Dizzy from the flashing colors of plasma TVs lining every wall of the barroom? Gone deaf from blaring late-night club music? Escape from sports bars, nightclubs and other rowdy drink destinations and find sanity at 4 Hands Brewing Co.

4 Hands, one of this city’s newest breweries, recently opened its tasting room. There’s nothing showy about this converted warehouse at 1220 S. Eighth St., just south of Busch Stadium; the space bespeaks thoughtful simplicity. The furniture is made from reclaimed century-old barn wood; the large community table in the center of the 35-seat room was built from a dock door original to the warehouse. There’s one – count it, one – TV in the room, which will likely stay unplugged the majority of the time until baseball season returns. There’s live music on weekends but not the kind to blast you back out the door when you walk in. Oh, and there’s foosball – and it’s free – in a small side room. All of this means when you come to 4 Hands, you can actually talk to your friends – or just sip solo at the bar, stare through the windows into a brew house destined to expand, and ponder some really good beer.

4 Hands currently has four of its brews available on draft. Order a flight and you’ll be poured Divided Sky Rye IPA, Reprise Centennial Red Ale, Cast Iron Oatmeal Brown and Single Speed Session. Brewmaster Will Johnston didn’t need to empty the pantry to brew the latter. It’s an uncomplicated blonde ale that lets red wheat and elderflower work their magic into suds that are soft, floral and fruity. With such a citrusy bouquet and hoppy swallow, 4 Hands’ American red ale is one to admire. And my, oh my, what a beautiful crimson color! Divided Sky Rye is likewise high on hops and moderately spicy from rye, while hefty brown ale makes lasting friends among chocolate malt, roasted barley and oatmeal. Watch for Pyrus – a saison bursting with pear and white peppercorn flavors – and a Russian imperial stout to be released in a few weeks.

If you’re planning on eating, come on weekends, when food arrives within minutes of placing an order – this, despite the fact that the brewery doesn’t have a kitchen. Instead, management makes arrangements for one of the many area food trucks to park curbside and handle hungry bellies. “None of us are chefs,” said Nick Kanter, sales manager at 4 Hands. “We’ll do what we do best and leave the food to someone else.”

Can’t remember the last time you talked with friends face-to-face? Get over to 4 Hands. Sip good beer. Relax. Heck, hear yourself think. You can do that at a place like 4 Hands, and sometimes, that’s a very nice place to be, at least until Super Bowl Sunday.

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jpjernigan
My heart will always belong to @whereschacha, but @hotaztec deserves a look, #STL. My chori queso torta was delicious.

MOFUSOY
Gave mofu firm to Salumi Beddu. They cut it up fresh and said, “tastes just like fresh ricotta.”

Pigpicker
@NoReservations A badass like you should never say “toiletries”.

barbaricgulp
My toenails hurt. This is what I get for teaching a cooking class in high heels. #60sCocktailParty

SHcraft
Favorite quote of the day: “I would totally become a vegetarian if I didn’t love meat so much.”

MayorSlay
Beer brewers, chocolate makers, and coffee roasters. STL has some great ones. #fgs

HilaryPerkins
I wish St. Louis would get a #foodtruck like @EggSlutLA #stl

BeerKaren
Holy jeez, I need more coffee. I blame @cookingkid and his cronies!

boxcar_fritz
Clam Chowder pizza will be the best New England – New York mash up since Aerosmith and Run DMC.

MoEats
Whoever decided that m&m’s were E10 and the Fiber One bars were E1 in the vending machine is an evil, evil person.

NedDirlik
A third trip to Alinea in an 18-month span? Why the hell not.

mcharcuterie
Funny stuff: walk into Pappy’s & both my bosses are chowing down on a slab of ribs. Supposed to be in a meeting ; )

13blog
Can anyone point me towards adult looking and microwavble #bento boxes?

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More often than not, St. Louis is billed as a cultural wasteland. But beneath the city’s sometimes-Philistine facade, a healthy little nest of artists toil into the night, transforming canvas and clay. This week offers a rare opportunity to impress a date by schmoozing it up in the local art scene (or, at least, faking it) and, in the process, grabbing some free intoxicants.

Tonight kicks off the first Arty Party, an event series showcasing local artists in the vanguard of the creative world. The good news: It’s hosted at the gorgeous Four Seasons Hotel.

