The Mud House

As I make my way throughout the city of St. Louis’ brunch scene, sometimes the best places are the ones you just fall into. After spending a lot of time on Cherokee and in the Benton Park area, we drove by Mud House quite a few times. But since another location was still closed at 9:30AM, we finally remembered to make The Mud House our destination.

This place is hopping on the weekends so you may have to wait to find a table and be prepared to make friends so you can get a seat. Definitely a cute coffee shop with interesting noshes for breakfast and lunch.

For such a small shop, there are quite a few choices for coffee, breakfast, and sandwiches, so we had no trouble killing our time in line closely studying the menu. I was really wanting to be adventures and try a “Veggie Madame”, which has veggies on a brioche with an egg on top, but I went with the safe bet and got the “quiche or strata of the day”.

Strata

Patience was the adventurous one and got the “hash of the day”, which turned out to come with a pile of Brussels sprouts and potatoes in addition to an egg on top.

Hash with Brussel sprouts, potatoes, and fried egg

We are both wanting to go back to try some more dishes!

Resources:

The Mud House = http://themudhousestl.com/

Photos by Patience Scanlon

Yellow Farmhouse Winery and an Olive Ovation

I was invited by a friend, who works at Yellow Farmhouse Winery, for a tasting of their wines at a store I had never been to before: An Olive Ovation. Mostly known for their wide variety of olive oils, the store actually has a lot of artisanal and cooking products. So for the first time, we attended a “wine and olive oil” pairing class.

While we did taste the olive oils straight, the actual pairings were the wine with a small dish made with the specially selected olive oil. On a couple of them, you could taste the flavor of the oil, but for the others, the flavors were too well blended.

The oil that stood out the most was the Olivas de Oro Rosemary olive oil, which was used as a dressing for the Italian Rice and Bean Salad. The strong herbal dressing gave the vegetables a little more flavor and stood up to the extra sweetness from the Compass Rose.

My favorite pairing of the night was the Edelweiss, a white table wine, paired with the spicy sausage and lentils that were mixed with hot smoked paprika, Dijon, rosemary, thyme, and garlic. The slight sweetness matched up perfectly with the little bit of heat.

A Chambourcin Reserve from 2009 is a good pick for red wine lovers as the dryer flavors were able to take on the grilled veggie skewers dipped in sunflower oil and Robbins balsamic.

And for dessert, the Sweet Talkin’ Blonde Traminette definitely dominated in sweetness over the Macadamia Nut & White Chocolate cookies.

Menu

Resources:

Yellow Farmhouse Winery = http://www.yellowfarmhousewines.com/

Extra Virgin: An Olive Ovation = http://www.extravirginoo.com/

STL Vegetarian Restaurants

I have had the same discussions MANY times...trying to come up with a list of vegetarian restaurants.

I think it's about time I write these down...this way everyone will have a place to refer back to!

Feel free to message me or comment with any that I may have missed and need to add.

Bahn Mi So

Balkan Treat Box

Beets & Bones - Clayton

Bombay Food Junkies - Creve Coeur

CC's Vegan Spot - south city

Confluence Kombucha

Everest Cafe

Frida's Deli

Frida's Cantina and Grill

Gokul Indian - U City

Gooseberries - south city

Lona's Lil Eats

Love at First Bite - St Ann

Lulu's Local Eatery

Mayo Ketchup - Lafayette Square

Mud House

Peace Love Coffee - St Charles

Pizza Head - South Grand

PuraVegan - Midtown

Ranoush

Seedz Cafe - Demun

Small Batch - Midtown

SweetArt - South Grand

Terror Tacos

Tree House

Tumeric - U City

The Wolf Cafe - Ballwin

Update: The RFT recently posted it's 10 best Veggies Restaurants as well:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/gutcheck/2014/12/10_best_spots_for_vegetarian_fare_in_st_louis.php

Feast Magazine:
https://www.feastmagazine.com/st-louis/collection_bd9af394-c255-11ec-bc97-fbd41b1b6f54.html

Central Table

Not only did it take a while to finalize dinner double date plans, but it also took me a while to get to Central Table Food Hall. But now I know what everyone is talking about!

