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
Restaurant Gripes #1 and #2
Jan 6, 2010 St. Louis, missouri, restaurants
Over at Winemag.com Erika Strum today posted a list of 10 Unspoken Rules of Restaurant Service Etiquette written up after a bad experience at New York’s, Michelin two star award winning, Gilt Restaurant. What she left off the list, however, is my number one service gripe: SERVE WOMEN FIRST!
From taking their orders to placing their dishes in front of them, women are always to be served first. It’s such a basic service rule that even at the most basic of diners a server ought to be capable of handling it. Still, amongst St. Louis’s finest restaurants, only two, in my recollection, have pulled this off on 100% of my visits with women: Sidney Street Café and Atlas. And that includes all of the usual suspects where one would assume such a basic service rule would be followed easily.
Of course that’s not my only restaurant gripe and, in an attempt to post a little more this year—a task at which I will undoubtedly fail—I’ll start writing, occasionally, about restaurant gripes that I feel could (and should) easily be avoided.
Now that you know my #1 gripe, rather then heading straight into #2 and picking on service staffs alone, let’s turn things to the back-of-the-house shall we?
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Atlas Restaurant, butter, gilt restaurant, restaurant gripes, service etiquette, Sidney Street Cafe
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…
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
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?