St. Louis News Blog

Here's your guide to having fun this weekend on a budget. Looking for live music? Check out our weekend concert calendar.

Where the Wild Things Are opens Friday. Read J. Hoberman's review.

​Where the Wild Things Are at various theaters (Friday)
While J. Hoberman questioned some of director Spike Jonze's methods in this adaptation of the 400-word children's classic, the buzz about this film is inarguable. It opens Friday at various theaters here and across the country. Read Hoberman's full review before you go see Wild Things.

Paint by Numbers at Mad Art Gallery (Friday)
The Saint Louis City Open Studio & Gallery (314-865-0060 or www.scosag.org) hosts a fundraising event where everyone who wants to be an artist is an artist if only just for the night. Paint by Numbers is held at the Mad Art Gallery (2727 South 12th Street) -- it sounds artsy already! -- and throughout the evening attendees get to take up brushes and contribute colors to the largest paint-by-numbers mural in the state. $3-$5. Alison Sieloff has more details here.

Good Monday to you, St. Louis. Here's a recap of our weekend coverage:

Big Muddy Records Roof Top Party

Photo: Sarah Paradoski

See more photos from Friday night's party.

​On Friday night, local label Big Muddy Records hosted a party on the roof of the Jefferson Underground gallery. The music went on late -- past 2 a.m. -- and featured a slew of local blues and folk acts. See photos here.

Good morning St. Louis. And if you're observing Yom Kippur, Gmar Chatimah Tova.

Here's a recap of our weekend coverage:

Dancing in the Streets

The jolly green stilted giant at the Dancing in the Streets festival, held on Saturday in Grand Center. See 48 more photos from the festival.

Who didn't watch the Emmys? Here's a recap of our weekend coverage:

The Books at the Luminary Center for the Arts

The Books

On Sunday, the Books played a sold-out show at the Luminary Center for the Arts -- "On record, the group makes mostly acoustic, ambient folksy headphone music that relies heavily upon samples discovered on used cassette and video tapes" -- writes Ryan Wasoba. So how did that translate to a live setting? Wasoba has the review here.

This weekend, before you admit defeat to To Catch a Predator reruns, check out these suggestions for having fun on a budget. At least, for two glorious days, you won't have Bossy Bosserson sending you e-mails about the broken copier (because we know how it really broke) or your mother, bless her heart, forwarding time-sucking chain-letters. So, turn off your computer (after you read this, of course) and get out there.

Naughty By Nature's self-titled 1991 album.

​Naughty By Nature at STL Prom at Home Nightclub (Friday)
The opening lines for a press release about this year's STL Prom read: "Did you ever think that you would have the chance to relive Prom?  If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?" Now, if you're thinking "I wouldn't have tried to finish the bottle myself," or "asked my calc. teacher on a date," Friday might be your opportunity to re-live high school's glitziest moment, just the way you wanted. This time, you're more than welcome to drink before, during and after. Home Nightclub hosts this party. And we may have buried the lede by waiting this long to say that Naughty By Nature ("O.P.P." and "Hip Hop Hooray") are going to be performing. The whole shebang is free if you RSVP (vip@homenightclub.com by 5 p.m. today) but $15 at the door.

​FreezerBurn opening reception at Apop Records (Friday)
A fine balance exists between art that is offensive to the senses and art that pushes viewers into expanding their personal tastes. Ben Stegmann's zine FreezerBurn lacks that balance, careening gleefully between crass and creative from page to page. Offering insight on life's many annoyances, fascinatingly detailed drawings and a healthy dash of cantankerous old-man angst, FreezerBurn is a treasure for any fan of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor and its spiritually grumpy contemporaries. Stegmann's zine art and his fine art will adorn the walls of one of Apop Records' auxiliary rooms (2831 Cherokee Street; www.myspace.com/freezerburnzine) Friday through Sunday (August 7 to 9). The FreezerBurn show opens with a free public reception at 7 p.m. Friday, and art created by Jeremy Kannapell, Josh Levi, Nick Kurple, Melissa DeBus and Sheeran Meatte will also be on display for your viewing (dis)pleasure. (More details.)
- Nicole Beckert

Coldplay at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater

Photo: Kenny Williamson

Chris Martin of Coldplay on Friday nights. See more photos and read the concert review.

​Music editor Annie Zaleski ventured out to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Maryland Heights to see Coldplay. Read her review here. We also have photos from the show.

"Art of Food" at Mad Art Gallery

Photo: Stew Smith

Clara Moore from Local Harvest Cafe. See more photos.

​

Ah, the smells of spring! The sweet perfume of lilacs and cherry blossoms. The comforting scent of dirt after a gentle rain. Makes you want to inhale deeply, to store up all these evanescent odors to sustain you through another blazing-hot St. Louis summer, right?

