside such as a glass maker, blacksmith or taffy puller. All of these buildings, still have the crafts people doing the crafts. So, the person working at the blacksmith shop, really is a blacksmith and those swords, knives and other gifts were really made by him and his metals. The glass factory had two guys working the glass on an elevated stage so people could watch and the items they made were for sale in the glass store opposite them. The whole area was a mixture of these craftsmen and craftswomen, food venders and rides. <br />
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While Bioshock Infinite's world of Columbia takes place in 1912 and Silver Dollar City is in 1882, there was many things that were very similar: <br />
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Silver Dollar City is stuck in this 1882 world of American nationalism or zealot patriotism. Like the above picture from the Bioshock Infinite world, you can see the use of the "red, white and blue" on everything from umbrellas to signs while selling items of America like flags or toys. There were so many American decorations on the buildings, flags hung from the light posts, American flag pins worn by the workers and everyone who worked there was in period clothing. Everyone, from the person selling frozen lemonade to the teen girl running the roller coaster, were in a recreation of an 1880 clothing piece. The men were in hats and vests and long sleeves and then women were in bustle dresses.<br />
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Now, while the above pictures are from a fictional world within a game, some the elements below from Silver Dollar City appear to fit easily within that fictional world.<br />
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The world of Silver Dollar City is stuck in the 1880's, which is funny because so much of that style is what is in the actual Bioshock Infinite Video game. Even the trash cans are decorated in such a way:<br />
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There were rollercoasters outside of this sign:<br />
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An one outside of this one:<br />
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With American flags hanging from every post, sign, tree or light:<br />
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Let me say this, as weird as Silver Dollar City was, if you were dressed up in Edwardian clothing, you would have fit in exactly and everyone would have thought you had worked there and was just in costume. Also, I was surprised that no one was dressed up as the main characters from Bioshock Infinite. As the location would make for an awesome cosplay event. </div>
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John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-2404027589951817812014-05-15T08:42:00.001-07:002014-05-15T08:42:53.344-07:00Farm to table isn't a new concept here<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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When I was young, back in the early 80's, my dad would drive us around town on the weekends as we went to random spots for random activities. I know that sounds pretty vague, but it was the case of random weekend summer activities. We would sometimes drive to an old fruit and vegetable stand, in Webster Groves, where they always sold fresh and locally grown items. I remembered seeing an old man running it, back then, and always nice. I want to say it was called "Roger's Produce" and I would assume that the old man was named Roger. The stand started in the 70's, from an old 1920's gas station. The thing was, on the ride from Shrewsbury to Webster Groves, this way, was about 3 minutes, since they were right next to each other across the highway. I went to this stand, before it was the "cool" thing to do. But along the ride, we passed many houses that had small yard-sized gardens.<br />
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The produce stand always had items fresh and from local farmers and I didn't think anything of it considering that not only my neighbors on the street at small farms, but we did too. My dad used farming as a hobby, like his father before him and it seemed that it was completely normal to grow your own food or as much of it as you could. I remembered seeing a small, maybe 10 foot square garden in my backyard with tomatoes, broccoli and some other vegetable plants.<br />
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My grandparents lived originally on Virginia Avenue and had a complete house to themselves. As a young child, my grandparents would host myself and my older brother for sleepovers. There was the old television, my uncles original 13 inch tall G.I.Joe figures and some other random toys, but the highlight of those days was the garden. My grandfather, who worked at Monsanto after he finished his run as a field nurse in the second World War, started a garden in their backyard. I would estimate that the garden was about 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and had a chicken wire roof at about 8 feet off of the ground. In fact, the entire garden was encased in this chicken wire cage with a wooden screen door as the entrance. I remembered that he had everything from tomatoes to corn and squash to green beans growing inside of this garden cage. The place was magnificent and it was such a treat to have my grandmother harvest items from their own backyard and use them as side dishes for items she prepared.<br />
