Summer Reads

 

Soooo… August.  Summer is quickly expiring and you probably have not left your desk or your job for a decent vacation.  This is a sin and a microcosm of what is wrong with our country.  We don’t want “European Style Socialism” but they shut down for August.  People go the water or at least they stop working and that should be the goal of sensible people everywhere.  I know that no one reads anymore but it is still one of the greatest pleasures or summer.  Reading has become a victim of two things in my opinion:

1.    No time

2.    No trusted sources or filters (like music)

99% of people dont care about books at all.  To the extent they care about anything other than FOX NEWS or the business report they read magazines and once again those tend to be more about business and current event than literature.  This is a shame.  As people stop reading their ability to express themselves in writing declines and as I said, this is a shame.  Reading shouldnt be painful so I suggest some summer reads….from east to hard.

“Sweetbitter”-Stephanie Danler

NY Times Book Review-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/books/review/sweetbitter-by-stephanie-danler.html?_r=0

“Sweetbitter” is the best sort of cotton candy.  That does not mean it is crap.  It is very well written, very well paced and excellent.  It is the novel Anothny Bourdain would have written had he been a girl instead of a boy and working front of house instead of the kitchen.  It is a coming of age (late) tale about a midwestern girl moving to NYC and snatching a job as a backwaiter in a great restaurant.  There is romance, competition, mentors, heartbreakers, crazy bosses, funny stories and lots of drinking, cocaine, sex and regret.  She narrates as a sympathetic character and then you get to the authors picture on the jacket flap and it is more like, “boo hoo...pretty girl goes to NYC and gets a job and adventure in the mean city”.  It is kind of trite, kind of funny and kind of sad but as I said, she can write.  If you like food and you like restaurants and you like NYC, it is just a fun read. It requires no thought and in many ways is the perfect summer book.  You can put it down, pick it up and not worry about missing or fogetting anything.

The Fixers:  Michael Thomas

This is another easy read.  It is narrated by an old school, monied, CIA trained art afficianado.  He gets recruited by his old boss to help throw the 2008 election and explains the financial crisis through the lense that Wall Street bought and paid for the 2008 election, pulled strings to make sure that none of their were prosecuted and moreover made sure the government did nothing to impede (and instead actually enhanced) their ability to continue to pilfer and victimize.  It is well written.  Short chapters and speaks very poorly of Wall St. and what Wall Street culture has become.  The narrator eventually and long after the fact has pangs of conscience and there is a longing for the Wall Street and the ethose of old.  He makes very clear that the top 1% of the 1% make their decisions solely on the basis of what is perceived to be “legal” and if it is “legal” there is no question about anything silly like ethics.  He walks you through the whole thing, the mortgage meltdown, the greek crisis, the LIBOR fix, Fannie, Freddie, The Big Short.... Everything.  It is kind of stomach churning and kind of amazing that we survived at all but this too is an easy fun read that also makes you think.

Everybodies Fool-Richard Russo.  This is my personal Book of the Year!  I ave always loved Richard Russo.  “Mohawk”, “Straight Man”, “Nobodies Fool”, “Ransom” and all the rest.  Most of his books are set around upstate New York and the failing industrial economy that seems especially relevant in light of the fact that the rust belt and angry, under employed white people, seemingly left behind have been mobilized to support one of the two cantidates for the most powerful office in the world.  No one writes dialogue or colors characters like Russo and he is the top of his game with this follow up (of sorts) to “Nobodies Fool”.  He takes us back to North Bath NY.  A failed manufactuing town that was poisoned on the way out by industry fouling their streams as well as their downtown.  He draw a colorful list of down in the mouth characters who are all compelling, many of them from “Nobodies Fool” but they have changed as life has continued to kick the shit out of them and their town.  It is a hard book to put down and is so well written as to be mesmerizing.

NY Times Review-http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/books/review/t-c-boyle-reviews-richard-russos-everybodys-fool.html

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.

Carondelet Diner

Soooo… your intrepid reviewer (god that sounds cool), how about “your insipid reviewer”, has been doing the St. Louis Diner Review for...some time now.  Places come and places go and I end up with kind of basic, smug knowledge of where to eat breakfast in St. Louis and always figure, if a place is not pretty new… I have been there.  So, it is with some extreme humbleness and embarrassment that I belatedly bring to you a gem, The Carondelet Diner.

