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Posts Tagged ‘Araka’

Slow Food Art of Food Menu

Jul 24, 2008 St. Louis, chefs, missouri

This is why you want to buy tickets for Art of Food

222 Artisan Bakery / Goshen Coffee – Debbie Sultan / Matt Herren

222 Artisan breads in roll form: bacon, brioche, and sun dried tomato olive and feta
Goshen-roasted Costa Rican pour-over drip coffee

Bailey’s Chocolate Bar / Rooster – Robin Murphy

Fruitland roast beef sandwich with red onion marmalade and herbed Heartland Creamery goat cheese on a housemade roll
Bailey’s buttercream chocolate bar cake

An American Place – Joshua Galliano

Prairie Grass Farms lamb and foie gras ballotine, apple mustard, chickpea salad, saba

Annie Gunn’s – Lou Rook III

Duroc pork belly confit on Companion brioche roll with Atomic horseradish mustard and house made local peach chutney

Araka – Mark Curran

Prairie Grass Farms housemade sausages
Local heirloom tomato salad

Erato on Main – Kevin Willmann

House smoked Guthrie Farms chicken with local vegetable chow chow

Local Harvest Grocery – Clara Moore

Housemade hummus served on local cucumber circles and local tomatoes tossed with fresh pesto and served on Companion crostinis

Moxy Bistro – Eric Brenner

Duck breast with grilled peaches

Niche – Gerard Craft

Slow-roasted Greenwood Farms pork butt sandwiches with brussel sprout slaw on Companion bread

Schlafly Bottleworks – Matt Bessler

Schlafy “Gardenworks” beet and Arugula salad
Troutdale Farms smoked Trout Mousse with English cucumber cups
Bacon-wrapped Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork tenderloin with Schlafy pale ale raspberry BBQ sauce

Sidney Street Café – Kevin Nashan

Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork butt with cornmeal “toast”, Eilerman Brothers peach bbq glaze, Claverach Farm greens and pickled peaches
On the Wind Farms watermelon gazpacho with jumbo lump crab

Veruca – Mathew Rice

Local peach and lavender trifles

Tags: 222 Artisan Bakery, An American Place, Annie Gunn's, Araka, Art of Food, Bailey's Chocolate Bar, David Bailey, Debbie Sultan, Erato on Main, Eric Brenner, Gerard Craft, Goshen Coffee, Joshua Galliano, Kevin Nashan, Kevin Willmann, Lou Rook, Mathew Rice, Matt Bessler, Matt Herren, Moxy Bistro, Niche, Rooster, Schlafly Bottleworks, Sidney Street Cafe, Veruca

If you were cool…

Jul 21, 2008 St. Louis, events, slow food

you would be at Mad Art Gallery this Saturday for Slow Food St. Louis’s annual fund raiser, The Art of Food.

Full event details are at artoffood.org though what you’ll really want to know is who the chefs are:

Debbie Sultan & Matt Herren – 222 Artisan Bakery and Goshen Coffee
Joshua Galliano – An American Place
Lou Rook – Annie Gunn’s
Mark Curran – Araka
David Bailey – Bailey’s Chocolate Bar and Rooster
Kevin Willmann – Erato on Main
Eric Brenner – Moxy Bistro
Gerard Craft – Niche
Matt Bessler – Schlafly Bottleworks
Kevin Nashan – Sidney Street Cafe
Mathew Rice – Veruca

and possibly more to come…

Patios and Pappardelle

Apr 9, 2008 St. Louis, general food, missouri, restaurants

fpboathouse You checked your email, you got the Araka newsletter, and because you like to sit around outside like the rest of the indigenous people no matter how sweltering the heat, you rejoiced when you read that the patio is now open. After a winter of clamoring to sit outside and deal with sweat, bugs and wind you can once again rejoice at the possibility of dining on every porch, patio and veranda in St. Louis.

Of course, after reading that new Araka Spring Menu you may also have found yourself craving that pappardelle with braised lamb and pine nut-mint gremolata because it does sound pretty friggin’ good!

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Araka, Outdoor Dining

Excuse me, where is the restroom?

Jan 25, 2008 restaurants

bathroom As this is a food blog I could do the appropriate thing and tell you all about my dinner last week at Araka. Perhaps I could even write about the meal I ate there a couple days before Christmas, and how in both those meals, while I definitely ate some good things, I ate a couple flawed dishes as well.