Jeff Kapfer art

The better news: It’s free of charge and open to the public. From 6 to 9 p.m., guests are welcome to join painter Jeff Kapfer at his display in the Four Season’s swanky Presidential Suite, where they can mingle, check out the art, chat it up with the artist and grab some free cocktails and light snacks. Booze, schmooze and a little culture thrown in? Hello brownie points.

Cielo’s pan-seared tuna caponata

Following the showing, escort your date over to Cielo Restaurant and Bar – the hotel’s rooftop eatery – for an informal cocktail reception. From there, you can break off on your own and still enjoy a 30-percent discount on your tab. At that rate, four indulgent appetizer plates – like marinated shrimp, calamari salad, arancini, veal-stuffed olives – will run you less than $20. Better still, Cielo boasts some of the most expertly poured drinks in town in a great, upscale atmosphere for a weekday date. For more information, check out the event’s Facebook page.

It was just a matter of time. In a move that was entirely expected, Pujols 5 Westport Grill – the restaurant that bore the name and jersey number of Cardinals slugger-turned-Los Angeles Angel Albert Pujols – is being re-branded. KTRS sports-talk radio host John Marecek broke the news via Twitter last night that the new name of the Westport restaurant will be St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame Bar and Grill. The news has made national headlines, with David Brown reporting the story on the Yahoo! Sports blog and even national food site Eater munching on Pujols fodder this morning.

As daytime temps hover in the 60s this week, everyone is already thinking about spring, including the organizers of the first-ever MayFest St. Louis, a festival billed as a “celebration of spring with music, food, drink and fun.”

The inaugural MayFest St. Louis is scheduled to take place from May 18 to 20 in the parking lots at the corner of Seventh and Cerre Streets, southwest of Busch Stadium.

For three days straight, music-lovers can rock out to national, regional and local musical performances on two concert stages. Highlights for hungry festival-goers include: a crawfish-and-shrimp boil, featuring a truckload of live crawfish from the Louisiana Bayou; an oyster-eating contest; and an amateur chef “Best Midwest Gumbo” contest. Mobile eateries from the area will be parked at “Food Truck Row,” while traditional festival faves like brats, kabobs and corn dogs will also be available.

Adult imbibers will be able to visit a beer-and-wine garden or grab a cocktail at drink stations scattered throughout the grounds. Visit opening night to parktake in what organizers are calling “St. Louis’ Largest Happy Hour Ever Party.”

For more information, visit the festival’s website.

The word “transcend” gets kicked around a lot, as in a work of art so earth-shattering that it manages to transcend the genre.

But truly, to appreciate what Ferran Adrià (pictured) did with his late, lamented Spanish restaurant, El Bulli, is to understand that the maverick chef transcended the idea of what a restaurant – and maybe even what cooking itself – can be. The window into his world comes courtesy of the documentary El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, which opens at the Tivoli Theatre this Friday and runs through Thursday, Feb. 9. This look at Adrià, the “Salvador Dali of the kitchen” – freely devising dishes like tangerine and green olive bits in vinaigrette, with ice chips added tableside – is sure to inspire chefs angling to shake up their menus and travel further into the endless vistas of taste and creativity.

We can only imagine what a dish like that would taste and feel like – the ice, fruit and oils rolling around our tongues. The same goes for the pineapple phyllo. And the praline ravioli in “vanishing” pockets of pasta (The pouches dissolve on contact with the tongue, revealing the flavors within immediately.). And all the other bizarre innovations that make up the parade of 35 dishes, brought out one-by-one every six minutes, to comprise the three-hour, epic prix-fixe meals for those diners lucky enough to actually score seats in Adrià’s rarefied food arena (a meal for which they paid about $500).

The film, shot in 2008 and 2009, is divided into two parts. It moves from the half-year experimentation process in a secondary location in Barcelona to the half-year of cooking and service at El Bulli itself, which became a theater where Adrià’s fanciful whims finally enter the greater world. Adrià and his assistant chefs experiment in a Barcelona kitchen, taking careful notes on all the different permutations of their potential recipes, tasting tiny morsels, slowly circling about what they hope will eventually become something new, daring and delectable. But it’s not even about whether something tastes good, at first, said Adrià in the film, but whether it is “magical – it opens up a new path.”

