St. Louis Food Blog

Do I really need to say anything? I should add that while the waitresses at the restaurant from which this originates do dress provocatively, they don't dress as provocatively as this coaster might suggest.

Ian Froeb

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Remember the hand-turkey? That staple of the November elementary school curriculum? You trace the outline of your hand onto a piece of paper, color it in with crayon or paint, depending on your level of sophistication, and voila! Another piece of crappy artwork for your parents to hang on the refrigerator!

Megan, the mastermind behind the website Not Martha, has devised a culinary version of the hand-turkey: The meat hand. Complete with nails and bones. It would make a lovely addition to any Thanksgiving dinner table. (Megan claims it's delicious. It is topped with cheese, so she may be right.)

www.notmartha.org

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It's Friday. It's the Friday before a major holiday. If your office has any kind of holiday spirit whatsoever, there will be lots of sugar nearby. Ergo, you are going to slack.

cheeseorfont.mogrify.org

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Via Eater comes this trailer for a new Travel Channel animated series called Anthony Bourdain's Alternate Universe. Quoting Eater: "...assuming this isn't a hoax, it's only going to be online, as a six-part animated web series to debut sometime in 2010."

Via Serious Eats comes this report from the Texas state fair, where deep-fried butter sends a young boy into a dance of joy. Eat enough of that deep-fried butter, kid, and you'll never have to worry about being carried away by a balloon!

The video takes a creepy turn when the reporter asks a woman who's invited to the party in her mouth.

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Posted without comment.

​Recently unearthed footage from the pilot of The French Chef from WGBH in Boston, featuring political reporter -- and current Riverfront Times managing editor -- Ellis Conklin in the role that Julia Child would make famous. Test audiences reacted poorly to the then-127-year-old Conklin, who refused to pick up any of the food he dropped while cooking and continually berated the audience for the lack of good chicken teriyaki options.

​ ​Bacon. Is there anything it can't do? Well, yes, in fact. Lost in the current craze for all things bacon is the fact that there are many, many things so unrelentingly awful that even delicious, glorious bacon can't improve them.

For your convenience, Gut Check offers a countdown of the Top Ten Things So Horrible That Even Bacon Can't Improve Them.

Brilliant viral marketing campaign? Surreal drug trip? Allegory on racial integration? All of the above? We report (via Ad Freak), you decide:



The second episode, after the jump...

Via Huffington Post, where the author does a nice job of pointing out how wrong this is, a dietitian on NBC's Today recommends how to eat "healthy" at fast-food restaurants while on the road. My favorite part? When Matt Lauer asks, "What is that?"

Today is Martha Stewart's birthday. What do you get the kitchen and style maven who already has everything, including a felony conviction? Gut Check dispatched its crack research staff -- not to be confused with our crack-research staff* -- to find the ten most useless kitchen tools in this or any other universe. Enjoy your gift basket, Martha!

Peter Duhon, Wikimedia Commons

​*Yes, I realize I'm the only person in the world who finds hyphenation-based humor funny.

A loyal reader -- OK, my wife -- showed me this incredible video in which the variations of Southern barbecue are set to (catchy!) music. Aside from the horrid-sounding sauce from Alabama, it's a keeper.

Those of us who have visited states such as Texas or California know the joy and wonder that is a taco truck. To the uninitiated, these are nomadic vehicles that roam around selling delicious Mexican food -- such as tacos. (Other members of the same portable-food family include the falafel truck, a Korean BBQ taco truck and a cupcake van.)
Today, I was slightly perturbed (but also intrigued) to find out that the Taco Bell Truck is taking up residency in St. Louis for All-Star week. The premise is simple, as its Twitter bio says: "We drive around the country, handing out free Taco Bell tacos to people. What's not to like?" Well, there's the grossness factor of its food, mainly (and I speak of this as someone who devoured many, many tacos when my metabolism was a lot higher -- i.e., high school, when there was nothing to do after 9 p.m. besides hit the Border).

Here at Gut Check, we strongly advocate the enjoyment of food. But we find there's a lot of pleasure to be had in looking at really gross food and going, Ewwww. Secretly, we're all just third-graders at heart. (I mean, just look at Throwback of the House.)

And so I was really, really happy to discover the blog the museum of awful food. Zombie Chicken, Braised Puppy with Assorted Greens, Fried Guinea Pig. With recipes! And some pictures! And amazing, STL Today-worthy comments on the post about fried guinea pig!

Alas, the museum of awful food lasted a scant seven entries back in the spring of 2006.

RIP.

Though Gut Check has a general distaste for competitive eating, the breathless commentary on this YouTube clip is too entertaining to ignore.

Peter Dutton, Wikimedia Commons

File this one under "Hunh?" Pop megastar Justin Timberlake is releasing his own tequila. It's called 901, after the area code of his hometown, Memphis. OK. No big deal. But check out this detail from the People article:

In development for more than two years, the liquor will hit store shelves in early May in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and St. Louis.

One of these things is not like the other.

You can bet that Gut Check will be giving 901 a try. In the meantime, enjoy my favorite JT tune:

OK. We here at Gut Check International Headquarters are as guilty as anyone of obsessing over George Clooney's presence in our fair city. However, today brings news that makes even us blanch. PETA wants to sell tofu that tastes like the actor.

Yeah. You read that right.

From the always reputable E! (via Eater) comes news that the animal-rights organization has somehow acquired a towel soaked with Clooney's sweat and wants to use said sweat to flavor tofu.

"The technology actually exists to take your perspiration and make it into George Clooney-flavored tofu (CloFu)," writes PETA. "Of course, your fans would swoon at the idea of eating CloFu."