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Now I know that life in St. Louis was different in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, but even when my family moved to a new house in the mid 80's, we worked to get a small garden in the backyard again. This time, with tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and peppers. During this time as well, when my dad would take us on drives or excursions during summer weekends, we would sometimes pass still operational produce farms in St. George off of Mackenzie or off of Union or even further off of Telegraph. It is just amazing how much property and land was farmland even in my younger years and is now residential or commercial. Still, the concept of farm to table, as it is being used today, is the same as it was then, only now there are fewer farms. But I don't think this area, this metropolitan area of St. Louis has anything but farms. I lived near farms and farmers my whole life and even on the Illinois side of the river in Columbia, my subdivision is located next to farmland. I admit though, the land that we have as our yard, was once a landfill where people dumped things they didn't want so the ground is not great for farming, like the farms around us. But, even with use of the farmland at my in-law's home, we have a large summer farm in the works with corn, sunflowers, tomatoes, squash and peppers.<br />
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I tend to thing that St. Louis is doing a better job at the farm-to-table concept than any other city based on the fact that the time between productive farms 20 years ago and new farms now, was just a short hiccup of time compared to other cities. Think of those restaurants in Austin which claim to support local farmers and do farm to table, but get their products from farms 30-100 miles away. About 10 years ago, the farm to table was just really becoming a popular thing again in the US and at a restaurant at the newly opened Lumiere Casino called Sleek, Chef Hubert Keller wanted to bring St. Louis the concept even though it never left town. I remembered eating a meal at his restaurant and having the waiter telling me how everything has been locally farmed or produced and then his explanations included things like carrots harvested from Wentzville or beef from Colorado or even tomatoes from a farm near Chicago. I was then and am still disturbed because at that same time, I was fully aware of cattle being grown for their meat, just in SW Missouri, I was aware of deliciously fresh and local carrots grown on the other side of the river and even tomatoes grown just inside of Columbia, Illinois. To me, when a restaurant says they want something local, they mean within 20-30 miles, for the record, Wentzville is about 50 miles from that restaurant. There are a lot of really good local farms and farmers within less than 50 miles from that restaurant and yet they wanted to focus so much on what was outside the limits. <br />
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To be blunt and still remain some sort of sense in this madness, I would like to state that I have been eating farm-to-table practically my whole life. I have never lived more than 5 miles from a farm and always support the closely local farmers. I can't really explain much more or describe much else but I guess it would be similar to someone explaining how they are the best in Parisian Fashion when Paris is the best at that. What would happen if a designer came into Paris and told the people there that this is how they do it in Paris and showed them things they have been seeing their whole life. <br />
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Contrary to popular belief and statistics, St. Louis is a very safe place to live. The place that makes it listed as a dangerous city is a very small surface area of the entire area. The rest of the city is awesome with historical landmarks, farms and gardens, and still the friendliest people in the country. </div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-71627943160472119722014-05-01T09:08:00.002-07:002014-05-01T09:12:16.662-07:00Savannah Grille's spring time boards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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No real story here or article, just some food porn. Two weeks ago my wife's family and mine were going on a road trip to Branson via Lake of the Ozarks. So, we had one afternoon of driving and then dinner at the Savannah Grille. I asked Chef Robert, on the phone earlier that day, if he had anything special and he told me that he had some fresh tomatoes and would make something special for us. He also had finished breaking a pig down, earlier in the week and wanted to make a better meat plate. So, we ordered and it came, these are the boards:<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/antiquarian78/13895378379" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="IMG_20140416_195250 by john bauer, on Flickr"><img alt="IMG_20140416_195250" height="640" src="https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2940/13895378379_9dab9cc511_k.jpg" width="480" /></a><br />
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Look at how delicious everything on this board looks. He gave us headcheese, some terrine, some fresh sausages as well as prosciutto. Then covered the board in all of these random vegetables, which he pickled. Each pickle was a completely different spice or flavoring agent to complement the meat items.<br />
