I was just reading Sauce’s gossip section, and it looks like the restaurant closing trend I predicted is starting to begin.    In the last year we’ve lost:

Red Moon
Melange
Crossings Taverne
King Louie’s (Will be sadly missed)
Lagniappe’s
Shmeers
The Tuxedo Room
Arther Clay’s
Tanner B’s (downtown)
Rossino’s

In the grand scheme this is a very small list, and some of these were doomed from their first day.  However, I’m predicting that once Highway 40 closes we’re going to lose a lot of inefficient independant restaurants.

It’s not going to be a bad thing - All the young guns of my generation will get their chance to shine once the highway reopens and the suburbanites start dining in the city again.

UPDATE: I forgot to add M.P. O’Reilly’s to the list of closures. I didn’t care for their second location, but I enjoyed their first location. I scavenged their men’s room door when the place shut down, and used it on my bathroom.

Salad dressing is supposed to be a sparsely used flavoring to accentuate a salad’s natural taste. Don’t douse the plate in it, please. Any kind of salad dressing is nasty in large doses. This is what my salad tastes like when the chef applies too much dressing:

I bought some cookies today, and I have to say that the Bahlsen Choco Leibniz now holds a special place in my heart. The cookie was a Biscuit of the Week over on Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down in 2003, but don’t take our word for it. Alan Bromley left a user review that sums it up nicely.

Occasionally something (or someone) comes into your life and changes it forever. Since childhood I have been content with home-grown offerings on the chocolate biscuit front - indeed, a sense of pride still wells in me as I bite into a McVitie’s Chocolate Homewheat - but during a recent browse along the biscuit section of my local Safeways I stumbled across a foreign invader which puts our meagre British offerings in the shade.

Choco Leibniz, I love you

There once was a bar
Named O’Reilly, St Louis
Their door is now mine

There’s a bar in St Louis named M.P O’Reilly’s. It was large, it was cheap, and it was in the Central West End (before they moved down to Manchester). The old spot had a lot of memories for the restaurant crew in the neighborhood, and a lot of my friends worked there at times. Currently, the old location is being gutted for a chain bar and grill named Bar Louie to come in.

See, when I moved into my current apartment it was great: Four times the size of my previous studio, lots of big windows, and a kitchen with working appliances. There was one very strange drawback, however… I didn’t have a bathroom door. No one knew where the door had gone, but I lived alone and it wasn’t high on my priority list. I hung up a curtain for any guests that might call and marked it done

Luckily for my bathroom, the Bar Louis crews ripped out and discarded the M.P. O’Reilly’s mens room door, and I pulled a 3AM ninja raid to liberate it from their dumpster. This is a solid core door that’s been lovingly abused. The heavy brass handles and kickplates look like they’re a hundred years old from all the undergrad students beating them over the last fifteen years.

The door had an automatic closer stuck to the back of it, and I decided to go ahead and install that in my bathroom as well. Since my doorway was 28″, and this door was 31″ I decided to side hang it with the closer to keep it held flush. The door feels more like a display piece, or a monument, hung outside of the frame. I’m actually thinking of it as more of a floating section of wall.

I don’t know how most people feel about architectural salvage, but I think that the history in the piece makes it just that much cooler.

Just a little note to register my thoughts on the remodel of Zoe’s Pan-Asia. It’s an interesting change, and I think that everyone in the area should pop down and take a look at it. Just a note, this is a remodel, and most definitly not a redesign. The room itself has in no way changed in layout or architecture, but it does feel like a new space.

The “new” Zoe’s is done in an almost monochromatic chocolate brown. It’s dark where there was once blinding light, and there are actually decorations on the tables now. Centerpieces of green apples and tea candle trios throw a bit of light up from the tabletop, and exposed bulbs in the Edison style hang down from the ceiling. It’s nice, and it’s a style that has been popping up more and more in St Louis. In a word, this room is now demure. A vibrantly noisy room becoming hushed and intimate just by changing the paint is one of the marvels of interior decorating.

