Babies, and Art, and Food, Oh My!
Jul 22, 2010 St. Louis, chefs, events, farming, missouri, restaurants, sustainable agriculture
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
Tags: Annie Gunn's, Anthony-Devoti, Art of Food, Bailey's Chocolate Bar, Brian Pelletier, Cary McDowell, Clara Moore, Claverach, Companion Bakery, David Bailey, Farmhaus, Five, Franco, Gerard Craft, Harvest, Hinkebein Hills Farm, Josh Galliano, Kakao Chocolate, Kevin Nashan, Local Harvest Cafe, Lou Rook III, Mad Art Gallery, Matt Abeshouse, Monarch, Niche, Rooster, Sidney Street Cafe, Slow Food St. Louis, Stephen Gontram, sustainable agriculture, The Bridge, Winslow's Home
Ah Ha! A Newbie’s Wine List or: How I Managed to Post Twice in One Day
In March of this year, Josh Galliano and I dined at the Niche bar together. Throughout our meal customers of Niche, who were also customers of Monarch’s, regularly came up to say hello. To my great fortune, a particularly generous customer added to his hello a bottle of 2004 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir and with that, my Ah Ha wine moment had happened, and a new chapter of my life began. Thanks Jeff L.
Certainly I’d had good wine before, and I definitely preferred it as my libation of choice with a meal. Outside of restaurants, however, I’d been primarily a beer drinker because I could not only wrap my head around beer, I could afford it. I had no idea what Williams Selyem was that night and, if the wallop of flavor were any indicator, I was pretty damn sure it was a winery producing a product well outside my price range. Arriving home and doing a bit of googling, however, I found a bottle at Brown Derby, in Springfield, MO, for $55. While I realize that’s not cheap by any means, it was significantly less than I’d anticipated, and I immediately purchased it and two other bottles of Williams Selyem Zinfandel to tuck away into my cellar (AKA the cool/dark corner of my basement).
The slippery slope of oenophilia had landed and, where once I was a guy that simply knew he liked wine more than beer but felt he couldn’t afford it, I quickly became a guy that reads a dozen wine blogs a day and voraciously clamors for information. Which brings us, windingly, to my poorly written point: One of those posts was written by Stephen Schenkenberg on stlmag.com about his favorite wine books and websites. It’s a good list but, as a newcomer to this world of wine, I thought I’d offer up a newbie’s perspective (which you can read here in it’s shiny-new polite form, or as an stlmag comment in it’s original, several glasses in, grammatically incorrect–but possibly more entertaining–form)
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: blog, books, cellartracker.com, drvino.com, erobertparker.com, Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, Jay Miller, Josh Galliano, Kevin Zraly, Mark Oldman, Niche, Robert Parker, Tom Stevenson, Tyler Colman, vinography.com, websites, Williams Selyem, winespectator.com
Next Up: Galliano in Southern Living
Aug 23, 2009 St. Louis, chefs, missouri, restaurants
The accolades keep coming for St. Louis’s favorite chefs, and this time they’re for Monarch executive chef, Josh Galliano, who appears on page 28 of the September issue of Southern Living magazine. Not yet in stores or online, writer Corlanne Griffith Roberts gushes over Galliano’s dishes even if she is an Alabama fan (Galliano graduated from LSU).
Check it out on newsstands in the coming weeks, and join me in congratulating Galliano for joining the growing list of chefs bringing national attention to the St. Louis dining scene.
Remember also, you can check out Galliano’s cooking for yourself at Monarch’s Australian Wine Dinner on August 25. (menu)
Dorm Room Challenge Menu #1
Jun 23, 2009 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants
I kid you not, thoughts to come…
Tags: 33 Wine Bar, Dorm Room Challenge, Jeff Stettner, Josh Galliano
Holy-hell, is this thing the greatest or what?
Apr 13, 2009 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants
Apparently that’s what I thought when I typed but never posted about the Monarch chicken nugget on Halloween of last year. At the time I thought they’d disappear swiftly, but dining there Saturday, some of our companions had them before we arrived. So run–don’t walk–and get yourself a Monarch chicken nugget if you haven’t had one.
They consist of unctuous chicken thigh confit mixed with red bell peppers and I think a little onion that has been breaded, deep fried, and placed into a bowl of a perfectly acidic salsa verde of capers, lemon juice, oil and parsley.
So simple. So delicious.
Tags: chicken nugget, Eat This, Josh Galliano, Monarch, salsa verde
Monarch Tasting Menu
Jan 13, 2009 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants
I completely forgot about this until I saw a post about it on the forum but, Josh Galliano did recently start a tasting menu up at Monarch. Of special note, some of the dishes are paired with cocktails from Ted Kilgore.
Though I’ve only experienced cocktail pairings once at Bluestem in Kansas City, non-wine pairings in general seem to be on the rise around the country. It made for some particularly interesting flavor combinations at Bluestem and, with Kilgore’s bartending chops, I’m glad to see someone doing this locally.
- Country Ham Consomme – hamhock ballotine, persillade clams, shaved fennel
- Skate Steak – pineapple-basil ravioli, thai long peppercorn cream, jasmine tea (tea infused with ras al hanout to make the sauce)
- Rosemary Skewered Sweetbreads – beluga lentils, carrot butter, cilantro – carrot top puree
- Braised Lamb Belly – celeriac puree, brussel sprouts, tempura tomato confit
- Sweet Potato Pudding Cake – blood orange – szechuan peppercorn jam, blis maple syrup meringue, bacon pain perdu
Tags: brussel sprouts, Josh Galliano, Monarch, sweetbreads, tasting menu, Ted Kilgore
From the mountains of Panama and Ethiopia, to the urban-jungles of Portland and Chicago, journalist Michaele Weissman takes us behind the scenes for a look at the world of third-wave specialty coffee. How did we get to Starbucks, and where we go from here?