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Then, the tomato plate come out:<br />
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<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/antiquarian78/14058885986" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="IMG_20140416_195300 by john bauer, on Flickr"><img alt="IMG_20140416_195300" height="640" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7418/14058885986_c80a5db7d9_k.jpg" width="480" /></a><br />
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The board has some toasted bread on it and then these perfectly red tomatoes and a drizzle of some balsamic vinegar and sauce and these were just extraordinary. The bite of these tomatoes tasted like that first day of summer. <br />
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Chef Robert always makes great use of the items that he can get, always looking for fresh and seasonal. My advice to you, is to go there, order these boards and try one of their new burgers.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-72912026895093560332014-04-10T07:18:00.001-07:002014-04-10T07:18:26.423-07:00The dreaded DIET<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First off, no, I have not weighed myself. To be quite honest, I have not been on a scale, besides at a doctor's office, in possibly more than a year. I just didn't care to know how much I weighed. I remembered that about a year ago, I did weigh around 160 pounds. I'm a lightweight, I am 6 foot tall exactly and I eat a lot of food without really gaining weight. My family is an incredible metabolism which is important because through that, I am able to take in as much as 5,000 calories in 24 hours and not feel sick, bloated, or even full, much less gain an ounce of weight. While all of this is said and good, within the past year, my 1 inch of noticeable gut/belly fat, has increase in size. <br />
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Now, I do all of the cooking at home and while my wife was on weight watchers and lost a huge amount of weight enabling her to look hotter than Salma Hayek and Marilyn Monroe combined, I possible only ate more junk food than I normally did, adding useless weight onto my body. It was mid-Summer of 2013, which I had asked my brother-in-law's body building trainer to start on me. It was no secret that I was a 160 pound weakling. I know that I probably weighed about 130 pounds when I first met my wife and she tells me stories that her family first thought I was sick and anemic. I know her mom used to wonder if I could even help her with carrying groceries because I looked so weak. <br />
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I never did any weight training or body building as I viewed it in a negative light thanks to my younger brothers. When I turned 16, on a whim, and partially because I was a huge Mortal Kombat fan, I signed up to take Kempo Karate. It wasn't required for me to live so it wasn't paid for by my parents and instead I had to pay for each and every lesson and everything that went with it. So, as a teenager, still sharing a room with my younger brother, he began to feel threatened. I mean, he was a younger brother who was always more aggressive than myself and my other two brothers. I'm sure he saw his older brother as even more of a threat now that I was learning how to defend myself. So, my younger brother started to weight lift at age 14. He worked as hard as he could and as long as I did karate, he worked out. When I got to college and was finishing up, he had gotten a job in a gym and was taking karate lessons from someone who claimed to have the ability. (Much like taking karate lessons from someone who had watched a Chuck Norris movie.) I had learned in karate classes that the damage that could be done to people was done through speed and concentration, rather than brute force. Also, with my younger brother routinely trying to beat me up and me able to defend myself using my new found skills, probably irritated him even further and pushed him to work out more. He talked my youngest brother to work out with him and within that time frame, he and my youngest brother had done some sort of exercise incorrectly enough where they both had hurt their backs. It was bad enough that they were both told that they couldn't work out anymore.<br />
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Mind you, that my younger brother was the very epitome of body builder stereotypes. During the summer, I remembered him waking up around 7am, leaving for the gym and then coming back around 4pm, eating 3 cans of tuna, drinking a large cup of milk mixed with whey protein and then changing his clothes to go to a nightclub and drink and come back home around 2 or 3. Even when I was married and came back to visit my parents, he would still be there, downing can after can of tuna against my warnings of how it might not be real tuna and packed with great things like aluminum lake or mercury. But it didn't phase him. <br />
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Now, enough about him. <br />
