St. Louis has nothing to worry about.

The other night, my wife and I had a free night in downtown Austin, Texas and decided that a night out, at one of the trendy and local, seasonal, farm to table restaurants may do the trick.  This restaurant, Parkside, has won awards and attention for their raw bar and oysters as well as their use of sustainable and seasonal foods.   Not for their other foods.  Now, when my wife and I stood there, waiting 10 minutes past out 8:00 reservation, we wondered if it could be as good as other great restaurants in this same category: like Farmhaus.  The answer is 'no'.

The interior of Parkside reminds me a lot of Taste.  It is dark, the lights are high up and everything has dark wood colored tones.  The hostess staff are dressed in black.  There was seating near the bar and more seating in a separate dining room behind the bar in the next room.  What was odd about our wait, was that they seated several people who just walked in and asked for a seat, before us.  So, right off the bat, reservations here mean nothing.  After being sat at a table/booth combo, we were greeted by our waiter who was not very friendly or knowledgable.  He didn't know what the different selections of oysters had in them, where they were from, or even where they were from.  It was odd since this place is famous for their oyster selection.  As we looked at the menu, we noticed that the food was priced a bit high, which would be alright if the food came in reasonable sized portions and were great, but neither was the case at Parkside.  We ordered some drinks, he left and returned with them and then without saying a word, left.  We didn't see him come back to our table for 10 minutes.  Our waiter seemed too occupied with the large table of 8 people next to us, which was odd since they were more than 6 and had an automatic 18% tip added in and would make sense that the guy should work on the tip that wasn't automatic.

There was a good selection of food and as such, we both selected some appetizers.  We were told that the beef marrow dish is cooked to order and would be about 20-30 minutes and since after we waited 10 minutes for him to come back, we figured that the 20-30 minute wait wouldn't be that bad.  So, while we waited, and waited, finally our starters came out.  The first one that came out was the Kampachi, which was pieces of fish with some blood oranges and ginger for $12.  We thought it would be a good sized plate for $12.  This was it:

Was it any good?  Neh.  The blood orange segments completly ruined any good flavors from the dish.  So, would we order it again?  No.  It stands at a 2 out of 5 stars.

I'm thinking that I made a good decision and set off to accept my Potato Gnocchi with sunchoke butter, arugula and a citrus gel.  This is what I got:

Someone needs to go back to cooking school.  Gnocchi are supposed to be a little firm, a gummy, toothsom texture, like al-dente' pasta.  Guess what this was? Mushy.  They tasted like someone mashed some potatoes and then cooked them in little balls in boiling water, like you would cook spaetzle.  They were flavorless and not seasoned at all.  I tasted not even salt or pepper.  The sunchoke butter was super sweet and there were these orange segments which were tart.  The citrus gel, was a runny sauce.  If you say that something is a gel, then it better be a gel, not a runny sauce. Here's the thing, if myself or my wife can make food better than what we pay for at a restaurant, then the restaurant did a bad job on it.  This is a 2 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.  For $10, I'd say that the price was a bit high.

As we are still waiting for the marrow bones, we got one of the other starters which my wife had ordered.  She picked out the Caramelized Cauliflower with chili, calabrese and capers.  This was for $7 and we had a small plate here: 

So, we paid $7 for partially cooked cauliflower and a few capers.  What was most promanint about the dish was the large leaf of parsley there, for no reason.  A 2 out of 5 stars.

So, finally Marrow Bones comes out with an herb salad, a whole $14.50.  This is what is delivered to us:

First thing, flat leaf parsley leaves, strewn over the bones with some bony fescue, is not an herb salad.  Second thing is, that when something so rich and fatty is served, something that is tart or acidic should be served with it.  Traditionally the greens are tart or sour and there should be some vinegar; even a simple dressing that should go with this dish.  But there was none.  It was fat on burnt toast.  The fat was also quite boring.  At Truffles, a St. Louis restaurant, when we last ordered some beef marrow bones there, they cooked them, then scooped the marrow out, mixed it with herbs and spices and then placed it back in the bones for presentation.  So, they were not boring as in this place  I love my marrow, I really do, but this was just good, like a 3 out of 5 stars.  Its just that for the price, we expected a bit more time and effort.

The last dish was the real winner of the evening.  I figured that what looks like to be the strangest item on the menu, should be the best one to pick.  So, I ordered the Grilled Hill Country Rabbit with roasted carrots, green garlic spaetzle, carrot puree' crema, and red wine vinegarette for $24.  

Does it look like rabbit?  The rabbit, is in these disc shaped patties.  They had what tasted like bacon, wrapped around them and the whole thing tasted like bad tasting ham.  Really.  I know that rabbit does not taste like ham, so why did it taste like turned pork or salted and brine-marinated pork.  The meat was awful and even if they made a mistake and gave me ham, it was so salty, so terribly salt, you could kill a room full of slugs with one bite.  So, let's look for the carrots.  There is one that is bright orange, in the 6 o'clock area of the photo.  At about the 9 o'clock area are two more carrots.  These were more roasted than the other one and even worse is that the two dark roasted ones, were so burnt that there was no flesh there to eat!  The green garlic spaetzle, were the best part of this dish.  I ate every one of them and if you could take one part of this dish out and separate it, I would take those.  They alone were like a 4 out of 5 stars.  They were awesome and I really did eat every one.  It was just sad that it was so salty and I couldn't eat it.  I will say this: this is the last one.  My wife kept egging me into returning the dish, because it was so bad.  I told her it was okay, but after this, restaurants look out, I will ask to return items that are bad or suck.

