ghostrider

How many people read books any more? When was the last time that a book not dealing with a low-carb diet had any effect on widespread behavior? I wouldn't expect a book like Schlosser's to have an immediate impact on our national eating habits. Nonetheless the hopeful idealist in me concurs with DonRocks above.

I meant drive across the street. Pity they don't seem to have a website - Google leads me right back to this thread - I'd like a gander at their menu. Guess I'll just have to drive over.

Why, as I view this thread, are all 4 of the Gooooooooogle links on the banner for peanut butter????? That thing is sick! Just sick!

Up in Maine, when the kids say "That was decent," it's the highest possible praise. Dry New England understatement, gotta love it.

He's going off topic again, somebody stop him..... Too late! David Caruso on CSI Miami couple weeks back, explaining why the villain did what he did: "Nature threw him a curve ball, so he had to switch to a hurry-up offense." OK, nothing to do with food, but it is TV phraseology, & it's so tortured that I just had to share it.

Thanks so much for the Maresca's suggestion & link. Takes me right back to my childhood. My dad used to drive us 50 miles from St. Louis county out to the small town where he grew up to get meats & bacon from his favorite German butcher. The butcher made a beef concoction called "raw hack." The name pretty much tells you what it was - raw beef hacked up with a good deal of onion. A bit like steak tartare but designed to keep for a week or so. Only place I've ever encountered the stuff. I should probably start a thread to see if anyone else has ever heard of it. Thanks for awakening those memories. I will have to visit Maresca's.

Great thread. Will add only that I'm partial to peanut oil for same reasons grapeseed oil was suggested above. I've never tried the grapeseed stuff though.

Is every town going to have a Café Café? There's one in Rutherford too. I haven't been there either.

Us folks interested in Saffron aren't significant? That's OK, I'll get over it.

That's a great little block. It's so nice to be able to fill up the car with Whole Foods goods & then stroll across the street for dinner. Does Lalezar have the same deal with parking in the Art Museum lot after hours that the other restaurants there do? Are you getting tired of all these questions?

We are always up for Indian food, so if there's interest in dinner at Saffron, we're likely participants.

Call me perverse, but I believe that really good fries need no condimental toppings or dippings. Other fries can do with a spot of ketchup or malt vinegar. Here's an exception: at a county fair in Maine earlier this fall, I got a plate of really good cooked-to-order fries to accompany a plate of REALLY REALLY good fried shrimp. I had a nice glob of the shrimp vendor's horseradishy cocktail sauce on side of the shrimp plate for dipping. It worked pretty well with the fries too.

Fascinating, I did not know that! I don't get back to St Louis all that often. My mom loves the original chain & always took us there once or twice during a visit. I thought their sandwiches were decent & reasonably priced - that seems to have changed a bit from posts above. As with most things, seems that once you try to standardize it & then expand it, the quality of the experience suffers. ← My wife is from St. Louis and the last time we were there we went to the St. Louis Bread Company. I don't remember exactly what we ate -- some type of paninis -- but they showed up on the Panera menu about a year later. Maybe they've hung onto them to use as an incubator for new menu items without using the Panera name. The food there was much better and fresher than Panera. It's been a couple years since I've been there (oh how I miss Ted Drewe's!!) so it's possible that things have changed. ← The one we went to, somewhere near Webster Groves, had a corner with comfy chairs & tables that was basically a little Internet cafe within the larger premises. I guess Panera isn't rolling out that concept nationwide. It sure pulled in the customers in that part of suburban StL though.

Fascinating, I did not know that! I don't get back to St Louis all that often. My mom loves the original chain & always took us there once or twice during a visit. I thought their sandwiches were decent & reasonably priced - that seems to have changed a bit from posts above. As with most things, seems that once you try to standardize it & then expand it, the quality of the experience suffers. Glad your customers are sticking with you!

I'd hoped they didn't hold the salt from everything! They oughta be able to char the steaks consistently though.

Thanks! I haven't tried preparing it with guanciale myself. In Italy I had it both ways, as I have over here. The rendition I had that I liked best was a pancetta version so that's where my focus has been. I've never been able to find Bel Paese in the US either that tastes the way it does in Italy. That was another revelation. Ah well, the search for pancetta is part of the fun, I've spotted a couple of new (to me) places recently....

Never been. There's a local chain in St. Louis called St. Louis Bread Co., which seems to be the same concept, probably better executed from the sound of the posts above. I don't know if they pre-date Panera but they were in business 3-4 years before I'd ever seen a Panera. I hope StL Bread survives, that Home Depot/Walmart biz plan thing just grates in my craw.

I'll confess to having borrowed "craptacular" from Bart Simpson, but only for truly special occasions.

Well, I have to say that my filet had a tastily charred exterior & a subtle sprinkle of herbs. Maybe I got lucky with its placement on the grill. Or maybe the trick is to order everything with no salt. We didn't order what I now think is their best side, which is the spinach with white wine & garlic. I hadn't tried the "creamed" or the beans before. I'll stick with the garlicky stuff. I usually don't have dessert & wish I hadn't, I ate too much. The "apple crisp", which was really apple sandwiched between sheets of crispy pastry, wasn't overly sweet, & was made with a healthy dose of cinnamon, which is the way I like it. I imagine I'll get back there because they're so close, & they stay open later than most places in town, which is sometimes handy. And I do like those pork chops.

Birthday: err, merry. Meat: Very good. Service: Interesting. Company: Outstanding. I wound up consuming too much grease, which accompanied the Lyonnaise potatoes, as someone mentioned above, & paid the price with some indigestion after we got home. But they were good. I couldn't believe that no one brought a camera, I'd thought that that was mandatory at all eGullet occasions. (I don't have a digital camera yet, that's my excuse & I'm sticking to it.) Really nice to meet y'all!

Don't worry Ghostrider, we'll get you loaded tonight. I'm bringing my 4-beer funnel and a case of Piels ← Make that a case of Newcastle Brown and I'll be SERIOUSLY tempted!

Thanks for that succinct description of good pancetta. Very helpful. It also confirms my suspicion that the worst pancetta I've ever bought came from one of New York's most reputable butchers. I spent a long time thinking "Well, this pancetta came from ------ and they're one of the best, therefore some varieties are just supposed to be this grey & taste this funky." My instincts knew better, I should, as always, have listened to them. On with the quest.

You mean the stack of boxes of Ferrero Mon Cheri hazelnut chocolates that accumulates every time my local ShopRite puts them on a 30% off sale? Impossible to hide, it's way too tall.

I have a friend who is severely allergic to alcohol, he's very painstaking in questioning servers about what's in his food. He claims to get hives & if he gets too much, have difficulty breathing. I don't think this is anywhere near as common as nut allergies, but still.... I quit drinking in 1979, but still eat coq au vin and the like. Going to parties & bars & dining out with friends who drink doesn't bother me a whit. Sometimes I come in handy since no one needs to decide who the designated driver will be when I'm around.

No I don't. Oddly, I'd stopped salting the pasta water a couple years prior to my heart attack. I'd seen a cooking show that maintained it didn't help the water maintain its temperature when you added the pasta, & I tried not using the salt & found that the flavor didn't seem to suffer, to my taste - it was different but still good - so I just took a "why bother" attitude at that point. These days the only things to which I add salt are brown rice & oatmeal. The flavors just don't work without a pinch. Everything else - meats, veggies - it's over. No more salt. That was actually the easy part, the hard part is the notion of no more soy sauce & having a whole range of Chinese & Thai etc. dishes out of reach. Still, I enjoy some pancetta once in a while & dine out with a bit of attention to what I order. And life goes on, that's the big thing.