Not so fast.

(And beware those who venture past the jump. It's pretty grisly back there.)

Dear Mr. Clooney,

We here at Gut Check International Headquarters are big fans of your work, dating all the way back to your turn as Jo's boyfriend on The Facts of Life.

When we heard you were filming a new movie in St. Louis, we couldn't contain our excitement. We know people are claiming to have spotted you all over town, but we would like to offer a few restaurants you absolutely must try.

To give you extra incentive, we've made our selections based on your oeuvre.

George Burnett, The Facts of Life



George and Jo had a thing for motorcycles, no? Then you should check out the Triumph Grill, which features vintage motorcyles and food that's...well, maybe you should just have a beer and admire the decor.

Talk about your slow news days. Unreal hasn't heard back from our friends in the movie-screenin' business, but we just had to share this priceless photo and story from our other friends in the newspaper-writin' business:


Yessiree, seems today would be the day to get around to seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the celluloid insta-classic that has Midwestern audiences lining up in droves, allegedly because we're no-account lard asses who enjoy seeing other no-account lard asses make good.

That's cuz today only, St. Louis-area Denny's have been giving away FREE GRAND SLAM BREAKFASTS to all comers. That's right: two eggs any way you want them, two pancakes, two pieces of bacon and two sausages -- a $6 value -- FOR FREE!

It was a busy weekend for the arts in St. Louis. RFT writers and photographers were all over the city, capturing what you may have missed.

An ex-employee of Copia Urban Winery and Market, the Washington Avenue dining spot that was lost in an early-morning blaze last December, faces federal arson charges.

U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway announced the indictment this morning against 26-year-old Gilbert Summers, a "back bar" worker who had been at Copia only a month or two and was a long-rumored suspect.

Hanaway would not talk about Summers' potential motives, or even say whether he had been fired.

Summers faces two counts of arson, each carrying a maximum penalty of up to twenty years, or fines of $250,000. According to Hanaway, investigators believe there were actually three fires: one in the adjacent Vanguard Loft at 1110 Washington Avenue, one in a storage area at Copia and a third in the banquet room/back patio. Walking down the alley, one can still see soot on the walls outside Copia, and the charred mess inside the locked patio.

Sommelier Chris Hoel is bidding adieu to his native St. Louis. An e-mail I got from him this morning says he’s accepted a job at The French Laundry, the preeminent chef Thomas Keller’s Yountville, California restaurant. Hoel is/was one of only two advanced sommeliers (certified by the Court of Masters Sommeliers) in St. Louis. I chronicled his attempt to become a master sommelier in last year’s cover story, “The Wine Master.”

-Kristen Hinman

Today Food & Wine magazine named Gerard Craft, executive chef and co-owner of Benton Park restaurant Niche, one of its ten "Best New Chefs" for 2008. Craft is the first St. Louis-based chef to receive the honor, which began in 1988. Previous winners include such noted chefs as Daniel Boulud (Daniel), Thomas Keller (The French Laundry and Per Se) and Tom Colicchio (the restaurant Craft and co-host of Top Chef).

Craft learned the news a month ago. "I thought one of the other chefs was playing a joke on me," he told me this afternoon on the phone from New York City, where tonight he and the other winners will attend a party in their honor.

The magazine swore Craft to secrecy, which he admits was difficult: "I have a big mouth."

While the news did remain a secret, obsessive observers of the St. Louis dining scene might have suspected that the stars were aligning for Craft. Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin dined at Niche a few months ago and mentioned the restaurant in the "Where I'm Coming From" sidebar to her editor's letter in the magazine's February 2008 issue.

On the eve of the announcement, Food & Wine's Web site offered clues to the identities of this year's "Best New Chefs." One of the clues set alarm bells ringing in anyone familiar with Craft's career before he moved to St. Louis:

Two of this year's BNCs have cooked—and might still be cooking—in an unexpected city on the west coast (okay, Salt Lake City).

(Craft worked at the Salt Lake City restaurants Bistro Toujours and the Metropolitan.)

When I spoke with Craft this afternoon, he was exceptionally modest, saying that his staff at Niche "were the ones who got [the award] for me."

"I consider myself to be extremely lucky," he says. "There are so many [chefs] better than me. They all deserve to be recognized. Hopefully, this will give a boost to the St. Louis dining scene."

Josh Galliano, chef de cuisine at An American Place, agrees: "It's awesome for St. Louis."

Galliano believes the award will let Craft and Niche represent St. Louis' contemporary dining scene to the rest of the nation. "People can look beyond the St. Louis specialties," he says. "There’s nothing bad about that heritage, but we're in a new [restaurant] industry."

