YOLK.lore

I'm calling from the diner

the diner on the corner

I ordered two coffees

one is for you

the cups are so close

the steam is rising

The Slant/The Diner-Ani DiFranco

 Sooooo….sometimes your humble reviewer lucks out and has a chance to hit a new place.... On it’s very first morning.  In its very first hour of existence.  Such was the case this morning when I had the pleasure of going to the opening day of YOLKlore  Crestwood is woefully short on breakfast options.  Bread Co (Sunset Hills), Mc Donald's.  White Caste (Webster).  The best option is obviously the Courtesy Diner on Laclede and Heege but that is pretty far east.  Watson Road near the late and much lamented Crestwood Plaza is a breakfast desert.

At Grant and Watson sits a poor little strip mall on the corner.  It contains a cigar store, a vape store, an oriental massage place… in short a pretty high end location.  Formerly the location occupied by YOLKlore was a fish and chicken place which has expanded and moved down the road.  Anyway, Yolklore is only a mile from my south Webster (upper Crestwood) manse and so I was excited to check out a neighborhood option.  I mean...I could walk there!

It is at best an unassuming location.  There is signage but it is minimal and when i went in there was still an “Opening Soon” banner hanging from the wall outside.  It seems slightly sterile (clean) but not off putting and the staff was welcoming and friendly.  It looked so well organized and clean that I assumed it was a chain, which it decidedly is not.  The menu is limited in the sense that there are not voluminous items (Think First Watch where you have 45 things thrown at you) but has nice diversity and runs gamut from pancakes to biscuits and gravy with a lot of eggs in between.

http://yolklore.com/menu-1/

I walked in and walked to the counter to place my order and after reviewing options I ordered “The Classic Breakfast” and then gave them my name and got my iced tea and had a seat.  They immediately came to my table with a smackerel of St. Louis’s own gooey butter cake.  It was excellent and welcoming.  There are no waiters or waitresses.  My food came up in about 5 minutes and was, in a word, perfect.  They serve on press board basket/plates (which is sort of off putting for me) and they are very functional and I would guess cut down on their labor costs.  

Frequent reader will not my obsession with hash browns.  They don't have them.  They have instead “smashed” potatoes and what they were was two small brown skinned potatoes (I wont say “artisinal” since it has become a meaningless term) but two very nice little potatoes, roasted and it appeared browned slightly in a skillet and browned.  Not crispy but VERY flavorful.  The eggs (over easy) were perfectly prepared.  The sausage (they grind their turkey and chorizo sausage) I ordered was sage and I found it didn't have the kick I like from sage but it was more than adequate.  

If there was a weak spot on the plate it was either that or the side of biscuit and gravy that came with it.  The gravy was perfect in consistency but once again, like the sage sausage, lacked “POP” but not everyone likes the pepper like I do.  The biscuit I found problematic.  I believe it was perfectly done for what it was but it was a heavier (critically I would say “leaden”) biscuit and I prefer lighter.  This was almost scone like in density and I definitely prefer a fluffier product.

I LIKED IT!

I salt n pepper before I taste and since this is a chef driven breakfast place, they might not appreciate that.  I am attributing either that, or opening day jitters but they have no salt n pepper condiments and when i asked they gave me some Mc Cormick grinders from the kitchen which were excellent but a little disjointed and awkward needing to ask.  The seating also might be problematic for some.  They have a long table and high stools up the middle with stools around two edges and a ledge table for eating.  Might not be the best place for a breakfast meeting with those options but they did have a pair of two tops and a four top for regular seating.

Over all I would give this 4.5 Slingers on the 5 scale.  It is really good and really high end without being too pricey.  My breakfast was 10 bucks and although they don't have servers they do have a tip jar at the counter.  While not a “value” place it is really excellent food.  The owners were there on opening day and they seem to have worked out a lot of the kinks by doing breakfast pop ups at places like Byrd n Barrel.  This place is a keeper and I am excited to direct you to go there and give them a shot. This could be my new “home base”.

They also have a DRIVE THROUGH!

Good background Article from the RFT: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/foodblog/2016/04/22/new-chef-driven-breakfast-restaurant-yolklore-will-open-in-crestwood

Sauce Article: http://www.feastmagazine.com/the-feed/article_ae09e76a-f03c-11e5-9339-5b7f1d43e724.html

Soooo… the election.  8 years ago this space was rife with politics.  The ascent of Barack Hussein Obama was stunning.  We were tired of Bush.  It was clear our country had made a mistake by going into Iraq and had indeed made the world less safe.  People like me pinned their hopes and dreams on this man.  This broken man.  Different than the rest of us but really no different and idiots like me thought he could transcend the system.  Pull our country together...Hopey Changey type stuff.  Oh well.

He was not transcendent.  Even worse he galvanized the people who disagreed with him.  They were dispersed and weak and dispirited from the Bush Presidency.  But when faced with a liberal black man with a super majority they came together… an angry 20% to block vote for change and whipping up enough fear the Republicans swept that democratic majority out in 2010 and more importantly took over ⅔ of the state house just in time for the census and reapportionment cementing the divide through Gerrymandering that would make Elbridge Gerry very, very proud.

The Tea Party Rose.

The Republican Party began to be commandeered by its base.  The leadership of the party went along with the whipped up frenzy assuming they could control it and… it turned on them. Classic Republican leaders dropped like flies because they were not conservative enough.  RINOs.  Republicans in name only.

But Obama got re-elected.  

Half the country was scared by the strident right which had been whipped into a frenzy by their leaders to fear the liberal, progressive, community organizer, Kenyan, Muslim President and his ilk.

Two sides who hate and fear one another and above all despise and distrust our political system.  Blow it up and tear it down!

The Base of the Democrats rallied around Bernie Sanders pulling the Democrats further to the right.  The base of the Republicans never rallied around anyone sporting 15 or 16 candidates and it looked to be a free for all but it was never even close.  The base argued about who was purest and the entertainer, megalomaniac who understood the media hijacked the entire process with a solid base of 30% in each state who were feeling angry, disenfranchised and they wanted the guy who looked like the biggest asshole to be their bully for change.  And they got him.  In Spades.

So now we are left with a bad choice.  Hillary Clinton is an old, self dealing pol.  She and her husband were low level dealers who have maintained a legacy of self enrichment post Presidency which is unparalleled in American History.  She is not likeable but she is smart and motivated and is a product of our system.  She would be the most disliked and mistrusted candidate in history but for her competitor.  Her competitor is a self aggrandizing, narcissistic sociopath who has never done anything for another human being that he did expect to get a personal or business advantage from.  I don't know why he ran but at this point he is behaving like the proverbial dog that caught the car.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/

It is going to be a Hobbesian choice of epic proportions.

We will end up as divided as we started. I wonder how our grandchildren will judge us for the “leadership” we have raised up.  I do believe our country and our constitution will survive as it always has but we all need to think again about when we are going to stop villainizing our leaders, defunding our government and making sure that they cannot do the job we elected them to.  We will need to have courage to find a consensus and a way to move forward as more than a divided nation and find some new leadership that will not manipulate a minority within their own party to disenfranchise the good old american middle.  The disenfranchised middle is the group of people who should be railing about taking our country back.  We will see.