Sugar Fire: The Diner Review

Soooo...occasionally something new happens that is really outstanding on the St. Louis food scene. We see pretty many new places and we see many places that suck.  Many places that don't last.  But occasionally there is a gift and occasionally it is discovered by Kevin. Naturally the fact that Kevin discovered it is a reason to dislike and disdain since he loads all of recommendations with pretense but occasionally he finds a place that just absolutely kills it and this is the case with Sugar Fire.

By this time, if you have the misfortune of reading this you know that I am not a cheerleader.  Even when I gush I find something to criticize in some petty, meaningless and annoying way.  Alas, I come not to bury Sugar Fire but to praise the shit out of it.  I am so sick of Bar-B-Q places in this town.  I love Lester's, I love Pappys and I love Bogarts. They are all relatively new and they have upped the game in this town but how many shitty Bar-B-Q places have I tolerated in the past 5 years. Every place is extolled. Every place is revoltionary.  Every place ultimately disappoints.  The three mentioned above are exceptions.  They are well run and have high quality control.  They both have the same faux exclusive rule that they only cook so much each day and when they are out, they are OUT!  It annoys me.

So Kevin said “Sugar Fire”.  I asked “where”?  He told me it was on Olive at Price in a strip mall and i was incredulous and then I remembered that Dickeys was formerly there.  Dickeys is classic mass market, crappy BBQ.  Nothing wrong with it, nothing right with it.  It is generic and inoffensive with hot sauces to mask banality of the product.  I love good BBQ sauce but it is there to complement good meat, not to makle up for lack excellence.  So I gave it a try by myself one Saturday after a grumpy visit to the licence bureau.  I had the misfortune of wearing an orange shirt and it looks ALOT like a mug shot with me wearing an orange St. Louis County Jail jumpsuit.  
I have now been to Sugar Fire 5 times.  This is not out of an obligation to do a diligent job.  I like passing judgment on a place with one trip.  No, it is because I keep having to go back, again and again and again because it is SO DAMN GOOD!  The first time I had the brisket.  I do not love brisket.  It is bland, often dry and without sauce can often be inedible. Sugar Fire’s brisket is a symphony for the mouth.  Nice charring but nothing dry.  I have no idea what they rub or season it with or how they cook it so moist but it is without fault.  They serve them on a thin roll that is somewhat like a kaisar roll but excellent for the sandwich.  The next time I went back and I had...brisket. I think they have 5 types of sauce.  I don’t like carolina, I don’t like vinnegar, I don’t like horseradish but they have them all.  They also have three normal BBQ sauces and I found them all very good.  The third time I went I had a brisket philly cheese steak.  It had carmelized red onions on it on a nice french loaf.  It too was unstoppable.  The next time... I had the brisket.  Today I finally branched out and got the burger which was touted to me with cheese and house smoked bacon.  When you order the pull a 3rd pound of ground sirloin out and throw it on the griddle. Takes about 4 minutes.  It too was perfect and bacon was flavorful but is a little chewy for the sandwich.  (See, I always find something to bitch about...but that is it!)

So they put out good meat. they also advertise excellent smoked salmon and pulled pork which I will eventually get to.  I also tried their chicken biscuit which is smoked chicken which is then breaded and fied and put on a biscuit.  I took it home and put it in the fridge and that was a mistake as it seemed kind of baseball like.  next time I will try it fresh.

So all the good meat entrees make it interesting. Very interesting.  But what makes it awesome and a must go are the sides.  They have excellent fresh fries lightly seasoned which I have gotten every time but as we all know, anyone can do that.  What makes them different is that they have specials every day  (Brisket Philly Cheese Steak, fried bone in pork chop etc...).  There are great but what is really, really great are the other sides beside the fries.  theyu are always changing and they have greens (I don’t eat them but authentic people love em).  They always have a couple types of slaw (yawn again) but then they will sometimes have fresh cornbread doctored up, I have gotten garlic cheese grits and today I had green chili cheese pork which was like a little bowl of soup.  The sides change every day.  They are always creative. They always have 5 or 6 and it makes a meal a delectable treat.

They brew their own tea.  Regular and white trash sweet.  They have a soft drink dispenser you hit first but you can also pick up some odd bottles of soda as well as... wait for it.... BEER!  They have fresh cookines and also a wide array of deserts which i will likely never get to.  Bottom line... I cannot say enough good things about this place.  If I could get a franchise I would do it tomorrow.  One of these downtown, one in Chesterfield and one in Webster Kirkwood. I do not know how they do the quality control.  All the guys making the food seem to love what they do and seem to love making people, talking about the food with the patrons and giving the place a good vibe.  The location is a little inauthentic (whatever that means) and the parking lot at Price and Olive is a tragedy of stupidity but those are small prices to pay.

Go there.  Eat.  Come back and thank me and by extension, thank Kevin.

http://sugarfiresmokehouse.com/

I

Fall Recap: Kozmapolis!

