Jennifer Silverberg

Josh Galliano: Normally of Monarch, he served as chef for last night's Patron Secret Dining Society at Busch Stadium.

​These days, it is not enough to go to a wonderful restaurant and order a meal that's well-prepared and served gracefully. These days, food must be an event.

And so we found ourselves, last night, standing in the visitors' dugout at Busch Stadium, shivering a bit in the unseasonably cool air and drinking "Autumn in Jalisco" -- a champagne glass filled with an intoxicating mix of Patron Silver, the French apple-based apertif Pommeau, lemon juice and sparkling wine. We'd already slurped up our amuse bouche, a little plastic spoon of steamed clams in sangrita. We were about to swap out our champagne glass for a bigger drink, this one featuring Patron Reposado and Patron Citronge, plus ginger ale and passion fruit juice and lemon -- a concoction that would ultimately leave us a bit tongue-tied and giddy in the way that multiple tequila shots often do.

We were among the few, the lucky. We were, last night, the Patron Secret Dining Society.

More >>

Even Gut Check is limited on how much we can eat in one weekend, so we had to plan our attack on the Nosh Pit at LouFest with much precision and thought. Some vendors - Pi, Mangia Mobile, Nora's, Pappy's Smokehouse - had great food, but nothing too different from their usual offerings. Hopefully festival-goers who haven't tried their wares were introduced to some of St. Louis' best food offerings.

Hard as it was, we avoided our beloved favorites and went in search of LouFest-only treats and debuts.

Buck's Good Eats, a food stand that sets up on the corner of Forest Park Parkway and Vandeventer, had the best surprise with their family-size bacon cheese fries.

Robin Wheeler

Buck's Good Eats bacon cheese fries

​
The crinkle-cut fries weren't unusual, but they were fresh and crispy. The cheese? Spicy standard nacho cheese. But the bacon - that was the thrill. They kept a pan of it, also fresh and crispy, on the grill. When crumbled on top of the fries and cheese, it was still warm and crisp.

More >>

Robin Wheeler

Passion fruit tartlet with toasted marshmallows, blackberries and basil

​"It's sort of like being kids, staying up past your bedtime and eating dessert for dinner," chef Steven Caravelli told members of his first sold-out Entre Underground crowd as they finished his four-course, all-dessert menu. And he was right. Workday be damned, the Thursday-night dinner focused on grown-up desserts and beverages.

Robin Wheeler

​As with all of Entre's underground dinners, guests learned the location -- an event space on Boyle -- that morning. The menu gave hints of what was to come.

The night began with a bubble tea amusé, with caviar-sized peach bubbles in a tall shot glass, topped with aerated black tea.

The first course featured thin wedges of pineapple infused with hot sauce, topped with spiced walnuts and thyme, and beside an Asian soup spoon filled with mild, creamy goat cheese, topped with a crisp burnt sugar layer.

More >>

Holly Fann

There was plenty of Schlafly on ice at Taste of Maplewood

​
The Rapture didn't happen, and it's a good thing. When the festivities and food officially started on Saturday at noon, Taste of Maplewood was already bustling. White tents lined both sides of Sutton Boulevard; a few were manned by vendors offering services (Edward Jones, for instance, and Hatch), but food was the focus -- that, and an array of beer and boozy drinks.

Holly Fann

Maya Cafe brought the beef -- brisket and empanadas.

​

More >>

Two iconic symbols of Little House on the Prairie: A sunbonnet (worn by Pudd'nhead Books children's buyer Melissa Posten) and a butter churn.

​If you've ever read any of the Little House on the Prairie books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, even if it was more than a quarter-century ago, some things stick with you. Maybe it's just Gut Check, but for us, most of these things are related to food: pouring molasses on a pan of snow to make candy, butchering a pig and savoring the crisp-roasted tail, apple pie for breakfast, a doughnut jar in the kitchen, vanity cakes at a party, one piece of candy to be savored every Christmas.

