Does it Sound Chemical or Earthy?

Terrene is a little restaurant nestled between Midtown and the Central West End, just a stone's throw from the Scottish Arms. With an expiration date on the Groupon looming, it was our choice for a casual dinner on Friday evening.

Once again, we apparently have odd dining hour choices; arriving just after 6 found us in the company of one other couple and a completely bored wait staff. Completely bored and completely strange wait staff. A table runner brought us each glasses of water and about 20 seconds later our waitress, toting identical glasses of water, arrives at our table (for two only) sees the glasses of water and sets down the new glasses anyway. There wasn't an abundance of room, so I push the glass off to the side. Thanks to a boredom, the original glass never got below 2/3 full. The wine list and menus were at our table when we were seated. The waitress introduces herself, says "Can I get you something from the bar? Oh, by the way, we have a beer and cocktail menu too." Well, go get that shit! The seasonal cocktail/beer/soda menu was printed on something that resembled a golf scorecard, making this 30-year-old yearn for some reading glasses. They offered 5-6 original cocktails, two of which called for the same ingredient that the waitress proclaimed, "Oops we may be out, hold on" then returned and said, "Nope full stock I thought this was Tuesday!" Ok. Got that figured out.

We ordered pate for an appetizer, one of my top fav app dishes. It was pretty good. I glanced over at a newly seated couple who was enjoying their breadservice and although I was a little miffed that we were without, I didn't need the carbs anyway and went on with the pate, of which I finished 3/4ths. I ordered the special which was salmon and Tim ordered the burger. I was asked how I would like my salmon cooked (?) and Tim wasn't given the choice for his beef (??) I deferred to the chef on that one, and my salmon arrived in a manner I would call undercooked but it tasted fine so I gladly finished it. What my dish did suffer from was an odd combination of flavors. It had: spinach (good), quinoa(good), some white sauce (good) and balsamic reduction (no business being here). There was way too much going on here that the balsamic reduction just overpowered everything. Tim's burger was good; it was cooked medium-rare, which is a little rarer than either of us like burgers, but tasted good just the same.

Terrene also has a patio, which we probably would have checked out if we were only having drinks, but it is getting dark way too fast now so we stuck to the dining room. By the time we left (around 7) more folks had shown up waking the waitstaff up for a potentially busy night. The owner knew the couple seated next to us and never quite learned what an "inside voice" was so I caught bits and pieces of his "restaurant philosophy" which was just a bunch of bullshit that was ostensibly supposed to be impressive. All I caught was "rich kid whose parents gave him this space to open a restaurant." Jealous.

The website hasn't been updated recently, still featuring summer cocktails. You also can't see the whole menu because the webmaster didn't put a scroll feature in!

www.terrene-stlouis.com

Wanna Taste?

The Taste of St. Louis was yesterday. Being a big fan of Chicago's taste and never having missed one when living there, I wanted to check out what St. Louis could do. I read somewhere that somebody (maybe Midwest Living Mag) rated this event the #1 Taste of event, ranking the huge Chicago event third.

First of all, this is not Chicago's taste, not even in the same class, maybe they paid off the magazine, who knows. I think it was a smart move to have this event in October, when the average temp is 75 and not 105, and having it downtown instead of Forest Park was also smart (and more convenient for us). Also, NO TICKETS! Cash was king.

There was a restaurant row of about 30 choices, which unfortunately leaned heavy on Italian dishes. I can only have so many toasted raviolis. I would have liked to have seen more ethnic places; we have a sizeable Vietnamese and Bosnian population here, yet no restaurant representation at the taste. Interestingly, there were several chain restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen. Pass. The wind had picked up real fall-like by the time we got there, killing any kind of hunger just to stay warm. What we ended up getting: crab rangoons, black bean empanadas, a smoked turkey leg, and a turtle funnel cake. Nothing too earth shattering there; at the Chicago taste, I get African goat rice and crap like that. No restaurant really offered a "taste" portion, so we filled up quite quickly.

There were two stages of music, which were ok. I guess Sister Hazel was headlining Saturday night-if they were any good-It's Hard to Say. There was the obligatory collection of small booths selling crap that makes you wonder, "who the hell buys this shit?"

The oddest part about the whole taste was their go green initiative EGS. They wanted you to place the compostable containers in one place, recycling in another. The organizes did make it easy by having all of the containers and service utensils compostable. I have no problem with all that. What was odd: THEY ONLY HAD CANS AT THE STREET CORNERS. Which made three total. I had to hunt and hunt for one of these cans and even asked someone who was serving food and even they had no idea where they were. I would be very very curious to know how many of those cardboard containers and forks ended up on the ground yesterday.