The group even quotes a researcher, who says, "If you use a sample of human perspiration, it is 'no different than making artificial chicken flavor for instant gravy.' "

Once again, I regret that the RFT has retired Keep It Down.

Presenting, via This is Why You're Fat...

The Meta-Pizza!

The best we can say is: At least it's not Provel.

Wikimedia Commons

Stunning news from the struggling publishing industry, via Eat Me Daily: Jason Day and Aaron Chronister, who run the Web site BBQ Addicts, signed a six-figure book deal with Scribner. Day and Chronister were responsible for popularizing -- though not necessarily creating -- the Bacon Explosion, a gut-busting dish that involves rolling sausage and cooked bacon inside a lattice of raw bacon. Even more remarkably, according to the Pitch, our sister paper in Kansas City, the cookbook won't even feature the dish that made them an Internet sensation. Owen Morris nabbed this quote from Chronister:

"Everybody knows that one. We want to share our own unique recipes... we're still putting them together and deciding what to do."

But I don't think anyone has summed this up better than another Pitch writer, Peter Rugg:

Again, that's more money than most of us make in years of work to make America's asses even fatter.

www.combos.com

Combos, the pretzel-and-processed-cheese food that comprised an unhealthy proportion of my adolescent snacking, has released a new study revealing the 50 "manliest" cities in the country, and St. Louis ranks sixth! It trails only (in order) Nashville, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, Cincinnati and Denver.

How did Combos come to this conclusion? The study was commissioned from the same dude who does those "Best Places to Live" studies.

[The Study] ranks 50 major metropolitan areas using criteria such as number of professional major league sports teams, popularity of tools and hardware and frequency of monster truck rallies. Cities also lose ranking points for emasculating characteristics like the abundance of home furnishing stores, high minivan sales and subscription rates to beauty magazines.

Also:

Each metro area received a manliness rating between 0 and 100 based on how well it performed in each of the study's manly categories. Factors used to determine the manliest city rankings included the number of U.S.-made cars driven in the city, number of sports bars and BBQ restaurants, number of home improvement and hardware stores as well as manly salty snacks consumption.

The study singled out St. Louis for special praise:

If you're in the Midwest and looking to enjoy a game with a cold beverage, look no farther than St. Louis, which has the highest concentration of sports bars in the country.

What were the least manliest cities? Chicago -- take that, Cubs fans! -- Portland, San Fran, L.A. and New York.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go eat some pizza-flavored Combos and then wrestle a wild boar.

Via Eater, Funny or Die takes on those annoying Pizza Hut ads where diners/cooks are shocked to learn that they are eating Pizza Hut pasta. (I guess the captions are NSFW, if you worry about NSFW captions.)

Wikimedia Commons

"Tables? Your coffee shop has tables?"

When I was in grad school in Iowa City, there was this coffee shop with rude signage. Sure, the place seemed cozy, with its local art and overstuffed couches, but those accoutrements belied a dark truth: This coffee shop did not like you. It could, perhaps, tolerate you in small doses, but everywhere there were signs (literally): DO NOT OCCUPY A TABLE FOR MORE THAN ONE HOUR.

Doing research for your thesis? Preparing for the bar exam? Grading students' papers? Those things all take two or three hours, sure, but ha ha, sucks for you! Because in 60 minutes, the staff will start ahem-ing and giving you The Eye.

I avoided this coffee shop. I went out of my way to avoid it. I patronized every other coffee shop except for it, because no other coffee shop tried to criminalize leisurely sipping. I tell people about it, that this coffee shop made you get up even when there wasn't a crowd, and of course everyone thinks that's ridiculous and rude.

But now, you no longer have to go to Iowa City to be judged in a coffee shop! A local coffee joint will even do you one better: Single customers can only sit at the tiniest tables. Any table bigger than, say, a breadbox bears a sign indicating that THIS TABLE IS FOR TWO OR MORE ONLY. There's a please and thank you thrown in, and some seemingly arbitrary exclamation points, and the Orwellian declaration that this is "best for ALL customers."

From our sister paper Miami New Times comes this footage from the South Beach Food & Wine Festival. NSFW -- or, really, anywhere. You have been warned.

www.urlesque.com

Ian Froeb

Within seven minutes of sitting down, Slam No. 1 arrives.

 I think of the many firsts in my life. This ranks up there. The syrup mingling with the sunflower yellow yolks on the plate, a dance of sweet and savory, emulsified into a singular taste sensation. I slosh the sausage through the yolky-syrupy mix. The bacon is crisp and oily. The pancakes are buttery and ethereal. I take a sip of grapefruit juice and sigh.

He claims to have consumed 4,100 calories when all was said and done -- though he admits that he didn't finish everything. Still, that's quite a caloric intake, equivalent to 1.57 Baskin Robbins Chocolate Oreo Shakes.

Want a hot guy with your free burrito? Get in line.

It may have escaped your notice amid all the excitement over the Lincoln and Darwin Bicentennials, but Valentine's Day is nigh. (Or, as we like to call it here at Gut Check, Amateur Night.) But what if you don't have a valentine yet?

Don't despair, ladies! The website BettyConfidential.com reports that the best place to meet hot guys is at Chipotle:

The Bettys discovered that, come lunchtime, the popular chain Chipotle is overflowing with an inordinate number of very attractive men. From those with closely cropped hair in crisp business shirts of white and blue, to the sweaty, tan, muscled, t-shirt-clad crews of college guys, it's not just the food heating up the place!