Most of all there is butter churning. When Wendy McClure started writing The Wilder Life, her memoir about her travels through what she calls "Laura World," one of the first things she did was purchase a butter churn via eBay, which, as she informed a crowd of about 35 Little House fans Monday night at the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library, is harder than one might think. Particularly if you want a crock-and-dash churn like the kind Laura Ingalls used as a girl.

More >>

Egan O'Keefe

Carl Hazel of the Scottish Arms after winning the Iron Fork chef competition

​ Last Thursday, the RFT hosted Iron Fork, its annual celebration of all things delicious. Relive the evening through Egan O'Keefe's photos.

Kholood Eid

The University City Fire Department responds to a call from Blueberry Hill in the Delmar Loop on March 24, 2011

​The University City Fire Department sent trucks to Blueberry Hill late this morning, blocking traffic for at least two blocks in the Delmar Loop.

But although the restaurant at 6504 Delmar Boulevard was evacuated as a precaution, the situation turns out to have been all smoke and no fire. Literally: The furnace motor was on the fritz, which caused it to blow smoke.

The fire department was summoned to make sure everything was okay. There was no damage. The burgers and darts and fine oldies music will continue as normal.

Whew! Nothing like a little fillip of excitement on a dreary day.

Robin Wheeler

Pick your poison: You got your Chili Cheetos on the left and a Chili Slider Bowl on the right.

​This past weekend Belleville, Illinois, held its 27th chili cook-off. Forty-five vendors from local businesses and nonprofit organizations lined six blocks of downtown and circled the Veteran's Memorial Fountain, each making upward of 300 gallons of homemade chili to feed Bellevillians, who consider the chili cook-off a holiday worthy of extreme tactics.

Tiffany Sinovic of Fairview Heights, Illinois, posted a plea on Facebook Friday afternoon: "Does anyone know where my husband is? He took the day off to watch the kids, who are currently at their grandma's house and he won't answer his phone. I'm thinking he's at the chili cook-off. I know some of you are there too so I would appreciate it if you let me know if you see him."*

Marriage be damned! It's for a good cause -- all money spent on chili was donated to local charities.

More >>

​

A standing ovation from an enthusiastic (though under capacity) audience greeted Anthony Bourdain as the chef turned author and TV host strolled onto the Fox Theatre stage on Friday evening. For the next two hours, Bourdain demonstrated the force of personality that has made him one of the biggest stars in the food world, alternating between comic riffs about his favorite targets (the Food Network, Alice Waters, McDonald's) and impassioned pleas to dive head-first into all the opportunities that food and travel offer.

Much of the material from Bourdain's set (for lack of a better word) was cribbed from his latest book, Medium Raw. This included a lengthy broadside against the current state of food television, especially the dwindling number of programs featuring actual chefs. Even Iron Chef America "blows" because celebrities like "Chris Angel, Mind Douche," judge the work of real chefs.

More >>

Stephen Barber

Entre:Underground chef John Perkins (left) and chef Efrain Cuevas of the Clandestino Chicago Supper Club

​What did you do on your summer vacation?

Whatever it was, it probably wasn't as cool as what Eliza Flanagan and Stephen Barber did. The couple left their home in London, where Flanagan was general manager of Bistrotique, in search of underground American food and the people making it. They've chronicled their travels on the blog Fat Food Taxi.

Planning a road trip in unknown territory around food is only natural for Flanagan, whose mother, Zannie, is a food activist in Australia. And eating? "Well, that is how I choose to live, be it through travel, or at home. I think about lunch and dinner and try and fit everything else around those events. Really," the younger Flanangan writes via e-mail while en route from St. Louis to Austin, Texas.

Flanagan and Barber had planned to drive through the U.S. to Mexico and Central America with a side trip to Cuba, learning the local cooking methods along the way. "We got so excited about [the U.S.] section of the trip that we ditched the Mexican/Central America/Cuba section for another time and began researching only the American leg with a fury," Flanagan writes.

"Our actual route has changed a lot while we have been planning, but it's mostly been dictated by dinners or events that we wanted to experience."

One of the dinners they wanted to experience? An Entre: Underground meal in St. Louis.

More >>