Among Craft's fellow winners are several chefs who have already received national attention. New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni recently ranked Tim Cushman's Boston restaurant O Ya and Jeremy Fox's Napa Valley restaurant (and yoga studio) Ubuntu #1 and #2 in a countdown of the 10 best new restaurants in America outside of New York City.

Michael Psilakis, chef of the New York City restaurants Anthos, Kefi and Mia Dona, was named "Chef of the Year" for 2007 by Esquire magazine's well-known food critic John Mariani.

The other winners are Jim Burke of James in Philadephia, Koren Grieveson of Avec in Chicago, Ethan Stowell of Union in Seattle, Giuseppe Tentori of Boka in Chicago, Eric Warnstedt of Hen of the Wood in Waterbury (Vermont) and Sue Zemanick of Gautreau’s in New Orleans.

Craft and the other chefs will appear on the cover of Food & Wine's July 2008 issue. If tradition holds, there will be a profile of and a recipe from each chef in the issue. Coincidentally, Mathew Rice, pastry chef at Niche and the adjoining Veruca bakeshop, will have a recipe featured in the magazine's June issue.

Correction: The original post incorrectly identified Mathew Rice as the owner of Veruca. Our apologies.

-Ian Froeb

All this week Gut Check is celebrating the end of 2007 with the first annual Year-End Bonanza! I'm counting down my ten favorite dishes of the year -- and the absolute, no holds barred worst. We're revealing the nominees for the inaugural Gut Check Thing of the Year award. And of course there's plenty of the usual Gut Check goodness.

If you've never visited the RFT food blog -- or you haven't stopped by in a while -- now is the perfect time to get caught up.

-Ian Froeb

This week Gut Check doffed its cap to the winners of the Best of St. Louis 2007. (Even though our love for Terrene caused some confusion.)

In addition, we wondered what flavors would be appropriate for St. Louis Rams soda.

We envied Portland, Oregon.

We shared a second kitchen nightmare with Gordon Ramsey.

We found another reason to love tacos al pastor.

There's much more at Gut Check. It's low-sodium chicken soup for the soul.

-Ian Froeb

Under the impression that the restaurant offered a limited food menu as late as 1 a.m., we awarded Terrene "Best Late Night Dining" in this year's edition of Best of St. Louis. In fact, Terrene's kitchen is open no later than 11 p.m. We still love 'em, though -- and we stand by our "Best Outdoor Dining" pick!

-Tom Finkel

This weekend you can attend the Taste of St. Louis downtown. At Gut Check you can get a taste of St. Louis every single day. What were this week's flavors?

We told Ron Popeil where he could stick his rotisserie chicken.

We celebrated Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

We declared our love for schnitzel. And falafel. And beer.

Sick pork in China induced one of our occasional paranoid episodes.

Gut Check. The other white meat.

Who among us has not harbored the occasional romantic and/or sexual yearning for a teacher? Teachers have power. Power is sexy. More to the point, some teachers are attractive -- hot, even. They didn't include that red-pepper rating on RateMyProfessors.com for nothing.

This is not to say that the recent Hardee's and Carl's Jr. TV ad for the Patty Melt Thickburger could be mistaken for a tribute to the noble profession of teaching. In the ad, a group of teenage boys, inspired by the sight of their hot blond teacher's backside, begin rapping a parody of Sir Mix-A-Lot's immortal "Baby Got Back":

"In anatomy class, you got a butt-minus...I like flat buns, flaaat buns!"

Overcome, the teacher begins to dance and writhe atop her desk, whereupon men age 18 to 34, the ad's target audience, presumably say to themselves, "Gee, I could really go for a patty melt right now."

"I can't see how anyone could look at it not see a parody of a 'Hot for Teacher' video from the Eighties," says Hardee's Jeff Mochal, PR manager for the St. Louis-based company.

Maybe members of the Tennessee Education Association aren't fans of Van Halen, either. Soon after a few of them caught the ad during a break in an airing of a Tennessee Titans game, they began to protest and demand that the ad be taken off the air.

"The ad makes the classroom look like a joke," says Cheryl Umberger, a communications consultant at the TEA. "The teacher is not taken seriously, nor are the students. Teachers do not get up on their desks the way the supposed teacher does in the ad. The way she's portrayed makes it difficult, especially for young teachers, to establish the appropriate discipline and class behavior with high school students."

Mochal says the ad was never meant to cause any trouble. "I Like Flat Buns," sans teacher, first aired as a radio spot four months ago and proved so popular -- Mochal actually fielded requests for a ringtone -- that the company decided to create the TV version, which hit the airwaves August 28. Really, what better way is there to harness the back-to-school spirit and illustrate flat buns at the same time? The ads were scheduled to air only after 10 p.m., by which time most earnest young scholars should be finishing up their homework and heading off to bed.

