Saturday-morning garage-sale hunting is always great fun. Saturday-morning garage-sale hunting followed by a pig roast is awesome.
Schalfly Pork Shop 2012 | Image via Schalfly
On Saturday, May 25, Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust Street; 314-241-2337) will host its annual Pork Shop: A Dowtown BBQ and Garage Sale. Also, there will be beer. A roast pig, beer and a multitude of obsolete VHS tapes and grandma's costume jewelry.
Get excited.
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Pedal on down to St. Jacob, Illinois, on Sunday, May 19, for the 28th annual St. Jacob Strawberry Festival and Berry Bicycle Ride. 
The Berry Bicycle Ride will kick off the event at 7:30 a.m. at St. Jacob Township Park. There are four trail routes for riders with different skill levels (super short, short, medium and long) on mostly flat terrain. The ride will end at the strawberry festival with strawberry shortcake for all the riders. Wouldn't want all those calories you burned to go to waste!
The Strawberry Festival and Berry Bicycle Ride is run by the United Church of Christ and features all manner of strawberry treats prepared by members of the church. It starts at 10 a.m. and the fun continues until 4 p.m.
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Maplewood is a hip, happenin' and, of course, delicious neighborhood full of unique restaurants and shops. The town is celebrating all things yummy this Saturday, May 18 at the 5th annual Taste of Maplewood Street Festival.
Maplewood Chamber of Commerce
One block of Sutton Boulevard between Manchester and Hazel will cease to be a road and instead become a foodie paradise, with vendors offering samples and live music and entertainment. Gut Check spoke to Nick Bettger at the Maplewood Chamber of Commerce who gave us more details about the event.
Check out what restaurants are going to be there after the jump!
See Also:
- Riding Out the Rapture at Taste of Maplewood
- Sideshow: Taste of Maplewood 2009
University City is packed with topnotch restaurants, and you can get a sampling from some of the best at Taste of U. City this Thursday, May 9.
The logo for Taste of U. City 2013.
Hosted by the chamber of commerce at the Heman Park Community Center (Vernon and Pennsylvania avenues, University City; 314-505-8617), Taste of U. City celebrates the food of the eclectic neighborhood with food and drink samples from more than 30 area restaurants and specialty food stores. Proceeds from the event, co-sponsored by Fifth/Third Bank will support Operation Food Search, which helps fill food pantries across greater St. Louis.
Find out if your favorite U. City restaurant will be there after the jump!
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The mighty mud bug is the star of this month's food festival at Broadway Oyster Bar (736 South Broadway; 314-621-8811), and chef Brad Hagen is pulling out all the stops (and all the crawfish) to make this a feast worthy of the Big Easy. 
Gut Check spoke with Broadway Oyster Bar's Mary Moramarco to get you all the deets about the upcoming crawdad jamboree.
More »Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year, was celebrated this past weekend at Wat Phrasriratanaram (890 Lindsay Lane, Florissant; 314-839-3115).
The only Buddist temple in the St. Louis area, Wat Phrasriratanaram is home to a half-dozen monks. For Songkran, local Thai restaurants and families prepare dishes to raise money for the temple. This event is free and open to the public. There is also music, meditation and traditional dancing.
Pad Thai. (You know you want some.)
Crystal Rolfe
Vin de Set (2017 Chouteau Avenue; 314-241-8989) hosts its fifth annual Oysters Five Ways Festival at 4 p.m. on Sunday, March 10. The restaurant has flown in 1,400 Penn Cove Pacific oysters, and head chef and general manager Ivy Magruder tells Gut Check he and his kitchen staff are armed and ready to shuck the night away. 
Image via
Magruder says Vin de Set purposely bought only enough oysters to serve during Sunday's festival, so get 'em then or not at all.
"We got 'em in our back door [Thursday]," Magruder says. "They were in the water on Monday; it just doesn't get any cooler than that."
See Also:
- The Ten Best Food Events in St. Louis This Weekend: March 8 to 10
Gut Check is always hungry for more restaurant news. Feed us your tips.
Gut Check has been pining for fish fry season, which begins this weekend, since at least last Easter. (Maybe longer -- we're of the disposition to start getting nostalgic for things even before they're over.) But we're going to have to postpone our first expedition to the Catholic school cafeterias and church basements of this fair city. That's because we've been waiting an entire year for the Schlafly Tap Room's (2100 Locust Street; 314-241-2337) annual Cod and Cask Festival (running this year 5 p.m. to midnight on Friday and 11 a.m. to midnight on Saturday) -- and our one chance this year to devour a plate of plokkfiskur.
image via A pan of the Schlafly Tap Room's plokkfiskur.
What is plokkfiskur, you ask?
Why, it's the food of the gods. The Scandinavian gods, that is. In Valhalla, you can bet that Odin and Freya and Loki and all the rest get to eat this stuff every day.
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St. Louis PrideFest is the largest event of its kind in the Midwest. It draws more than 80,000 revelers each year and in 2011 was named "Best Festival" by the RFT. This year's festival is slated to kick-off on Saturday, June 23, at noon in Tower Grove Park (4256 Magnolia Avenue; 314-771-2679). The parade begins at noon on Sunday, June 24, at Grand and Utah Avenues and will travel north on South Grand, ending at the entrance to the main gate of the park. A melange of live music, dancing, giveaways and artisan vendors make for a fun-filled festival, but the food and drink selection at Pride is also a huge draw - and this year's offerings are the most impressive yet.
Kristin Smith The "Tommy" sausage at food truck Sausage Syndicate, one of many vendors participating in PrideFest.
Tomorrow, Saturday, May 5, is Cinco de 
Jennifer Silverberg The tacos al pastor at Milagro Modern Mexican. Drinko Mayo. Though at best a regional holiday in Mexico, we here in the U.S. of A. can't get enough reveling on Sabado 5 de Mayo. Don't get us wrong, we at Gut Check also enjoy indulging in margaritas on the rocks and Mexican food, and thus have compiled a list of the best places in St. Louis to get soused in cerveza at on Cinco de Mayo.
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