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So, about last year in summer, I started working out, during my extra free time at my office. I was instructed by a former Mr. Missouri. I started off having to struggle to lift the 45 pound bar as a bench press and I remembered how tired I was after that. Since then, even as recent as this past Tuesday when I worked out last, I was able to do many lifts of 40 additional pounds onto that 45 pound bar. May not seem like much, but for me, it is great. Not only that, but for the first time ever, I have been able to lift and carry my wife for long distances: like around the house. So, while the body building has helped me get stronger, I have not burned as many fat calories as I would liked to have done so. I still weigh 160 pounds, today, but some of that is muscle and some of that is fat and I really need to get rid of that fat. I don't believe that I am at a risk of a heart attack or any diseases for that matter. I am so far from obese that it isn't an issue. But, I love food and I always go for the unhealthy stuff.<br />
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Bacon and donuts are my two favorite things. I love bacon and always loved bacon from the time that my dad would cook it in a pan, every Saturday morning for our breakfast. It has a comfort level for home, warmth and taste. I have made bacon, bacon brownies and even bacon ice cream. I have used bacon in every dish just to try. I even had my own jar of bacon lard, kept in the refrigerator. Donuts are perfect and again, stem from a comfort level as when we were kids and my dad would take us over to a spot near our house called the Donut Drive-In. At the time, it had a big wooden sign with red letters and lights on the side of it which lit up like a marquee. They had a window in the back of the tiny building, where it had once been a drive through and had moved to just a view of the old gentleman making donuts from scratch. We would get donuts from there and then go out back and watch him make more. The world was different then and so was my body. <br />
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Thanks to this internal drive and want for sweet things, I see myself gain weight in areas that I didn't know existed until now. While doing the body building has added muscle to areas of my shoulders, back and arms, which never existed until now, a 45 minute session does not burn enough calories to clear away the fat. Maybe 300 calories gets burned, because it brings me to sweating about every time. Also for the first time this week, I have been counting calories. I used to do it as a joke: eating a whole box of Little Debbie brownies at 340 calories a brownie and eating 12 would let me have 4,080 calories, as a snack, not a meal. after that snack, I would still eat other meals like breakfast, lunch and even dinner. I wouldn't gain that extra pound or anything else and it would just slowly seep onto my body over the course of many, many days or a week. But what gets me now, is that the decisions in the past, like that, can be compared. Tuesday I had about 3,000 calories by end of day. That included donuts for breakfast, potato chips as a snack, a burger on a pretzel bun with mustard and mayo, a glass of protein shake and a dinner later that day. Snacks included anything from granola bars to some chocolate chips I snuck in because I love chocolate. Yesterday was the first day of my diet and while still doing the same things as I normally do, I was able to stay below 2,000 calories and still be full. It was also one of the first times I have had a salad as a primary food source and also a bowl of fruit as a dessert. <br />
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Well, then today I weighed in at about 162 pounds. While I am still working out, at least 2-3 times a week, I find myself interested in losing about 5 pounds, maybe. I mean, I am working out enough to help strengthen my arms and core, but find myself unable to see past my belly fat when I look in the mirror. Do I want to look like a male model? No. But I would like to see this gut go away.<br />
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So, what does that mean for me? Well, as one with a degree in holistic nutrition, that means I really need to stay away from sugar and fat. Yeah I know, healthy fats are okay, but those sugars and other fats need to be kept low. I want to try to exercise a little bit each day and figure that even if I only walk 30 minutes a day, for the whole week, that burns an additional 1,260 calories from what I am normally doing. And I don't live an inactive life. I am always walking around the house cleaning up, doing laundry, doing dishes, taking the dog out and walking around the office and so forth. I haven't counted my steps but it would be interesting to see how many steps I do take in any regular given day.<br />
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Still now, the hardest part is not going over to get sweets.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-33979896358554878962014-03-26T13:04:00.002-07:002014-03-26T13:04:17.796-07:00Tastes may change but restaurants may not.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Back in 2004, I was only recently married and my adventures into the culinary world had only just begun. I was still exploring new restaurants and trying new food but the concept of paying more than $50 for a meal for two people was still too far away to be even considered an idea. It was at this time that through a recommendation from my uncle, my wife and I tried our hand at restaurant A. Now, before anyone goes on a rampage, keep in mind, that this first experience was 10 years ago. For my first time there, 10 years ago, I thought that the food was amazing. I only had traveled out of the city a few times and in America, it was always small cities when I was a child and didn't remember where we had eaten. This restaurant, A, was always the base for which I compared other places to.<br />