Will I be back? Not sure. We were entertained a few hours on a Saturday afternoon but the wallet was lightened quite a bit.

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors

What do you call a brand new sandwich that may cause your blood pressure to spike, to get a splitting headache, and let's face it, have a heart attack, but looks so good? How about a Double Down? Just like splitting those aces, KFC is betting big time the that war on childhood obesity will be lost to fast food giants dubbing their menu items as catchy little slogans such as "Monster Thickburger" or "BK Quad Stacker" What would you rather have a "Grilled Chicken Breast" (8 grams fat, 210 calories) or a FREAKIN' "DOUBLE DOWN" (32 grams fat, 540 calories). Duh! Fearing the war on childhood obersity may be won soon (ha), lest Dr. Slider K. Shaftacular have no fat kids to treat to make him rich, I made KFC stock increase just a little last Friday night because dammit, I wanted a Double Down.

Truthfully, I had been eyeing this advertising slad-dunk for awhile now. I don't really eat fast food other than when we're traveling. The issue was that Tim refused to eat something like that when we "didn't have home court advantage." So looking at my "plans" for last Friday night, I saw nothing but a DVRed Jersey Shore and an all-new Ghost Adventures. The scene was set.

What the Double Down got right: superb marketing scheme, bacon, and a cute little box to put it all in. The DD was smaller than I anticipated, about 1/2-3/4 as big as it shows in the commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwXaZjyAKTI&feature=related
Where it failed me: somewhere between 1987 and now, Col. Sanders decided that 27 herbs and spices were cutting into his bottom line and one mineral (salt) would do just fine. Holy shit. I had a headache until I went to bed and I had already consumed about 30 oz. of water. The fat created a nice slide in my intenstines. I'll leave it at that.

KFC: you were like a case of Natty Lite; you made that Double Down look so so good, but the next day, I realized that I won't be calling on you again.

Pumping Iron

The Iron Barley is not really like any other restaurant in St. Louis. It's in a neighborhood that is devoid of any kind of eating establishment, let alone one that's received numerous accolades. It has a menu that is all over the place and as many specials as established items, and yet it works. The proprieter and the restaurant itself has been featured on both Man v. Food and "Triple D", and yet I heard someone ask about their celebrity status and the Cubs t-shirt clad hostess said "Yeah, I don't know."

This is the second time Tim and I have made the seven-minute drive to Dutchtown to see what kind of chow the Iron Barley was serving up. You can pick up the computer-generated menu, but why? Just wait for the specials. We decided to split a bunch of stuff because we #1: wanted many things and #2 couldn't decide and #3 wanted the same entree. We first split a wedge salad with bleu cheese dressing, complete with a little Jim Bean thrown in for good measure. We then had two appetizers-wait for it-crab cakes with remoulade and potato pancakes with apples. The potato pancakes were a prelude to our cured and smoked (!) pork chops, and oh, so glad we split this as it came with two bone-in chops over home-made saurkraut. The curing is a one-week process and then the chops are smoked for twelve hours or something like that, and the result is a pork chop that needs no accompaniment of a sauce (although the kraut was awesome).

The Iron Barley offers a modest tap beer selection that has a good focus on locally brewed beer that isn't traded publically. This was the first place I had ever had a cask beer (served room temp-good!) and last night I had a porter (oops can't remember the brewery, but I think it was Six Row) and it was first-rate. The beer selection does rotate, and it is one that the owner, with his passion for good beer, takes pride in.

Iron Barley: tasty American chow and who cares if it doesn't go together. I just don't want to know how many calories I consumed.

http://www.ironbarley.com/default.asp

The Fries are Not Infused with Chocolate Truffles

An overall slow weekend allowed for us to have a leisurely dining experience Saturday night. Again, running out of time on some of my Sauce Magazine Groupons, I chose to try Truffles, a Ladue mainstay on Clayton Avenue. We arrived a bit before our reservations, thinking we could get a drink in the bar, but because of a slow evening there (Yom Kipur, perhaps?) we were able to be seated right away.

We were seated right in front of the dining room prep station, which ranged from smelling of fish to nearly flambe-ing my hair during a generous dump of Patron on the bananas foster. We settled in with a couple of drinks; they offer an extensive (and expensive) wine list with about 15 varietals poured by the glass. Since Tim was living it up Irish-style with the Jameson, I went with a glass of Malbec, which was good.

First, Tim informed me that he "wasn't that hungry," then proceeded to ask me if we could get the BBQ shrimp appetizer. Puzzled, but happy to oblige, we ordered, and this app turned out to be pretty good. The BBQ sauce was quite smoky with a deep almost brown color. We also split a salad, which they served already pre-split, which was nice. Nothing fancy, but I needed some greens.