When people ask where it is I describe is at south, south, south, south St. Louis.  This is in the area I think of as “The Real Confluence” which is not where the Missouri and Mississippi meet but instead where the Mighty River Des Peres disgorges it’s viscous content into the Mississippi.  There is a casino there, and some foundries and of course Lemay… on the bad side of River Des Peres.  I would like to say the area is in “resurgence” or even worse in “gentryfing” but that would be a lie.  Although Carondelet sports some fairly recent additions of note (including “Stacked” and Feraros” on Ivory, there is not a whole lot going on.  The place can be found on Davis, two blocks (east/south?) of Broadway at corner of Davis and Reilly..

I felt slightly better when I read this review and realized the place had been shuttered for a long time and was recently (2014) reopened by the Riverside people.  That represents a really fine commitment to food.  

https://www.stlmag.com/dining/carondelet-diner-now-open-under-new-ownership/

I went for breakfast on Saturday and immediately saw their white board of weekly specials which will demand a return for lunch.

It is hard to fault a good whiteboard full of specials.  This is Comfort food with a kapital K.  Fried chicken and mashed potatoes and jack salmon and sometimes catfish and french fries with brown gravy.  I might need to move.

The place has nice ambience and definitely feels working class but not in a broke down way.  The decoration and design are not opulent but instead veer towards comfortable.  Nice booths and spacious tables.  No broken furniture.  If I were to complain it would be that they do not have a counter where you can watch them cook but you can look back through the open kitchen door and see them working.  My waitress was polite and friendly and they had great brewed iced tea.  At the tables around me were primarily men, primarily older, at tables with several people and clearly there were some regulars (always a good sign for me) and a lot of polite conversation with no one talking politics or “Brexit” (whatever that is).  No one gave me the stink eye when I came in and that is as close anything gets to welcoming at 7:00 A.M. on a Saturday morning.

I perused the menu and saw that they had hash browns instead of the dreaded “breakfast potatoes” which as anyone knows are almost always an unforgivable sin.  They served a lot of plates “smothered” with gravy including a burger and breakfast.  They also offered a steak n egg breakfast for under 10 bucks and country fried steak which will need to be sampled along with a mess of breakfast sandwiches and omelettes.  Food was prepared and fast and served hot.  I got the smothered breakfast with only one biscuit (two seemed unhealthy) and it was...awesome.  Biscuits were a little heavy but perfect with the gravy which had an accessible amount of spice but allowed me to pepper it up to taste.

I can rate this as a 5 out of 5 Slingers as being worth the trip.  Sometimes it pays to drive around parts o town you don't frequent.  Get out of your silo and head south for some breakfast!

Soooooo….I love the Old 97’s.  I have seen them, at the Old High Point, at the Old Cicero's, at the Duck Room, the Pageant, Mississippi Nights, Bonnaroo, Off Broadway, the Old Rock House and more...likely many more.  It is just kind of something you do when they are in town...you go see them.  I think they remind me of my early 30’s.  I thinked I peaked then and I didn't even know I had a peak.

They came on May 24th to “The Ready Room” with The Heartless Bastards and BJ Barham of American Aquarium.  The Ready Room is on Manchester in The Grove and I want to love it.  I want to love it so much but, after several attempts to love it with several bands I love… it is a shit show.  It is just horrible.  It has, no ambience.  It has horrible sound quality and the sight lines and “space” are questionable in both planning and execution.  The only redeeming thing about the place is that they schedule quality acts (good booking) and they have a very professional bartending staff that can really rip out the drinks and the beers in a timely manner and this is no small deal.

I come here not to praise The Ready Room but to bury it.  You really cannot believe how bad it is until you go and hear a band you love.  I saw Lucero there last year and had the exact same impression but I forget (I am old).  You get there and there is no street presence or marquee on the place.  It is like walking up to an AAMCO or some body shop. It is a cool neighborhood.  Sanctuaria is right across the street.  They could help create environment but...they don't.

I mean...cmon.  AT least try.  You walk in and they basically have a card table set up where they take your ticket and give you your 21 and up wristband.  Then you enter the bar and the venue and room with the stage in it are on your left.  The floors are cement.  The walls are cinder block.  Bar area has a 30 foot cinder block wall which separates from the music room.  They say it can accommodate 750 but they probably do 500 comfortably. The ceiling is… warehouse ceiling.  There is no baffling or material to keep anything from getting lost or just bouncing around sound wise.  Additionally there is no place to go but outside to get away from the sound.  It is just a horrible venue with no personality and no one should pay there and no one should go see a show there because it disappoints in every way.  

