stlbites.com – st. louis food blog of bill burge

Babies, and Art, and Food, Oh My!

Jul 22, 2010 St. Louis, chefs, events, farming, missouri, restaurants, sustainable agriculture Leave a comment

Whew! After nine months (the final few weeks of which were filled with anxiety revolving around questions like, “What the hell am I going to do with a baby?), I now have a daughter, Quinn Reese Burge.  Definitely meaning to brag, Ellie did it 100% natural for both her health physically and mentally and the babies.  It was amazing, but more than that, they are amazing.

Bragging about my wife and daughter out of the way, in the few moments of spare time I’ve had this week, I’ve been tracking down chefs to belatedly nail down this year’s Slow Food St. Louis Art of Food menu.  It’s not quite assembled 100% (come on guys!), but I just wanted to let you know one thing:

If you’re in town this Saturday, and you haven’t got anything planned, and you care a lick about local food, you need to get your butt down there. It’s Slow Food St. Louis’s biggest fundraiser of the year and it’s the reason we’ve been able to give over $12,000 to ten small farms over the last two years to increase the biodiversity of what’s available to us locally.

And if that’s not reason enough for you to go, know this: whatever excuse you have can’t possibly top the fact that I’ll be there and I’ll have a 7 day old daughter, and Josh Galliano will be there and he will have a 13 day old daughter.  (we are of course hoping this means stellar birthday parties!)

Here’s the menu thus far if you’re wavering, and I hope to see you there…

Annie Gunn’s – Lou Rook III

Roasted Viking Village Sea Scallop with Annie Gunn’s Bacon and Ratatouille.

Companion – Josh Allen

1. Panzanella “Bread Salad”  – Companion Roasted Garlic Fougasse w/ local heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers (working to identify farmer this week)

2. Grilled Bread Station with assorted pestos & tapenades

Five – Anthony Devoti

Benne’s Farm Pork confit, sesame cracker, tomato jam and pickled Claverach Farm baby carrots.

Harvest – Stephen Gontram

Harvest Bread Pudding

Kakao Chocolate – Brian Pelletier

1:Bacon Caramels Made with bacon from Hinkebein Hills Farms and local honey.

2: Chocolate Dipped Double-Layer Pates de Fruits

Local Harvest Café – Clara Moore

Horseradish Pickled Heirloom Tomato Relish on a Prairie Breeze Cheese Biscuit

Monarch – Josh Galliano

Prairie Grass Farms Goat Terrine, eggplant tapenade, Greek yogurt, fennel mostarda

Niche – Gerard Craft

white gazpacho, smoked grape sorbet

Sidney Street Café

Rabbit bratwurst with Companion brioche and house made sauerkraut

Winslow’s Home

Winslow’s Farm Cucumbers and Heirloom Tomatoes with pulled Prairie Grass Farm Lamb

and dishes still to come from…

Bailey’s Chocolate Bar, Farmhaus, Franco

Taking the Edge off E-Ville

May 5, 2010 Illinois, chefs, restaurants Leave a comment

It’s not my style to alert you to all deals because some deals are at places I wouldn’t want you to eat at in the first place.  With a definite amount of bias, however, I’d like to point out that although Kevin Willmann has moved on to great new things at Farmhaus, Edwardsville’s Erato on Main is still chugging along.  With the same great wine and beer list they’ve always had (and really that was part of the reason many of you drove to E-Ville anyway), the restaurant is still worth the trek.  Doubly so because you’ll get to sample  Jonathan Olson’s evolving menus as he finds his personal cooking style. Triply so because if you’re on the fence about the visit, today only you can turn $10 into $22 with the new Hot Sauce Deals of the Day website.

As an added bonus, 10% of all Hot Sauce proceeds will be donated to help fund important programs and services at Children’s Hospital.

For a taste of what’s in store, check out the new Erato on Main website.  Menus are updated each Friday so you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’re in store for.

Full disclosure: As always, please keep in mind that while I believe my opinion to be correct, there are some establishments where my opinion is personally biased. This is one. Jonny “Style” Olson and other members of the Erato staff have become friends of mine because of my regularity in the restaurant.  Heck, Jon even guest-blogged once.

American Fast Food, Harbinger of Weird

May 3, 2010 general food 4 Comments

I thought I had seen the most disgusting thing that could be done with a White Castle Burger when my wife’s uncle showed up with a puree of Sliders—buns and all—which he attempted to pass off as pate for Thanksgiving.  “Just put it all in the food processor with a little Worcestershire!” he said with a proud smile. I told him to back off the Worcestershire and leave out a couple buns next time.

Anyway, proving that lows can always get lower, White Castle has trumped their fans themselves, and I/we owe George Mahe the Eagle Eye Award for passing it along.  It seems White Castle has created Slider scented candles to benefit…

wait for it….. Read More..