If you haven’t heard, Central Table is more of a cafeteria-style restaurant during the day for lunch but at night, it turns into a regular sit-down restaurant for the dinner course. I was also surprised to see a very large bar in the middle of the hall, and it was almost full for dinner, probably because it was a Friday night.

The high ceilings give it a big and open feel and I bet it’s hoppin’ during the day at all the different food stations that are available. Yet, I still think dinner may be the best time of day to go because now you have all the different stations on one menu so you can pick and choose from each section.

Although, this does make trying to pick out dishes a little more difficult when you want one of everything!

I definitely recommend going in a group so you can share all the different dishes that are available. We ended up doing a little bit of sharing and a little bit of splitting so we could try several items at once.

We started with a couple of oysters…one of each from both coasts, and they were served with three different sauces to try. My favorite was the soy mignonette…although it made the oysters extra salty, while the red wine and cocktail sauces gave the oysters a much sweeter flavor.

Oysters

Next up was the maki rolls: salmon and tuna. Both were very small rolls of six each and made for another excellent starter. The fish was wonderfully fresh. But we were jealous of my friend’s specialty maki, all of which are unique to Central Table. Luckily, she shared with us and not only were they twice the size of our rolls, but had so much more amazing flavors . I highly recommend getting as many specialty rolls as you can!

Sushi

For our main course, we ended up splitting the Sea Scallops that were served on top of root vegetables, freekah, and rappini. I had to research these two ingredients: freekah is a roasted grain, while the rappini is a green vegetable. The dish was actually a good size for one person, but I was happy we made room for the sushi since that was definitely my favorite.

Sea Scallops

We also go to try a bite of the Spiedie pizza, which came with chicken, ricotta, roasted garlic and oregano. There was no red sauce, but still a good mix of flavors.

I definitely would love to go back because I didn’t get to try anything from their soup (butternut squash) or salads (kale!) list, or from the hot small plates (mussels!). And I really wanted one of everything off the sushi menu to be perfectly honest.

The only issue is parking…since it was cold and snowy, I was thankful for the $4 valet, but I think it’ll be much easier come spring time for walking around in the Central West End.

Resources:

Central Table Food Hall = http://centraltablestl.com/

Photos by Patience Scanlon

Tenacious Eats Moulin Rouge

I know this is another “third-timer” on the STLCheesegirl blog, but Tenacious Eats keeps growing and getting bigger each time I go.

I took advantage of some time off over the holidays since the “five course dinner and a movie” event usually goes until 11pm. But now there are more good reasons to go a little bit early to Meyer’s Grove, where Tenacious Eats is hosted.

First, starting at 5pm, a small band kicks off the night, which is then followed up by a Super 8 film from Tom Stockman, who probably has the largest collection of Super 8 movies in the country if I had to guess. If you follow Tom on Facebook, or on the We Are Movie Geeks website, you can check out his other showings at the Way Out Club twice a month.

Anyway, Moulin Rouge was such a big and flashy movie, the food had strong competition between that and the cocktails created by owner, Dan Stoner and Beth Sorrell, from Cocktails Are Go. Talk about taking things up a notch! Let’s just say this is definitely the only time I probably will ever have a cabernet mixed with expresso or a habanero moonshine mixed with PBR!!

I have to admit that it was hard to pick a favorite course or even a favorite pairing since each one is so unique. It’s just one of those events you have to try once, when you can be out late on a school night.

Tenacious Eats Moulin Rouge Menu

Resources:

Tenancious Eats = http://www.tenaciouseats.com/

Meyer’s Grove = http://meyersgrove.com/

Cocktails Are Go = http://cocktails-are-go.com/