Sooooo....mid October.  I always get a little maudlin when I look out my bathroom window and the pool is closed.  I had not noticed it before today.  Maybe it has been closed for a day, maybe a week.  It is dark when I am in the bathroom in the morning.  It is dark when i am in the bathroom in the evening.  Life is dark this time of year.  Daylight Savings will be happening soon but I have never understood it.  Anyway, the pool closing is of course a metaphor... for something.

I got my son married a few weeks ago to a woman who I can happily put in the category of my mother, my wife and my daughter and that is some pretty good company.  I feel blessed by that.  She is also nice to be and tolerant of me.  BONUS!  Last Sunday when they were returning from their honeymoon I thought we had lost their cat but that will be another story. #mydaywasruined.

Watching Mizzou early in the game and it looks like are going to get predictably destroyed by Alabama.  We are soon to leave on a "Pub Crawl for a Cure" with our friends the Bentzingers for the benefit of some of our friends families who have lost loved ones to cancer.  It should be a good distraction from the Mizzou game.

Last night the Cardinals came back late and continued their improbable season.  They back into the new wildcard position.  They knock of Atlanta in one game play off.  Then after leading the Nationals in the NLDS 2-1 the drop the 4th game and are trailing the 5th game 6-0 after two innings.  All they did was scratch back and on the last pitch of a full count with two outs in the ninth, score two runs with a walk off Kozma single.  Kozma is setting himself up to be this years David Friese and there is something about these Cardinal teams in October that is really something to see.  We of course are dreaming of a back to back World Championship either against the Yankees or the Tigers. Either would be epic.  The Rams play tomorrow.  3-2 against the Dolphins and it feels like the most wonderful time of the year.  First NLCS game against the Giants tomorrow night at 7.

I am backing (starting) an effort to rename St. Louis Kazmapolis.  Join me.

So, I don't think we can be too maudlin this fall.  God is good.  Balls are in the air whether they are being hit, kicked or thrown and life is good.

Highway Tacos

Sooooo... during the summer I drive to Michigan a lot.  I believe in the Ballad of Lilly and Lola I regaled you with tales of an idiot eating their way north.  Their are many ways to northern Michigan but the fastest way, "as the crow flies" is to buzz up 55 to Joliet, shoot on 80 across the remainder of Illinois (South Chicago), zip across the northern most portion of Indiana (from Gary to Michigan City and then hit Michigan and head up Highway 31.

The problem is the first part.  That first stretch from the river in St. Louis to where it hits 80 in Joliet.  It is at best a wasteland of corn and wind and that it only during the time when the corn is growing.  The rest of the time it is wind and soybeans or wind and dirt.  It is a miserable 4 hours plus no matter how you cut it.  Last weekend when traveling home from #Beckerwedding (more on that later) I decided that since I was driving home by myself, I had gotten a late start and because I wanted to ruin another shirt that I should find every taco place on that strip of road or thereabouts.

I think it is pretty well established that I give too much.  I do too much for other people.  I extend myself in really unbelievable ways to do tremendous acts of savage kindness which are too many to be listed and frankly I would be embarrassed by their sheer volume but there is no question that no one gets more of this unbelievable sacrifice.... than you people.  So as i am driving and ignoring calls from work, emails from work, cried of help from work, injured people on the highway, monsoon warnings, deadly heat and the sad fact that I left my Ray-Bans up in Michigan I am typing in Google searches of "Street Tacos" along with a city name.

I have come to think of "street tacos" as two corn tortillas, overlapping with any meat (other than ground beef which is verboten) along with some onion, cilantro and a lime wedge.  That is the street taco.  Sadly there is no Wikipedia definition of "street taco" but I am going to stand by my definition.  A lot of interesting things come up but when traveling at high speed along the highway and avoiding deer and occasionally people you cannot read too closely.  Hy the way... this is another way I give too much.  DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE.

Even when you have the whole day it is difficult to eat tacos too many times.  It wears you out.  They burn.  They got processed (sometimes unhappily by your body.  They can kill you.  There, I said it.  When booming over highway 80 and stiffing the toll booth lady for a dime I came across a place in Joliet called Ricos.  All i read was "it is in a silver trailer behind the SuperMercado.  What could possibly go wrong.  With the iPhone I got my directions and off I went!  The Google Maps gave me a stupid way to get there but that happens.  I got there and BOY did I get there.  I arrived around 11:30 to a full parking lot and had to jockey.  there were anglos around but not too many and I spotted the trailer and knew I had done well.

It was... beautiful.  I watched the two gentlemen in front of me order their lunches and tried to gain my bearings.  There were tubs of sodas from other countries and the menu was half in Spanish, half in english.  Everyone around me was speaking Spanish and I had read about their pork tacos and I ordered them and stood around,  pretending to stare at my phone as life teemed around on the parking lot.

My tacos came up and she put them in a styrofoam container and put them in a plastic grocery bag and I hopped in my car and was on my way.  Twisting out of Joliet and back onto 80 I sampled my first one and it was chewy, spicy perfection.  I had an iced tea which I needed to gulp and I got my big allergic sweat on as I got on 55 and headed south.  This place is about 3 minutes off the highway in Joliet.  I will be back.