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Now, over the years, I had learned more, acquired a more intricate palette and learned about wine and food and how things should be done. I went and tried interesting foods, more authentic ethnic foods particular to this St. Louis restaurant and all the while, about half of a decade later, my wife and I came back. Sadly, the things that we had loved so much from the first time, had not changed and that had meant that the restaurant did not change anything in those 5 years. While this seems like a grand idea, restaurants need to change with the trends of food, service and decor so that you do not become one of those places on Restaurant Impossible. Furthermore, the restaurant A, also only lacked in service compared to the last time, especially when it came to the handling of dirty dishes and food delivery. <br />
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It is just such an odd experience coming to a restaurant over a time period and seeing how it may have changed for good or worse. </div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-61045876955816102902014-03-21T07:21:00.002-07:002014-03-26T13:19:00.668-07:00There is nothing more dangerous than a writer with no edits.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I feel bad sometimes as I look at my blog and wonder where the posts have gone. I feel a bit nostalgic as I wonder where my passion for writing a blog 2-3 times a week has gone. Have I lost a love and passion for real food? Have I lost a need for finding and tasting interesting things? Have I lost a feeling of allowing writing to be so easy as my own thoughts on paper (or on a keyboard)? No, I think the main reason that I don't do so much now is actually because of time. I do not own a TARDIS.<br />
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I have never owned a time machine nor been able to travel and contain time. So, the possibility of myself to be able to be a full time father, a full time sales and accounting person as well as do my new hobby and still have time to go out and about and write about some restaurant that St. Louis is told to follow like sheep, is just not on my mind right now.<br />
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Contrary to what some may think, I am not paid to eat out. I am not under the salary force of any magazine, website or institution so no one is paying me to write about certain things. In that same sense, no one is paying me to not write about certain things. There has always been this loyalty to the truth, which I write by that very little other writers in the metropolitan area live by. The truth being what a restaurant really is like. I want every person who reads my reviews to be able to feel as though they had been there in my same circumstance. I do not want to read about how someone was specially greeted by the manager and sat at the best table where they were given the best food and then everything was on the house because their arrival was predetermined and arranged. I don't want to hear about how someone called and called and had whole conversations with a group of chefs about where their favorite places are and then make sure they have advertisements with my company before they have their reviews posted. The fact remains, as it does in any city, that if you wish to be paid for writing about a restaurant or item, you cannot piss off the sponsors. It seems like a very simple idea. The sponsor pays the company, the company pays you to eat at the sponsor's location, and you need to write something good about the sponsor so they are happy and maybe pay more. It makes complete sense and if I was a sell-out, I would ask for advertising and then write post after post about those sponsors and make them out to be the best in the world. The problem with this concept is: I have too much integrity for the truth to sell-out.<br />
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I have read online reviews of restaurants which rave and rave about how perfect everything is only to go there and have a horrible dining experience. Why did this restaurant get such good reviews? Well first of all, in the online version of the magazine, they have links, banners and ads on the site. In the tangible magazine, they have 1/2 to full page ads, which can be as much as $1,000 a run. Like any good business, the site would not dare say anything about someone who just paid them $1,000 to promote their restaurant as that would be completely the opposite of the original intention. Also, the online negative reviews were hidden and removed. There are a lot of online reviewing sites but most of them give the reviewed location or company a chance to remove the negative ones, making them in the best possible light even though they are not.<br />
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In this case, as you read above, the restaurant I was thinking of is always listed as one of the best 'burger' places in town. It is hailed as also being a great LGBT friendly location as well. They have ads in almost ever St. Louis magazine and on their sites. The problems is though, the food is so-so and the service is difficult. In my mind, if the service is horrible but the food is good, then I'd be happy to come back. If the food is bad and the service is amazing, I'd even come back to be pampered. But if the service and food is bad and the only savings grace you have as a unique restaurant is the fact that your mascot is a cross dresser, then I don't count that as saving your ass. This isn't an anti LGBT post or sexist or chauvinistic or anything having to do with people, but only food. I have been in a local bar where the female staff wear costumes like Tinkerbell and even serve customers in bikinis. You could have the best looking staff wearing next to nothing but if it has nothing to do with your food and your food and service still suck, it will not save you from me.<br />