In complaints, the walls are missing a little something to break up the monotony, and the Edison installations should have been larger than life instead of just functional. Impress me. Please. Though this is hardly original design it’s nice to see someone bring the aesthetic to my neighborhood. Good job, Zoe.

Just a little project I’m working on. It’s a layout for a club that could work really well in University City.

Private Club Walkthrough

Popped over to the Mihalis Chophouse on McCausland to check the place out. They’ve done a great design job, and it’s laid out very well. Menu seems to be ok, but I didn’t have the time to try anything. The restaurant is the newest spot from the cat that owns Michael’s. I’ll post a bit more info when I get a chance to eat there. (I’d link you, but their website 404’s)

Also, I’d like to give a shout out to the Orphans Party 2005. The chef from Bar Italia Ristorante-Cafe throws a little annual party for all the local neighborhood restaurant kids (it started off as a party for those who won’t be going home for Thanksgiving). There were easily ~200 people crammed into Matt Kamnick and Buffalo’s apartment, and the cocktails just kept coming. Jeff Gerth prepared over a hundred pounds of turkey with all the fixins. It was definitly a who’s-who of the neighborhood restaurant scene.

Also, I ran into Nhat Nguyen tonight. Looks like his new project Urban is only a few weeks away from open on South Grand. Only three weeks behind schedule is better than most. Good job, bro. (Now get your website up, man)

Just came back from my bi-annual trip to Cincy, and it was a great weekend. Twice a year I kick around with all my internet nerd friends, and just like the internet it’s a rollicking good time. I saw fuzz, and Squiggs, and Kamidake, and Zapgun, and Psyber, and AmishJosh, and EVERYBODY. It was great. There is almost nothing so cool as walking into a bar full of thirty of your closest friends and the room just erupts with shouts and cheers and clapping and whistling and welcome. That was truly a rock and roll moment, and I loved it (thanks guys).

The Wade Money drove up from Carterville, Syro came down from the north side, and we rocked out the Merc to Cincy. St Louis down 64 to Louisville up 71 through NKY to the Natty. That route is five hours at five miles over the limit. Seems to be a lot faster than the Indy path we normally take.

Of all the places we saw, the most impressive was The Anchor. St Louis has a plethora of greasy spoons in the metro area, but none compares to the one around the corner from fuzz’s house. Their motto is “We might doze, but we never close.” Opened in 1946 it looks like it hasn’t been touched since it opened. It’s a small time operation that might seat 50 at max capacity. Service is slow, the food is bad, and it’s a dingy hole. I loved it, but wouldn’t eat there more than once a year.

On Saturday we went to “The Farm” to bust some caps, and hang out around the campfire. I have to say, my buddy Dave Loken is a mean shot with a pistol. As soon as he stepped up every target fell down out of fright. I hope that he’s on my side when the revolution comes.

Wade Money and I popped out to Niccola’s on Saturday night. While it was a very nice restaurant and the food was very nice; it didn’t really jive with the Money and I. A hundred bucks for a couple of cocktails, some decent pasta dishes, and two cups of coffee. Honestly, I liked the place, but it felt a bit pretentious. In their defense I feel that way in any place that’s more of a restaurant than a bar. We had a great waiter named Yuri, and his service was top notch. One complaint that I have is that they do the white tablecloth annoyance of placing the napkin in the lap. C’mon people, only a select few are invited within striking distance of my genitals.

We then drove to Mt Adams to check out the restaurant scene there. In a word: Dissapointing. Longsworth, The Wine Cellar, and The Pavilion were all equally uninspiring. I did appreciate the multilevel design, mosaic bar top, and sweeping murals at The Pavilion, though.

One high point was finding the Mount Adams Bar & Grill. Just like Dressel’s, but a wholly Republican place. The pictures on the wall were of GWB, Ronald Reagan and Richard Milhouse Nixon. It was originally a speakeasy during prohibition, and that character shines through in a way that made me feel at home as soon as we walked in. It was one of the nicest small houses that I’ve seen in a long time.

All in all, a great trip and I can’t wait until the next one.

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