We both ordered a steak for our entree: Tim the filet and I the Wagyu Steak Frites. What I did know: Wagyu is Kobe beef but not Kobe beef since that only comes from Japan. What I didn't know: The "g" is silent. I would have felt more embarrassed if I pronounced frites wrong. Tim's medium filet came out practically mooing and my steak was all over the map, suffering from an uneven cut causing it to have portions that were rare and portions that were well-done. The two steaks tasted great, it just would have been more enjoyable if they were cooked properly. The fries were infused with truffle oil, and I was taken aback when the waitress wanted to know if I would like ketchup. Maybe my FUBAR of saying WAG-YU was screeming [Redneck accent] "I need some Ketchup!"

Truffles is very proud of their logo:


They put it on their butcher paper and on the little towelets in the restroom. I had to explain to Tim what it meant-he thought it was a turtle as a play on chocolate truffles. I explained to him the strange coincidence that mushrooms and chocolates carry the same name and all about the truffle pigs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_hog

I guess he learned something last evening too.

www.trufflesinladue.com

Take It To the Bridge

We were invited to a happy hour(s) on Friday night to a newish bar, Bridge. Bridge is owned by David Bailey, of Chocolate Bar fame, and being a big fan of the Chocolate Bar, I was looking forward to checking it out.

Bridge is located on Locust Ave, next to some strange Bridal shop and a branch of Left Bank Books, in a revitilized area of downtown. Bailey probably was banking on attracting some of the Left Bank patrons- doubtful the bridal shop patrons, but who knows-by making an up-scale lounge, with 60-some beers on tap and at least twice as many bottled. The bar has a shot-gun style set-up with a long bar on one side and really nothing in the rest of the downstairs except a long hallway leading to the restrooms. Most of the seating is upstairs, and we were lucky enough to land a small lounge area with love seats and little tables made out of tree trunks.

Bridge has a limited menu, mostly finger good and meat and cheese plates. The finger food, however, is "kicked up a notch" with four or five kinds of nuts sprinkled with various chiles and savory spices. Although we didn't try any, they also have popcorn with about five different spice combos, including chai. I thought that sounded interesting. We ordered two different cheeses a la carte, one of which was quite odd, and the jalepeno summer sausage, not exciting but good. The cheese boards all include foccacia and dried fruit. Another meat option is smoked duck, which I got to sample from a friend's plate.

This is definitely an intimate place; most of the seating is for two or four and we were kind of the beaten path in the lounge area, which seemed to be only one of two places that held more than four patrons. The service is above average and Tim commented on the background soundtrack, which he enjoyed. This was a nice place to chill on a Friday night.

http://www.thebridgestl.com/

Molly's Follies

My cache of Groupons (www.groupon.com) and Groupon-knockoffs SaucyHotDeal coupons(saucyhotdeals.com) was growing and growing without redemption. Friday night, it was time to cash in and try a new restaurant.

I had been to Molly's before (coincidentally, with Tim long before we were dating), back when they were known mainly as a hang-out for twenty-somethings with make-out cabanas and fire pits. A few years back they bought out their neighbor, Norton's, and took on a major expansion of their patio and menu. The menu is NOLA-centric, as are all of the menus in Soulard, with typical sandwiches such as muffaletta, Po'Boy, etc, and entrees like etoufee and jambalaya.

I was eyeing both the app of fried green tomatoes and bbq shrimp, although more South Carolina than Lousiana, and the oyster po'boy. Tim always prefers peel-n-eats, but he acquiesced and we ordered the FGTs. I thought it was quite tasty, but Tim was "eh." FGTs-the food and the movie-are both an acquired taste, I suppose, but I was pleased with the dish and that I got to try the oyster po'boy as my entree. I was plowing along with the flash-fried oysters, crunchy french bread, and remoulade when BOOM! BAD OYSTER! Now if you've ever had a bad oyster, or should I say if you live in the Midwest and you eat oysters at all, this is just the worst. It's like enjoying your grapes and that bad one comes along and you don't buy grapes for a year. But worse. Tons worse. I was only half way through my sandwich and I wanted to stop then and there. But I soldiered on through two more oysters without incident. But oh, the bad oyster.

Tim ordered the creole burger, a regular burger topped with a crawfish concoction that looked somewhat like etouffe minus the rice. He said it was utterly disappointing. I wasn't interested in eating a burger, and after he said it wasn't great, I took his word for it. He said the burger itself had zero seasoning in it (ooo! Tim becomes an unabashed food critic!) and the creole topping was bland as well.

No more Molly's for us. Broadway Oyster Bar, here we come.

http://www.mollysinsoulard.com/index.php