St. Louis Earth Day Festival This Sunday

Apr 23, 2010 events Leave a comment

While Thursday marked  the 40th year  that people have gathered together to celebrate Earth Day nationally, it’s not till Sunday that you’ll get your big shot to do it St. Louis style in Forest Park. It’s there, on the Muni grounds, that St. Louis has been throwing their Earth Day Festival since 1989.  And if you’re thinking hippy fest of epic proportions, you’d be wrong.  While you might step around a starry eyed dreamer or two, now just about everybody is on the Earth Day wagon because it’s not a political issue, it’s just the right thing to do if you care about the future generations of people that will be inhabiting our planet.

But screw all that, I’ll give you three reasons to attend the 2010 St. Louis Earth Day Festival

• The dope ass logo to the right will surely make a dope ass t-shirt when you pick one up in pink or brown for just $15.
• Slow Food St. Louis will once again be manning a booth in the Farmers’ Market where you can either a) say hello and see that I’m actually a swell guy or b) see me in person, tell me how much you hate me, and punch me in the face
• Prairie Grass Farm Lamb Gyros.  Need I really say more?  You know Dave and Barb Hillebrand from your time at the farmers’ markets.  You know their lamb isn’t just good for St. Louis.  It’s good anywhere. Period. And it’s especially good the few times a year they cut loose and bust out the gyro making mayhem that you do not want to miss.

A Farmhaus Dinner Menu

Apr 2, 2010 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants 2 Comments

If you’re thinking of going out for dinner this weekend, and you’re jonesing for a little taste of Spring, and you’re not yet sure where it is you should go, may I suggest you head to Farmhaus to order the beautiful bowl-of-Spring they’re calling: Pappardelle w/ local baby bok choy, Missouri pecans, black garlic, sous vide pearl onions, local sorrel and herbs.

Where most of the time you see black garlic as big, whole clove chunks, in this dish the black garlic is mixed in meaning that if you’re like me, and you forgot exactly what you ordered, it might leave you wondering, “what the heck is that unusual but delicious flavor?”  That’s black garlic my friend, and you need to go eat it before it’s gone.

Nothing’s gonna ever keep me down

Feb 18, 2010 general food 1 Comment

I knew there was a reason I liked the people of Thailand. – fortune from Pearl Cafe.

Useless Cooking Tip #2: Fast Soaking Beans

Feb 16, 2010 cooking, groceries 3 Comments

Two years ago, in a night of cooking and drinking, a YouTube video was born

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Thanks to the power of iMovie, it now has a sequel of vastly superior production quality

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Read More..

Lunch Dilemma?

Feb 12, 2010 cooking 6 Comments

You’re working from home and it’s lunch time.  Your wife thawed hamburger that needs to be used, but you can’t find a bun.  But, ah, there’s some red wattle applewood-smoked ham.  You can make a sandwich.  But there’s not enough ham for a sandwich.  What do you do? Read More..

Connecting the Dots

Feb 12, 2010 books, general food 3 Comments

Recently I have been reading quite a lot, and to say I am fascinated by some people’s command of language would be a gross understatement.  Regretfully, I feel that while I can BS endlessly, I write quite poorly as a whole and am jealous of these people.

One book I’ve read recently–or reread as it were–is Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.  The forward once again captivated me in a way that the subject rarely is, and as I neared it’s end and saw who wrote it, I am embarrassed to admit that I had not previously considered that the White half of Strunk and White, is E.B. White; the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little.

You see, of late I have also been reading Letters of E. B. White; all the while in shock that a man who is best known for writing children’s books writes with such grace.  Connecting the dots, it would appear I now have a new author to count amongst my favorites, and here is one food-related E.B White quote, from a letter he wrote to Bennet Cerf regarding Charlotte’s Web, that I am especially fond of.

A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always.

I have kept several pigs, starting them in the spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through the summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing.

#stl Twits

Feb 11, 2010 St. Louis, foodster, general food, groceries, missouri, restaurants Leave a comment

For weeks I’ve scoured many of your Twitter feeds.  Sometimes I found the St. Louis restaurants, chefs, and other food-related accounts I hoped to. But then I also found things that would make for a bizarre demographic study of St. Louis foodsters.  Like, apparently, a lot of you are LeVar Burton fans.  At first I wondered, are you Reading Rainbow fans or Trekkies? And then I looked at LeVar Burton’s Twitter feed and along with learning that he felt The Who’s halftime show sucked and if you call him during Lost he will hurt your feelings, he has 1,607,229 followers.

But why the research?  Because Twitter blessed us with lists so that we can create organized feeds of people we don’t actually want to follow personally.  And that gave me the opportunity to waste my time assembling four lists that encompass every restaurant, chef, grocer and coffee shop located in St. Louis currently on Twitter. Word Up!

Click the links above and if I missed any, let me know @stlbites.