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It may save you from the droves of men that fit that demographic. About a year ago I was picked up as the first ever food writer for a website which normally only did sports and sports news. They wanted to try having a food writer and so I started writing about places that I go to. I don't go to super fancy locations but the places I go to require you to wear a bit more than a T-shirt, shorts, flip-flops and a hat. During the year which I had submitted articles for this site, it was becoming more and more clear to me, from the trolls as well, that the majority of readers of my articles were actually men looking for the best place in St. Louis that served the best food, for the cheapest price, the cheapest beer, and the best looking girls. And you know what? That doesn't fill what I write about. I like beer, and I like to get great food for a low price, and having a wait staff that is clean-cut, nice-looking and in a uniform certainly helps, but usually the places that have great food don't have half-naked girls running around. (Although the last time I did eat the food in the VIP section of the Penthouse Club in Sauget, the food was pretty decent and there were half-naked girls running around.) The owner of the site told me that they were moving in a different direction after a year, which is code for "the readers don't want to spend more than $10 for a meal". But as a food writer who actually has some restaurant experience, I don't want to stick to the $10 beer and hot wings every day for every meal. I want to explore and taste new things and that often means that I need to go to new places and try the food, even if it is more than $10.<br />
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But food writing is also a large editorial and is entirely opinion based. Traditionally it is, at least. I like to add a bit more though. I know that from my dark days working on that cook's line at Home Town Buffet, making cheap food for old people to push down their throats, I know that if you have a frier full of grease and set at 385 degrees, you can drop and cook 2 whole chickens in about 13 minutes. I know that you can cook chicken strips in a frier for about 3 minutes. I know that French fries take about as long and I know that you can cook a whole sheet tray of baked chicken in an oven at roughly the same temperature in less than an hour. I have some basic education and know how long a steak should take. I know how a sous vide machine works and how some basic molecular gastronomy techniques are used. I can't be fooled easily because I still experiement and cook food at home. So, me going to a bar or restaurant, that specializes in chicken wings, and having to wait for 50 minutes to get them delivered to my table, cold, is not an excuse. <br />
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Here is a fun fact for you: While working 8 and 1/2 years for Buffets, Inc. I developed some basic understanding of the Spanish language. I did take Spanish for two years in high school but didn't really full grasp it until I worked at the restaurants, where most of the staff was illegal Mexicans. Am I calling them out, will I cause a scandal? I doubt it. Were they really illegal? Well, let's say this: one instance had the general manager asking two employees who were related about their SS card because they had the exact same number. Secondly, about once a year, we would get tipped off that there was an INS agent coming in and on those days, half of our staff called in sick. So, when you speak Mexican Spanish, drive a car with a temporary license plate for 2 years, live in an apartment with 10 other people in St. Louis, can't recite the Pledge of Allegiance in English and call in sick when the manager has a meeting with a representative from Immigration, I would call you an illegal immigrant. But I digress... I learned Spanish from them. So, while I was dating my now wife and even after we married, anytime I would go to a Mexican restaurant, and my family asked for a table, I would listen to the banter, I would hear what they were saying about us. I would also make suggestions. For instance at one restaurant they claimed that they could not seat my group of 6, and we had to wait 20-30 minutes. Well, in Spanish, I suggested that we could take those two tables if they turned them and pushed them together. I will never forget the look on the face of the hostess, because right there she realized that I A: knew what I was talking about and B: knew what she was saying. It would be like if you want to the local nail salon and could understand the language that the Vietnamese women use. You could understand all of their banter and you could find out if they were saying anything about you. Imagine how honest they would become, all of a sudden, if you said something in their language.<br />