The creative process is far from over when Adrià’s team packs up their equipment and notes and heads for El Bulli. The acclaimed chef sits at a table in El Bulli’s kitchen, painstakingly tasting everything again and again to fine-tune the final menu. It’s clear that he puts a high value on spontaneity, as he doesn’t even name the dishes, in many cases, until the server has actually placed the plated items on a tray and is passing Adrià on his way out of the kitchen. Remember, the waiters need to know what to tell diners unsure of just what they’re eating or how to eat it. On the first day of the season, Adrià divulges this information at the last possible second. It’s a purposeful kind of insanity.

Because the diners eat 35 different dishes, the aggressive pace of service mustn’t flag. The staff is drilled like a military squad. Dozens of cooks at a bank of tables lean over their respective mise en place, performing close, careful work on dishes they have certainly never imagined. They manage to balance artful, delicate presentations of breaded tuna fish marrow, pumpkin meringue sandwiches with almonds and summer truffles, pine sprouts brushed with spruce honey, and on and on. A bizarre cocktail of olive oil, carbonated water and salt is served to tease the lips with the softness of oil. Courses have names like “Parmesan crystal,” “coconut sponge,” and “minted ice lake.”

The viewer comes away with a perception of Adrià as a kind of Miles Davis of cuisine, continually reinventing the medium, leaving everyone else to guess what comes next.

Foodies will feel a sense of wistfulness at this one – El Bulli closed last year, when Adrià, tired of 20-plus years of experimentation and intense service (and set on finding new paradigms), announced at the El Bulli site that “We will transform into a creativity center, opening in 2014. Its main objective is to be a think-tank for creative cuisine and gastronomy and will be managed by a private foundation.”

Adventurous eaters will be stunned into wonder by Adrià the artist, let loose to indulge his caprices. But chefs might just need to make a point of watching this film to remind themselves why they’ve made this their career. When you cook like a mad scientist with a gleam in his eye, you might just turn a meal into a magic trick that won’t be soon forgotten.

Pappy’s Smokehouse will be celebrating its fourth anniversary this weekend with a celebration everyone can get in on (well, until the local barbecue mecca runs out of meat, of course). Owner Mike Emerson (pictured) and his ‘cue crew will be cooking two whole hogs this Saturday, Feb. 4 to feed hungry pork-lovers who are likely to start lining up long before doors open at 11 a.m. Best of all, every bit of the proceeds (that’s right, not 10 percent, or even 50 percent but 100 percent) will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “Gotta give back,” Emerson said. “I have been blessed.”

— Photo by Josh Monken

I get really excited about the Super Bowl, mostly because I eat appetizers all day long and no one raises an eyebrow. This year, I’m taking my game to the next level and bringing hearty smoked tenderloin sandwiches to the party. Think you can’t do the same? Think again. Find out just how easy they are to make (especially given this gorgeous weather we’re seeing) in this week’s Cook Wise.

When The Pump House Bar and Grill opens this month at 1523 E. Edwardsville Road in Wood River, Ill., the doors will stay unlocked seven days a week, serving lunch, dinner and drinks from 11 a.m. until 2 a.m. According to the restaurant’s Facebook page, some main draws of the new venue will be “food, karaoke, beer and darts.”

Considering its late hours and proximity to the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville campus (just five miles), Pump House may well attract students looking to escape from the books and instead heed the Pump House tagline to “Go with the flow.” Doors are expected to open Feb. 14.

St. Louis’ Mexican-food mecca is now home to another south-of-the-border restaurant. Siete Luminarias took over the space vacated by La Vallesana 2, which closed when La Vallesana’s main restaurant completed its expansion and renovations a few months ago.

As reported by George Mahe of St. Louis Magazine, Siete’s owners – brothers Luis and Ramon Gonzales – opened the doors to their new restaurant at 2818 Cherokee St., last month.

Siete Luminarias offers traditional Mexican fare with kitsch and a touch of charm: For instance, as seen here, chips and salsa arrive inside a quirky plastic donkey cart. Prices are a bit higher than other spots on the street, though many items are still under $10 – and portions are hefty. At $11, the Cantina Molcajete – traditional stone bake ware filled with still-sizzling grilled steak, shrimp, chicken, chorizo and cactus – can easily feed two.

The menu expands on Fridays and Saturdays to offer weekends-only fare, including a variety of posoles (Mexican pork-based soups traditionally made with hominy and a slew of spices). While Siete Luminarias doesn’t have a website, you can check out the new eatery on Facebook.