Nonetheless, the controversy sizzled. More groups, most notably the American Family Association, began posting the YouTube clip on their Web sites and urging their members to write to their local TV stations and CKE Restaurants, Hardee's and Carl's Jr.'s California-based parent company, in protest. The media picked up the story, and last week impressionable schoolchildren could watch it on Good Morning America.

"The media showed it ten times more than we did," says Mochal. "It must have increased the ad value 100 times."

It is hard to say at this point, however, how much it boosted patty-melt sales.

CKE was puzzled by the violence of the reaction, Mochal says, but as the ad was not meant to shock or offend (unlike the one with Paris Hilton), the company retooled the commercial and cut out the teacher.

Alas, St. Louis television viewers will be spared those poorly rapping white kids. The ad went off the air last weekend. Hardee's has already moved on to its next promotion, the Hawaiian Chicken Sandwich. Sensitive Hawaiians take note: the new commercials debut October 1.

-Aimee Levitt

Sure you read STLog, but you're still hungry for more. That's why you should visit Gut Check, the RFT food blog. This week...

We celebrated our favorite local food blogs.

We wondered why everyone was leaving the restaurant so early.

Crime!

A special guest star warned us about the dangers of blowfish.

There's so much more at Gut Check. It's better than pudding.

-Ian Froeb

My review of the Indian restaurant Ruchi is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcolm risks popcorn lung with MixMatch Gourmet Cheese & Caramel Popcorn, while Kristie puts the lotion in the basket enjoys Effen Black Cherry Vodka.

-Ian Froeb

My review of Bissinger's: A Chocolate Experience is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcolm dreams of anchovies in sauce gribiche, while Kristie enjoys a glass of Penfolds Thomas Hyland Shiraz at a curiously quiet mall.

-Ian Froeb

For more on food and restaurants in St. Louis, visit Gut Check.

Gut Check had an up-and-down week.

- We mourned the passing of another well-known St. Louis restaurant.

- We were intrigued by the "double-decker" pizza -- another blog-exclusive review.

- Salmon? Or deadly puffer fish?

- We mourned the passing of someone who has nothing to do with St. Louis or food.

- We celebrated the mysteries of Thai cuisine.

Gut Check. Pull up a chair and dig in.

-Ian Froeb

My review of Oceano Bistro is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcom tries to keep down smoked catfish, while Kristie wonders whether hot sake will soothe the pain of pulled wisdom teeth.

-Ian Froeb

For news, reviews and more, visit Gut Check, the RFT food blog.

My review of the Original SoupMan is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcom tries to keep down Promise Activ Peach SuperShots (and his cholesterol), while Kristie sips Glen Ellen merlot and tries to keep straight who's who at the barricade.

-Ian Froeb

For food news, reviews and more, visit Gut Check, the RFT food blog.

Gut Check put on a button-down shirt and a nice pair of pants and pretended to be a grown-up this week.

- We were able to question a member of President Bush's cabinet.

- No, really: We were able to question a member of President Bush's cabinet.

- We offered the first of many Gut Check-exclusive restaurant reviews.

- We learned about a special event to help the owner of one of our favorite spots.

There's much more at Gut Check. Tastes great. More filling.

-Ian Froeb

My review of Bacana Brasil is now available online. Click here to read.

And, uh, that's it for this week. Drink of the Week and Keep It Down have the week off. We'll be back with a full slate next week.

-Ian Froeb

For even more on St. Louis food and drink, visit Gut Check.

Gut Check was feeling a tad onery this week.

We demanded that you buy tomatoes.

We asserted our right not to love everything we eat.

We worried that our favorite strip mall might meet the wrecking ball.

We chuckled a bit when we learned what, exactly, Rocco DiSpirito has been up to lately.

There's more at Gut Check. Yum.

-Ian Froeb

My review of the Nicaraguan restaurant Fritanga is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcom tries to keep down Oscar Meyer Lunchables while Kristie sweats over the Infierno at El Scorcho.

-Ian Froeb

For more on food and drink in St. Louis, visit Gut Check, the RFT food blog.

Gut Check swaggered back into town after a long weekend in Dallas. What did we dish up?

- We sent our army of land crabs after you, the reluctant restaurant reviewer.

- We found a damn good cheesesteak.

- Media nonsense about food in China annoyed us -- again.

There's even more at Gut Check. I can't think of a punchy slogan this week. Just go read.

-Ian Froeb

My review of La Gra Italian Tapas is now available online. Click here to read.

Also in this week's issue: Malcolm touches upon a subject close to Gut Check's heart and tries to keep down a cardboard shipping box, while Kristie reflects upon summer and a Lakeside Lemonade.

-Ian Froeb

Sate your appetite at Gut Check, the RFT food blog.