St. Louis Food Blog

Jennifer Silverberg

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I don't eat scallops. Even though I've convinced myself that my allergy is psychosomatic, the collateral damage of a childhood afternoon spent at the swimming pool with a box of Keebler E.L. Fudge cookies -- don't ask -- even though I've eaten a few mussels without any adverse effect, I'm not willing to risk it with the food that put me off mollusks for a quarter of a century. I would eat a raw oyster first. Hell, I'd eat a raw clam. But I don't eat scallops. (Or E.L. Fudge cookies.)

Or so I told myself until I visited Fond in Edwardsville, where on a recent Saturday evening the third dish on chef Amy Zupanci's five-course tasting menu was a single plump scallop, its top seared chestnut brown, nestled among thickly sliced carrot.