Instead, however, I want to talk to you about something we can all relate to. From the pickiest of gourmands to the diners thrilled each time McDonald’s brings back the McRib, I’m talking about bathrooms — everybody needs them.

If you frequent enough restaurants, even if you’re one of those people that can only take care of the business on your home throne, sooner or later there comes a need that can not wait; one that sends you on an embarrassing quest in search of the restroom.

You hope in these situations that the bathroom will maintain the same level of quality as the rest of the restaurant. And sometimes — hopefully not often — in certain restaurants you cross your fingers and pray to the god you may or may not believe in that the bathroom is maybe even a touch better than the rest of the joint.

This retro throwback, for instance, is from a bathroom I was recently faced with. It’s been along time since I’ve see one of these babies, and when you go toe-to-toe with one, you really do have to ask yourself: is it maybe more sanitary to not wash my hands?

It was a question I pondered long enough upon entering the bathroom that I had time to snap the picture while coming up with my game plan, but fear not, I did wash them — before drying them on my pants!

While not dirty in anyway there are also restaurants where the bathrooms just don’t meet your expectations not because they’re dirty, but because they’re a bit run down in comparison to the vibe the rest of the place is going for.

I know it’s because it’s technically the hotel’s, but on my last visit, with a steel trashcan complete with a kicked in dent, An American Place is a pretty good example of a bathroom that’s awfully worn down compared to the opulence of the restaurant it’s attached to. Plus, with lighting so bright compared to the restaurant that it’s like walking straight into the sun, they go for a double by adding another bathroom flaw.

Certainly I don’t mean to suggest dimmed lighting to cover up the sins of an unclean bathroom, but is there anything more jarring then walking from a dark restaurant into a disproportionately bright restroom?

There are also flukes; places where the bathrooms are particularly nice compared to the restaurant you’re in.

Stellina Pasta Cafe is one of these places. Not that their restaurant isn’t nice, but it has a mild identity crisis as it sits in limbo between order-at-the counter fast food and casual upscale dining. Yet they have one of the nicest restaurant bathrooms in St. Louis.

The first thing that hits you is that they have one of those fancy vessel sinks with the spout and handles that come right out of the wall. On the floor and wall they have a great deal of detailed tile work that looks like someone definitely spent some serious time on that bathroom.

They also have really nice towels to dry your hands with. That might not seem like a big deal, but who hasn’t dined at Niche and noticed they use actual cloth towels instead of paper towels? While unnecessary, it’s a touch of class that does not go unnoticed.

As you can see, like most things, this is something I’ve considered more than the average person, and not one to hold back an opinion, the obvious question is: Where do these exquisite shrines to your public needs await?

Truffle’s is one example of a really rockin’ bathroom. Although it’s another story entirely I worked there for about thirty days around the time they first opened. Easily containing a top contender for the 7 wonders of the men’s bathroom world, they have one of the urinals from the original American Theater. And it’s no ordinary toilet as it’s absolutely the biggest I have ever seen. Standing about five feet tall I would describe it as art deco, and as I recall, the whole thing was carved from a solid chunk of marble stretching from about my upper chest all the way down to the floor. Smaller men could just step right in, and children, forget about it — play it safe and send them to the stall because they would surely be swept away.

But of course the real point of this is that Araka’s bathroom…it’s slammin!

From the moment you grab the door handle and its interesting texture strikes you as you pull it open, to the moment you exit realizing that as cool as it looked on outside it’s nothing compared to it’s warm glow within, when David Schefer Design was designing Araka they didn’t stop in the front of the house — oh no — they took the vibe right on into the oft-overlooked but always necessary bathroom.

Inside walls are lined with sleek masculine tile, and beautiful wooden stall doors are outfitted with shiny chrome handles that (thanks to my TLC vocab) really pop.

And “sinks” are a thing of the past. Illuminated from the direct lighting above, water simply runs down the sloped contours of textured sea foam green glass where it collects in a shiny metallic trough running the length of wall.

And so, with even the choice of soap seeming deliberate as the neon orange liquid glows from within, in the world of restaurant facilities, if I’m handing out stars, Araka’s bathroom is a true five star affair.