Festivals and Special Events
A Tasteful Affair
April 20 – 2 to 5 p.m., Chase Park Plaza
314.652.3663 · www.foodoutreach.org
A Tasteful Affair is the hugely successful annual Food Outreach fundraiser where three dozen local restaurants and catering groups join forces to offer a menu of menus. The kitchens of Bistro 517, Catering Plus, Designing Chefs Catering, Koko, LoRusso’s, Moxy Contemporary Bistro, Chez Leon, Orlando Catering, The Pasta House, Patty Long Catering, Vin de Set, Sinfully Delicious Cakes, Harrah’s, Bryan Young Catering and Food Outreach itself, among others, offer stations where you can sample the goods.
Mount Pleasant Winery Top of the Riverfront Wine Dinner
April 28 – 7 p.m., Top of the Riverfront
800.467.9463 · www.mountpleasant.com
You may think that the thrills offered by a gently rotating restaurant that crowns the horizon are minor. But get your finger stuck between a stationary floor panel and a moving one, and the evening takes on a decidedly more adrenaline-filled frisson. Don’t let the wine-enhanced frolic lead to risky behavior when Augusta’s Mount Pleasant Winery sets up shop at the Millennium Hotel’s Top of the Riverfront rooftop boite. The fun starts with a cheese-and-fruit reception downstairs in the Palm Court. After, guests shoot up 28 stories to enjoy the commanding views from the rooftop restaurant. Mount Pleasant winemaker Mark Baehmann is the host for a dinner with wine pairings for each of four courses.
Herbal Days
April 16 to 19, Missouri Botanical Garden · 314.577.9400 · www.mobot.org
Herb Days means thousands of plants for sale at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Orthwein Center, where the friendly herbivores of the St. Louis Herb Society walk the aisles and assist bedazzled shoppers. You can purchase common and unusual culinary and/or aromatic herbs and pots just the right size for growing them. There are sets of herbs perfect for pizza, salsa or potpourri, too. Look for such designer herbs as an extra-sweet lavender called Twickle Purple, cinnamon basil and garlic chives. Becky Homan will sign her new book, The Missouri Gardener’s Companion, on Saturday, and the Garden Gate Shop welcomes Herbaria for a trunk sale of its handmade herbal soaps. The Herb Society will also sell its cookbook and its famous curry powder.
Webster Groves Herb Society Spring Herb Sale
April 26 – 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., First Congregational Church of Webster Groves · 314.918.1077 · www.wgherbs.org
The annual Webster Groves Herb Society Spring Herb Sale is no mean feat, with more than 12,000 culinary, medicinal and ornamental herbs for purchase. Shoppers receive free recipes, and can browse gardening and herb books, and check out herb-use demonstrations. And the Heirloom tomato sale sounds juicy …
Herbalicious!
April 26, Bowood Farms · 314.454.6868
www.bowoodfarms.com
Bowood Farms nursery and garden center in the Central West End will offer a selection of herbs grown at its Clarksville farm, and from 2 to 4 p.m., the St. Louis Evening Herbalists will answer gardening questions and offer samples of their favorite dishes made with fresh-cut herbs.
Classes
The Icing Man Cometh
April 13 – 12:30 p.m., Kitchen Conservatory 314.862.2665 · www.kitchenconservatory.com
Red velvet cake: too beautiful to eat, and yet, when everything clicks, as delicious as it is purty. Pastry chef Mathew Rice of hot new bakery Veruca and Niche will share his family recipe for the Southern delicacy at a cooking class at the Kitchen Conservatory. In addition to dishing the cake, Rice will discuss his personal cake-decorating secrets, make versatile vanilla buttercream frosting, and create a chocolate layer cake with a mini-cupcake border that could make you charge headlong into diabetes with nary a care.
Nutrition and Energy Strategies for Biking
April 17 – 6:30 p.m., REI · 314.918.1004
www.rei.com/stores/events/73
I know what you’re thinking whenever one of those serious-looking bicyclists zooms by your car on the road. Their forearms are braced forward in an unnatural position by their space-age handlebars. Their absurdly colorful outfits are a clown’s acid fantasy. Their tiny buttocks mock your own. What is your secret, cyclist? Commune with me! Share your nutrition tips, skinny god that owns the shoulder of the road! REI offers a class in April on what to eat and when to eat it for cyclists with energy and hydration concerns. The session covers training, competing and more informal pursuits for hard-core types and dilettantes alike.
Best of Pujabi Home Cooking
April 26 – 10 a.m., Missouri Botanical Garden 314.577.9400 · www.mobot.org
Mother-daughter team Gurcharan and Aman Aulakh prepare a feast fit for a North Indian raja, with samosas, chicken curry, dal (split-lentil soup), bharta (smoked eggplant with herbs), chawal (basmati rice), kheer (rice pudding) and hot chai to drink.
Author Appearance
Robin Miller
April 22 – 7 p.m., Left Bank Books · 314.367.6731 · www.left-bank.com
Robin Miller is the actuary of the kitchen. She’s all about efficiency and planning ahead. (Fans of her Food Network show, Quick Fix Meals With Robin Miller, love her versatile “morph it” recipes.) The lanky, brisk nutritionist and food writer discusses and signs her seventh and latest cookbook for the terminally busy, Robin to the Rescue, at Left Bank Books. Treats will be provided by L‘Ecole Culinaire.
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ALTON BROWN
Chef, author and television personality
Alton Brown is a walking encyclopedia of kitchen science. And, it turns out, he’s also a walking Yellow Pages of the doughnut shops of St. Louis. The Food Network stalwart stopped here recently while filming his Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run TV series, and he killed seven area doughnut shops in one day. Holy hyperglycemia! The self-effacing, humorous maven of mastication took a moment to discuss his other popular TV shows, Good Eats and Iron Chef America, and the book tour for River Run, which brings him to the Ethical Society of St. Louis on April 27.