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So, back to my point, going to a place that says they have great burgers and getting an okay burger is not a good thing. The best part of my hobby, is that I can write about it as it is. The restaurant I went to was called Hamburger Mary's. Sorry, I don't have pictures. In fact, the place was so dimly lit that I bet it helped the food look better than it actually was. My wife and I entered, and were sat upstairs, surrounded by tables full of women. The bar which was about 6 feet away from us, had one bartender who came over and was also our server. After greeting us, we told him that we were actually stopping in for a quick bite and had a show in an hour at the FOX. Ordering a coke, a burger and fries and a grilled piece of chicken, didn't seem like it would take forever or should take forever, but it did. The restaurant had two levels. The top level, by us, was where the bathrooms, bar, and 4 televisions on the wall were located. There was 4 different movies playing at the same time. There was music and talking and it was a very loud place. My wife and I waited for almost 45 minutes before our food arrived. It was the most boring burger I have ever had. The burger tasted like you took regular ground 85/15 beef from the supermarket and cooked it. It didn't even have salt or pepper. My poor wife, ordered some grilled chicken sandwich and the chicken had nothing on it as well. I know people, even health nuts, like their grilled chicken to have some flavor so it doesn't taste like you are eating a piece of cardboard. This had no salt, no sauce of any kind, and no pepper. Here is the thing, my wife and I were starving, attempting to fill our bellies before a two show at the FOX. So, we wanted to eat the food, but it was so bad that we didn't. We didn't even take it to go! It was just bad. How does that rate? Well, in my book that is a 0 out of 5 stars.<br />
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What does that mean for you? Well, if I was paid to write by any of the St. Louis magazines, websites or organizations, you would not know how bad the food is there, until after you got ripped off as well. This also means, that I can help relate the truths that the restaurants who DO NOT pay out for ads are like. One of my favorite restaurants in St. Louis is called Basso and they are by the Cheshire. They have all of the makings of a restaurant that is highly praised by the news and media outlets, yet they are not. Instead, the magazines, websites and news shows seek instead to draw attention to Niche and Sydney Street. Now those two restaurants are good, I'm not saying they are not, but what everyone else fails to understand is that Basso is here as well. There has been a lot of press recently because the head chefs of Niche and Sydney Street are nominated for a James Beard Award, which is like the Emmy of the food world. Every news outlet, every magazine and website are talking about how great this is to have these two chefs represent St. Louis and bring home a James Beard Award for this city. They say things like "this is awesome", "we deserve this", and people saying they have a life-long dream of eating at a James Beard Award recipient's restaurant. But, we have a James Beard Award winning Chef at a restaurant in St. Louis already. I have just honestly mentioned this to all of these posts and my mention gets ignored. What does the chefs of these other two restaurants have over these magazines and website? I bet you that if these two chefs didn't win this award, the above sources would be depressed suggesting that St. Louis will never be recognized for their food. Yet we have an award winning chef here already! I don't understand, but maybe it has to do with politics. Maybe Basso is so good of a restaurant that they don't feel that they need to give food away to the owners of those magazines and site to get good reviews. It is amazing how the mediocre restaurants, like Hamburger Mary's or Brazikat, get pushed and represented as the best in the area because they paid the most for the biggest ad. <br />
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I know that the restaurant scene in St. Louis is highly political. I was reassured of that truth upon my first conversation with Chef John Johnson, but at the same time, that political correct view of which restaurants are allowed to be on top and which ones stay on the bottom does not work well with the same concept turned to reflect actual quality.<br />
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(And this is why I am dangerous.) <br />
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Overall though, as work and time permits, I do wish to write about more things, like new food ideas and new restaurants. I feel that you can always come to me for the real story of some of these restaurants and not the controlled suggestions that these outlets claim to be the truth. Although, maybe you can't handle the truth.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5073094950245045480.post-16604156874788844152014-03-13T07:47:00.002-07:002014-03-13T07:50:04.488-07:00Bad restaurant with NO responsibility<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
How many shows have you watched, where the restaurant owners complain that they are losing money and think that it might have to do with the service? Everything from Restaurant Impossible to Mystery Diners to others, shows and whole organizations spend time to help failing restaurants. Most restaurant owners are so passionate about their cause, that they do not wish to end it. Unless you are in St. Louis where restaurant owners have no care about their food or service and will do anything to make a buck, like this guy:<br />