Then I decided to double down.  I tried to find something in Springfield and if anyone has a place for street tacos in Springfield, I want to know about it.  Striking out on "the Google" I then tried Bloomington which was just a little too close but.... what the hell.  There were a couple of places but ultimately I chose La Carniceria.  It too was awesome.  Three more tacos Pastor that looked like this.  

Not Everyone is crazy about tomatoes on their street tacos.  These were good and they were served with a green (verde) and a red sauce.  I have found generally that the green sauces are  milder.  These too were OUTSTANDING!  One of the sad casualties of the outing was my WEATON T-Shirt but there prices a man has to pay for this type of searching and eating for the benefit of other people.  Trying to find highway tacos... my white whale... my quest.... as I said... I give too much.  Google map these things.  You dont need me to do it.  When you head north on 55 to Chicago or points further north... think tacos... this delicious and enjoy and thank you hard working diner reviewer.

Election 2012: Debate Stupidity

Soooo... the first debate.  I watched.  I watched the whole thing. I talked on the phone a little but I watched.  I thought Obama looked like a President and did a pretty weak job getting after Romney.  I thought Romney looked pretentious and unlikable but very competent and certainly "Presidential", whatever the hell that means.  I don't like the debates and I watch them skeptically as if it is kabuki theater.  I think intelligent people should read the news as it comes out from different sources.  Read editorials by the thinkers on both sides of the debate and try and decide which of these two deeply flawed, but brilliant men might best lead us through the next four years of pain.  Jim Leher the moderator did a fine job and was probably too nice to Obama which did make Obama seem weaker.  Still, it was not a disaster.

Until it was over.  And I flipped around with the remote.  And I found that the mainstream media, accross the board call the President a loser, a resounding loser and the drum beat got louder and louder.  It was a disaster for the President.  It was a beating!  It was carnage never seen before on Television.  Romney was Mike Tyson stomping in and beating the crap out of whimpering, simpering, frightened Obama.  The race...OVER!

This followed three weeks of Romney on the run.  47%.  A stupid convention and belated release of Tax returns where he paid more than he owed (something he thought a Presidential person would not do) and he was slipping.  But not anymore.  The media needs a horse race and he could win.  We are 51-49 country.  It looks like the swing States are for Obama but even those States it is close.  With the media coverage every gaffe is magnified and whether it is MSNBC or FO or all the cattle in between the news makes itself.

I am ambivalent about who wins.  I will likely vote for the President.  I think he took a world, not a country that had already fallen off the cliff and thrashed around with it and we did not die.  I suspect that we likely needed to die.  I suspect that we need a global depression to bottom out and clear the dead wood and really rebuild.  But no one wants the pain, least of all me.  So we keep kicking the can down the road.  Whomever wins this election has my prayers and should have yours too.  We are a divided country of know nothing, know it alls who only listen to voices that reaffirm our ideas and no one is willing to say the hard truths which i think are as follows:
1.   We all have too high and unsustainable a life style which we developed treading on the most bounteous natural resources on earth and then piled on some bubbles of tech and real estate and cheap money.
2.  We live in the US in an economy where 70% of it is driven by consumerism rather than production an that is not a sustainable model.
3.  We have an entitlement society that has built up over the last 200 years pushing paying the debts off till tomorrow and whether we stop today, tomorrow or not at all that debt will eventually crush us.
4.   We will all have to work harder and longer to make less and retire later, if at all.
5.   We will have national Healthcare, hopefully like Canada and the service will be adequate for most of us and not cutting edge and not as personalized and in some cases substandard to what we had before.  It will not allow that millions be spent to keep anyones 90 year old parents alive.  That will suck.
6.   Social security will pay out half of what it does now if it survives at all.

But there is a second part to that.  We are America and while i do not buy in to "American Exceptionalism" (I think God made people, people) I do believe that we are an extraordinary people and extraordinarily blessed people.  We as a people need to stop whining, stop being afraid, stop suspecting that everyone is out to take our stuff.  We need to be more charitable.  Go to church, or Mosque or Synagogue more and worship God with our brothers and sisters and for those who are not religious, those of us who are need to pray for them and lead by our example.  We need to stand up and BE the greatest country on earth and we need to do it quietly, and humbly and then when we get our own house in order we need to see what we can do to help God's people in other countries.  But there is going to be pain and suffering and disappointment in the next four years if you base your happiness on money, things and status.

There will be more debates.  In town hall meetings I would love to see people demand the truth.  What exemptions will you cut Mr. Romney.  How will I keep my house without the mortgage exemption?  President Obama, the top 1% cant pay for everything so you need to tell me how much taxes are going to go up to support health care for everyone.  How much Mr. President and how can I trust you to do it after the last 4 years?  Mr. Romney, why do you think "trickle down" works when any of the "gains" you point to from that were clearly the product of unsustainable bubbles?  President Obama, why couldn't you embrace the hard truths of Simpson Bowles?

That is the shit I want to see.  Until then it is all background news, sound bites and bullshit.  We have a right to expect more from our candidates and our media.  OK... I am done.  Sorry for the rant.  Very annoyed.  I might be off my meds.  Go Cards!