You rode your motorcycle on a River Run along the Mississippi from south to north, stopping at all kinds of fun eateries along the way. Was there anything in the St. Louis area that struck you as particularly memorable?
I found this kind of bizarre doughnut subculture in your town, and I think it’s absolutely the best doughnut town in the United States. We probably hit about seven places, but my personal favorite was Donut Drive-In on Chippewa. Amazing people, and the clientele is ravenously loyal, and the doughnuts are absolutely exemplary.
The really groovy thing is that people in St. Louis, neighborhood by neighborhood, are devoutly in love with their doughnuts, and they have extremely strong opinions about them, which I think is fabulous. That’s actually the thing that makes St. Louis a great food town: It’s the loyalty and the pride and the stories people tell about the places they like. The restaurants are real anchors to society there.
You’ve been with the Food Network long enough now that it seems you’ve witnessed the rise of the celebrity chef.
While avoiding becoming one, yes. I’m still a very small fish in that pond. If the Food Network is a Top 40 station, then I’m Tom Waits. (laughs) I’m not ever gonna be Emeril Lagasse or Giada De Laurentiis or Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay or any of those people. It’s kind of like a car company. You have different models of cars, and you hope that across the range that people find something that they like. I’m not sure what car I am. Maybe I’m a hybrid. Maybe a small light truck. Something utilitarian, hopefully.
On Iron Chef America, it seems like you’re commentating at a pretty rapid clip sometimes. Do you have to really be on your game to keep up?
Oh lord, yes. It’s extraordinarily hard work, just keeping up with the ingredients that are being used, and there’s so much going on in each kitchen at any given time, and I can’t lose track of a sauce that’s being constructed or any step. I’m constantly trying to get better on that. They let me fix a lot in post-production.
What do you think about those orange Crocs Mario Batali wears?
Well, you certainly see them coming, don’t you? (laughs) I like people that have uniforms. He wears his shorts and he wears his Crocs, and that’s who he is. I admire that.
Favorite snack food?
Wasabi peas.
Guilty pleasure?
Girl Scout cookies – all different kinds. There’s a lot of sneaking out to the garage going on right now.
Quick family dinner?
A big meal in my household right now is we have this Krups panini press, and I take Cornish hens and butterfly them and throw them in the sandwich press. You can cook a Cornish hen to perfect crispy doneness in about 12 minutes. We’re also doing really long cooking things, like I’ll take short ribs and smear them in various flavors and wrap them up in foil and throw them in our oven on its lowest setting, and leave them for like two days. Long, low cooking really breaks down all the connective tissue in things like short ribs. That’s a lot of fun.
Alton Brown, April 27 - 4 p.m., Ethical Society of St. Louis. Call Left Bank Books at 314.367.6731 for info.
Sauce Sponsored Events
Wall Ball
April 5 – 7 to 11 p.m., Third Degree Glass Factory · 314·865·0060 · www.scosag.org
Most of the time, silent auctions are, well, pretty silent affairs. Not so Wall Ball, the annual benefit for the South City Open Studio and Gallery for Children. That’s because the items that guests bid on are works of art that evolve right before their eyes. More than 40 artists create paintings and works in other media live and up close, and the benefactors bid on them in a silent auction that becomes much more intriguing as they gradually see just what it is they’re trying to win.
Paso Robles Wine Country Grand Tasting
April 15 – 6 p.m., Ritz-Carlton St. Louis 314.746.1973
Snuggled in the lolling hills of central California, Paso Robles is home to scenic views and award-winning wines. More than 20 Paso Robles wineries will be sampling their wares along with dishes prepared by the Ritz.
River City Professionals Networking Happy Hour
April 15 – 5:30 p.m., Jive and Wail
www.rivercityprofessionals.org
RCP hosts its monthly, charitable happy hour (this one will benefit the Wyman Center) where you can schmooze, sip a cold brew and watch the dueling pianos duke it out at Jive and Wail.
A Tasteful Affair
(see details at left)
Dining Out for Life
April 24 at participating restaurants · 314.645.6451 x244 · www.diningoutforlife.com
“Dine out, fight AIDS.” Eat at one of dozens of restaurants that will donate 25 percent or more of your check to the St. Louis Effort for AIDS' life-saving work.
Weim and Cheese
April 26 – 6 p.m., Pets in the City · 314.772.7387 www.thecitypet.com/StoreEvents
Show your love at this benefit for the Heartland Weimaraner Rescue of St. Louis.
Before and After
Open Lot
BEFORE: Performances at Open Lot tend to start a bit late, which means there’s plenty of time for a leisurely meal. And that, in turn, means you should head to Franco in nearby Soulard, where a comfortably contemporary décor and modern-rustic French food invite diners to sit a spell. So go ahead, sip the onion soup, slurp some oysters, wrangle those slippery escargot, tuck into a tart; there’s plenty of time.
1535 S. Eighth St., St. Louis, 314.436.2500
AFTER: After an under-the-radar show, head to an under-the-radar bar … well, sorta: 33 Wine Shop and Tasting Bar’s lack of signage and minimalist décor make it seem that way, but on weekends, seats can be hard to come by (though it’s still not as packed as its more aggressively marketed next-door neighbor). Crowded or no, this innately cool Lafayette Square spot always manages a friendly vibe – and the killer wine list more than makes up for having to stand. Fair warning: If Bud’s your brew of choice, 33’s not for you, but beer geeks will be happy as a clam.
1913 Park Ave., St. Louis, 314.231.9463