My thoughts?  Parkside sucks.  Parkside is also supposed to be an award winning restaurant and award winning restaurants need to be good.  So, for St. Louis which has a number of award winning restaurants which pop up all the time, they have nothing to worry about.  

I'll be Hansel and you be Gretel

Whenever I think of a gingerbread house, I think of a happy moment from my childhood:

While I know that it was never shown or told that the house was made of candy and sweets, at least it lent the idea that it could have been and the kids were just thrown in a pot anyway.

Watching this, then made me think of a game I have recently played called Katamari Damacy:

If you are not familiar with this game, the point is that you have a ball that you basically roll stuff up with.  Like a snowball rolling down a hill, the more your roll up, the larger your ball gets and then more that the perspective and scale shifts so that it appears that you are getting larger and larger.  In this level, you had to roll up as much of this gingerbread house you could.  It even comes complete with a witch riding a broomstick.  As a fan of donuts and other great baked goods, a house made from real baked goods, does sound delicious.

Now we get to St. Louis, where to the side of the main hall of the River City Casino, they have this:

This past Saturday I was allowed to enjoy something straight from the fairy tales: the giant gingerbread house.  I thought to myself, 'how can a gingerbread be that cool?"  I was quickly surprised of exactly how large-scale this gingerbread is.  Candice Coleman, sent me over the recipe and what was required to make this and I was shocked.
[

Gingerbread House

450 pounds of gingerbread dough
100 pounds of shortening,
100 pounds of granulated sugar,
90 pounds of corn syrup,
117 pounds flour.
Baked off 500 6 inches by 12 inches square bricks.
100 house made gum drops
400 fresh baked cookies
130 fresh baked cupcakes
300 pounds of royal icing
]

Okay, so imagine how big of a item you could make with 450 pounds of cookie dough!  What they did, was create a wooden house and then using frosting, they glued these gingerbread cookie slabs on to the outside.  While reading that list I also thought of how big it could be, with only 400 cookies, 130 cupcakes and 100 house made gum drops.  My mind immediately thought of those store-bought gum drops and how 100 of them is hardly enough to decorate even the store-bought gingerbread houses.  That is, until I saw them up close:

That large yellowish thing with the sugar on it, is the "house made gum drops".  Really?!?!?   Way to fool me Chef John.  That thing is huge and looks to be about 3 inches tall and about 2.5 inches in diameter.  It reminded me of those giant "novelty" gummi bears that you can buy at the World Market in Chesterfield and everyone sinks their face into.  I'm surprised no one has taken this idea and made some kind of weird candy fetish video with giant gummi bears and huge gum drops.  Take these into account with the normal sized cupcakes and those cookies look to be at least 6 inches across.

Now, while this house enough sugar to give every child in America a sugar rush and is cool to look at, there is special food that can be ordered.  The gingerbread house has a special menu, which allows you to pick from your first course, your entre' and get your dessert all for one low price of $25.

I had the pumpkin pie soup, which  had creme fraiche and toasted pepitas.  It was great and sweet but not too, too sweet.  It tasted like pumpkin with some sweet elements to it.  A great way to judge a dish is to get a kid to eat it and my 6 year old loved it.  He kept asking for more and he sat in front of his breakfast plate.
The soup was an easy 4 out of 5 for me.

 Between the choice of the ham and the turkey breast, I chose the ham.  (It is a pork product after all.)  The ham had a 1904 Bourbon glaze, with a sweet potato and yellow potato gratin and then had some baby carrots.  The carrots were as sweet as the soup, which is a good thing, for me.  I prefer my vegetables with large amounts of butter and or brown sugar or maple or other sweet applications.

So, it was huge, a large amount of food was offered to me and presented and I was already ready, already.  The ham was tender and juicy and flavorful.  The gratin was tender and easy to eat and creamy.  The carrots were awesome.  The meal was an easy 4 out of 5.

There were others:  Like the eggnog flan that came with this prefix meal.  I'd give it a 4 out of 5.  Then there was the egg and Canadian bacon sandwich with potatoes that my son ordered and ate his fill of, loving every bite of it.  Even the Beignets came out correctly.  They were light and fluffy and delicious.  We ordered the traditional and plan on trying the maple bacon when we return.

While going to the casino and eating in a giant gingerbread house may be just regular average droll for you, it is important to note that doing so, helps a charity.  To reserve your spot for a meal in this house, requires $20.  This $20 goes straight to the Center for Hearing and Speech, which helps hearing impaired adults and children in the St. Louis area.  This isn't some organization going to help people around the world or in some other city but takes care of the people HERE.  Every cent of that $20 goes to the organization.  Now, while you may be wondering, what you get for your $20 other than a spot in this edible house, here you go: activities for your kids.  The gingerbread house is a great place to go with your kids.  It seats 4 people comfortably and after ordering adults and kids alike, are given slabs of gingerbread with colored icing, with which you can decorate your tile.  Tiles or slabs of cooked and decorated gingerbread can be donated to the house, where a chef will get to glue them on to the house, using frosting.  So, you can make a funny picture, write your name, or even write the name of your website.

So, this holiday season, spend the $20, help someone hear for the first time and enjoy some great food.