A bunch of flannel

food, travel

I haven’t posted in several days, partly because my brother was in town for the Memorial Day weekend and partly because I’ve been out being a tourist. One day I tried doing this on public transport, as I’m a firm believer in the stuff, but while the MetroLink train – a fairly new light train system – was very good and shot me from west to east in no time, the buses were a bit crap. I had very long waits – I gave up once and walked the two miles I wanted to go – and the sad fact is that in this town (unlike New York for instance) bus travel seems to be exclusively for the impoverished or the slightly deranged. In my khaki shorts and pink polo shirt I looked and felt desperately out of place. Fellow travellers looked at me oddly, thinking perhaps that I must have been caught Driving Under the Influence and banned from driving; though one man tried to engage me in a conversation about some recent shootings-cum-killings and I really didn’t want to get into that on a crowded bus. …

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Waist expansion

food, travel

I like a good diner, I do, and in the last two weeks I’ve managed to visit a few. It’s a tough gig.
Dr Jazz in Webster Grove is a terrible name for a sweet little old mom ‘n’ pop place that is more of a soda fountain than a real diner. But it has booths and stools at the counter and at the lunchtime we went they were doing a special, which was a cheeseburger with the cheese of our choice (I had pepper jack and Lucy, Swiss), fresh-cut fries and a proper milkshake, all for $6.99. The burger was juicy, the fries still had their skins on (delicious) and my shake (just vanilla ice cream wazzed with milk) was frothy and refreshing. I was very happy.
The City Diner is a twenty minute walk from our digs and has all the trappings of a 50s diner; formica tables, two-tone leatherette booths and a checkerboard floor. It’s not actually that old but it’s menu is authentic (meatloaf is its specialty) and at weekends it stays open 24 hours. We’ve been twice. The first time I tried a St Louis oddity – fried ravioli, which is as it sounds. Crispy, deep-fried ravioli are served with a marinara dipping sauce. It’s not bad. I wouldn’t order it again and I’ve yet to understand why tomato pasta sauce is called “marinara” as there’s not much that’s marine about it, but there you go. I also had a slice of rhubarb and strawberry pie “a la mode” (with a scoop of ice-cream) which was very, very good. The pastry was crisp and the filling not too sweet or gloopy. …

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Oh for cluck’s sake, not more?

food, travel

I knew this would happen. No sooner do I mouth off about the quality of chicken than I have to start backtracking on what I said. This is not to say I have eaten some good chicken since I last blogged, but I will admit that my implied generalisation – which repeated pretty-well every prejudice that Brits have about America – that the produce over here is all tasteless pap, was unfounded and unfair. You can buy just as crappy food in Britain as you can over here. I’ve seen awful meat and poultry on the shelves of all of Britain’s supermarkets, with the exception perhaps of Waitrose. I’m just irredeemably smug because when I’m at home I get to buy all of my meat from local farmers. …

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Cluck cluck

food, travel

I made Arroz Con Pollo last night, a sort of chicken paella. I’ve made it many times before. It’s easy and tasty. Well, not last night it wasn’t. We got all the ingredients at a local supermarket, Schnucks. It’s generally a good store that caters well for the local community and which takes care to stock foods that appeal to every ethnic background. We bought onion, garlic, green peppers, short grain rice, tinned chicken broth, fresh plum tomatoes, paprika and chicken thighs.…

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