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​Friday (Feb. 3):

Missouri Organic Association organic food workshops @ St. Louis Union Station Marriott
Catch the last couple of days of this annual conference geared toward urban and suburan farms and gardeners, gardener wannabes and foodies, featuring plenty of workshops ranging from consumer health to vegetable gardening. $95 for single day registration. Friday, Feb. 3 and Saturday, Feb. 4. Check out the full schedule and register on the Missouri Organic Web site.

Mardi Gras Wine & Beer Tasting @ St. Louis City Hall
Try 50 varietels of premiere vintners, beer and whiskey tastings along with four food sampling tickets at this Mardi Gras event. $40 at the door. 5:30 to 9:30 p.m.

Saturday (Feb. 4):

National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day @ Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream
Serendipity serves up breakfast-inspired ice cream treats all day. Show up in pajamas and get a free coffee mug with coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Prizes are awarded at 3 p.m. for "best jammies." 8 a.m.

Sweetie Pay Day @ downtown Mascoutah, IL
Pie-lovers can sample free flaky pastries from participating businesses and then vote on favorites. Participants who try at least half the pies also get a chance to win a Mascoutah prize basket. Free. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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Ian Froeb

Barbacoa tacos (and a carnitas taco in back) at Tienda El Ranchito

​Tienda El Ranchito (2565 North 32nd Street, Fairmont City, Illinois; 618-875-1521) is by no means a secret. This here publication honored it last year as having the "Best Guacamole" -- and it's damn good guacamole.

Still, this Metro East grocery store and restaurant doesn't get as much attention as the taquerias on Cherokee Street or by the airport. It's time to change that.

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Jennifer Silverberg

​- I happened to drive by Fozzie's Sandwich Emporium (1170 South Big Bend Boulevard; 314-932-5414) today at the height of what should have been its rush only to see the restaurant dark, with a sign on the door.

Reason for concern?

Thankfully, no (unless some Fozzie's sandwiches were part of your planned Super Bowl spread). The sign states that Fozzie's is closed through Monday, February 7, for a "family celebration" and will reopen for its regular hours on Tuesday, February 8.

- Meanwhile, I checked back in this afternoon with Luciano's Trattoria (172 Carondelet Plaza, Clayton; 314-863-9969), which has been closed since a pipe burst two weeks ago. Office manager Tiffany Willis told me that the water damage was a bit worse than originally believed.

"We are starting construction next week," she says, adding that the restaurant hopes to reopen in about two weeks.

​So Gut Check just learned (via Eater) that Jack in the Box is making a big to-do about its new bacon milkshake, part of its disturbing new "Marry Bacon" ad campaign. "It's for real," proclaims the blurb on the Jack in the Box website.

No shit it's for real. We've had a bacon milkshake here in St. Louis since last fall. And this one has booze in it.

We speak, of course, of the "Sweet, Sweet Bacon Shake" at Baileys' Range (920 Olive Street; 314-241-8121). The shake is made with salted-caramel ice cream and bourbon, plus an honest-to-God bacon garnish. Which puts it in another class entirely from Jack's version, which -- shockingly! -- apparently uses bacon-flavored syrup instead of actual bacon.

Stay tuned: We'll have much more (hint, hint) on Baileys' Range next week.

Kholood Eid

Foxy's Red Hots no longer foxy or red hot?

​Just yesterday Gut Check included Foxy's Red Hots (11658 Dorsett Road, Maryland Heights; 314-770-2440) in our "Seven Best Hot Dog Stands in St. Louis" list. A commenter let us know that Foxy's had closed and that people were "emptying out" the restaurant.

Indeed, Foxy's phone number has been disconnected. The restaurant's Facebook page remains active, though the two most recent wall posts are from customers sad that it has apparently closed. Based on previous wall posts, it was open and serving customers as late as last month, though there are several comments from the end of last year suggesting that the restaurant had been keeping irregular hours.

Selecting Riverfront Times' Best of St. Louis 2011 was no picnic. Choosing the winner meant several worthy candidates would go unmentioned -- until now. In this Gut Check series, we are chewing our way through notable runners up in a number of categories. To see hundreds more winners and finalists and download the Riverfront Times Best of St. Louis mobile app, visit our Best of St. Louis homepage.

Megan Gilliand

Outside of Woofie's, a perennial local favorite.

​No longer relegated to ballparks alone or punch lines about the contents of their encased innards, hot dogs have never been so hip. So Gut Check was only too happy to fete the 'furter in our countdown of the area's best.

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Mabel Suen

"Medio Pollo," featuring boneless breast, smoked leg and thigh, mango-habanero salsa and pickled beets.

​MEDIAnoche (8135 Maryland Avenue, Clayton; 314-725-0719), a new evening hot spot from Mike Randolph of the Good Pie and Half & Half, made Gut Check's list of the five most anticipated new St. Louis restaurants of 2012. We stopped by recently to meet with Randolph and general manager Mike Marquard and to get a glimpse into its colorful, carefully prepared contemporary Mexican cuisine.

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(c) 2012 Topps

And take your restaurant with you, mang!

​Pujols 5 Westport Grill (342 Westport Plaza, Maryland Heights; 314-439-0595) is no more. With Albert Anaheim-bound, the owners of the restaurant bearing his name and number announced today that, effective immediately, it will be known as the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame Bar & Grill, which is, we're sorry, just a terrible, terrible name.

Never fear: Gut Check and some of our Twitter friends, have come up with some much better names.

If the owners are intent on the Hall of Fame angle, we have two suggestions.

- Combine the Hall of Fame and bar & grill concepts more efficiently: The St. Louis Sports Hall of Flame.

- Or, as nod to both Albert's new team and geographical correctness, former Gut Check contributor Dave Nelson suggests calling it The St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame of Maryland Heights.

Of course, Albert isn't the only beloved Cardinal. Why not embrace one of them? You could name the restaurant...

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​Brenna Haysom is every mother's dream: She had a Harvard degree and a lucrative job in finance -- which she then quit to develop, with no pharmaceutical background whatsoever, an over-the-counter hangover remedy called Blowfish.

Gut Check was fortunate enough to receive a sample of Blowfish, and we risked life, limb and liver to see if it's the morning-after cure (er, the other kind of morning-after cure, we mean) it purports to be.

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​We don't know about you, but Gut Check finds it a tad...concerning...that while we're heating up a bowl of condensed chicken and stars, we're feeding our pups canned cuisine in varieties like "filet mignon," "rotisserie chicken" and "grilled steak and eggs." Yeah, yeah, we love our dogs -- forever friends and all that -- but why the hell does their food look better than our soup?

We believe an honorable mention is in order to one of our readers, who (as many of the rest of you) guessed yesterday's photo was soup. He, however, guessed not only that it was soup, but the type of soup. Congrats, Dave! Your ability to identify fluid foodstuff is simply unCANny. Yesterday's post was Shop 'n Save brand Chunky Sirloin Burger.

After the jump, check out our eighth and final photo. Take your guess, and thanks for playing Gut Chuck's coveted Soup vs. Dog Food Challenge.

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