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So, recently my wife and I spent time and money at Brazikat, which is supposed to be like a churrascaria. Let me tell you this, the place is a joke. From online reviews, it is seen that on the nights that the owner is there, the service and food is impeccable. On other nights, when the owner is not there, everything slips. Horrible service had our waiter complaining about the number of people in his section and then didn't get us plates or even tongs or the red/green card to start the food coming to our table. The salad bar looked like a bus of vegetarians dismantled it and then the restaurant failed to restock it. The food came out either over cooked or under cooked. You could have two different preparations of prime rib and one would have been so salty and over cooked that it was all gristle and the other one was still bloody with NO seasoning at all! The place is an utter joke. Then, when my wife and I were finished, we complained to the manager on duty. The first thing she did was ask who our waiter was, in an attempt to likely throw him under the bus. <br />
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A good manager would try to do something that could make us come back or recommend it but this manager actually looked my wife right in the eyes and asked "so what do you want me to do?" My wife also mentioned to her that we have a large family and we like to go out all together. This meant that if we were happy, we would have had a party of 10-20 people there on a regular basis. But, as my wife said that we wouldn't bring our groups there, the manager looked at us and said "so?" With that level of customer service, I wouldn't let that woman manage a lemonade stand. I tried to contact or leave a message with the owner but it would seem that that real owner doesn't know how to use email or a phone, so that went bust. What is sad as well, is that this place fills up fast on Saturday nights, so we had an hour wait, because we didn't make a reservation. Even more so, even if we had a reservation they likely would have ignored it. I am just am amazed at how bad a restaurant can be and then act like it is no big deal. The blind sheep of Clayton, jump at anything new and because it is new, they believe it to be the best, when it is not even mediocre.<br />
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Here is a good example: The waiter brings us this dish, which he says is a "Brazilian staple" and it is mashed potatoes with cheese.<br />
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Now, you may notice something strange amount this dish, being the fact that the cheese is NOT melted at all. That would further indicate that the mashed potatoes are likely cold and you would be correct. The potatoes were cold as in, not warm or even hot. The cheese was cold as well. So, in a tropical climate where meat is very salty because the use salt as a preservative due to the lack of large refrigeration units, you have cold mashed potatoes and cold, un-melted cheese, and this dish is supposed to be a staple, a regular, everyone has one of these, items? I doubt it.<br />
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But, a "Brazilian Steak house" should have great, large pieces of meat given by the Gauchos, right? Well...., if you had a tunnel vision like cataract in your eye and everything that was small looked huge, then you would be correct. One guy came by and off of his sword he gave us this:<br />
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<span style="color: black;">This </span>is not a huge piece, look at that size. That is a normal sized dinner plate, fork and knife. So, the piece of ultra-rare, still moo'ing beef is about the size of a Kennedy half-dollar. Now, just about every piece of meat was this size so while it is all-you-can-eat, you will be there for years trying to eat your fill of tiny pieces of meat.</div>
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Who loves candied bananas? Well, at just about every Brazilian restaurant I have been to, they make them all the same way: they cut the lengthwise, and cook them with sugar or syrup, until they are almost spoon tender and sweet. Well, here at Brazikat, they do things differently. The bananas came out in a tiny dish and looked like this:</div>
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<a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7368/13126928945_76382d1349_k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7368/13126928945_76382d1349_k.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></div>
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This is a tiny plate. Just count the banana slices: one, two....eleven. So, eleven slices isn't even a whole banana. So, where is the rest? Did I mention that while the banana slice at the 3 o'clock position looks like it has browned, the others were all raw? Yeah, it just wasn't there.<br />
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I straight up give this place a 0 out of 5 stars. I've never given a place such a low score, but the waiter giving bad service, the manager being a bitch, the food for anemic people and the design being done and organized by a blind person made me think that this is one of the worst places in St. Louis.</div>
John Bauerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00018270333077039690noreply@blogger.com1