Even their website is boring.

http://www.thereadyroom.com/about/

They doubled down on stupid at the Old 97s show.  It was a Tuesday night.  Doors at 7, show at 8 but 3 acts.  3 acts on a school night is the type of stupidity I formerly had to deal with at Off Broadway.  New management has made that place a pleasure to go see a show.  But they always had three acts and always started late.  So on a Tuesday night Barham goes off on time and I only caught the end of his set but he was great.  Good voice and deeply, DEEPLY troubling lyrics.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vp8BH8eR_A

His lyrics are what I cheerfully refer to as “gun in his mouth” type lyrics but a great, mournful voice and good guitar.  I will need to check out his band… but that is not the point.

He got done and The Heartless Bastards went on.  I have nothing against this band.  Cool name.  Two girls in the band.  One of them is lead singer.  Good band, good guitarist, good singer.  I don't know any of their names and I never will because I don't care.  They came out and played their set.  No eye contact.  No stories.  No relationship building with crowd.  Nothing about the band stands out or should stand out.  They are really talented and I don't care and they played a set like they don't care.  Eminently missable.  But they kept playing and they kept playing.  Way more than 45 minutes.  You cannot play that type of music and Americana songs and be shoe gazers. They played for two full beers and I know because I left the floor and went and stood back by the bar because they bored and annoyed me.  They remind me of a less interesting and less talented Continental Drifters.  By the time they got off and did the equipment change it was 10:30 before the Old 97s went on!  I am too old to have the headliner start at 10:30 on a Tuesday.  This is stupid.

But Rhett Miller and the boys came on and did what they always do.  They rocked it, sweated it and chatted it up in a sing along for all to see and participate in.  Rhett whipped his hair and although they started without the typical, “Hi y’all, we are the Old 97s from Dallas Texas”... they still brought it.  I have seen these guys play so many times and Rhett Miller play so many solo shows that I should be bored.  Other than the shitty sound at The Ready Room, the band plays its straight ahead, rollicking music which provide a plate for you to eat up Millers 2 ½ minute poems.  Just to get a feeling of what they look like and sound like...watch this.  Another great song.  Kind of a long intro but it is worth listening to as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7-L7QmTo3A

Everyone in the band is great but Rhett Miller with the lyrics, the boyish charm and the good looks drives every show along with Ken Bethea’s relentless guitar.  It is not pretty guitar but it attacks and he has been throwing his ass into it for so long that it is a beautiful thing to behold. I really cannot say enough that you need to go see these guys the next time they come but hopefully they will not come to The Ready Room, because it ain’t ready and never will be.

Sooooo...Music has been problematic for me of late.  I am no longer buying music but just renting it and this continues a long occurring trend of “disassociation” from information about the music.  It is a long way from the liner notes I grew up with when I could often find everything I wanted to know about the album.  Who played on all the tracks, where they were recorded, who produced, who wrote.  The lyrics often we all there as well as a “feel” that you were really understanding what the artist was presenting.  You were delving deeper.  It often provided factoids to pretentiously throw at your ever diminishing group of friends who tired of such “card tricks” but still.  I miss them.  CD’s provided the same information but in tiny impersonal print and when I started buying from iTunes the separation continued knowing less and less other than artist name and track name...finally arriving at streaming music where other people (or algorithms) curate play lists tailored specifically for the hundreds of thousands of similarly pretentious pieces of shit like myself who still like to listen to new music.

My brain had tired of the game, reading reviews etc… in order to go deeper.  I was becoming a grazer.  A little of this, a little of that…”oh that is pleasant”.  Awful.  But it happens.  It is just a lot of work to keep up and with digital ALL the music in the world other than Prince and Bob Seger is at your fingertips.  But no filter.  No trusted sources other than NPR, No Depression and Lefsetz and that ain't much.  Rolling Stone long ago became irrelevant.  If it was not a major label release Jann Wenner wasn't having his folks review.  But last year with Courtney Barnett and Wakahatchie I started to try and list again and as always when you listen, there is a LOT of good music out there and there is even some great music.  Although I have my own peculiar tastes I will posit the Band Car Seat Headrest and their latest “Teens of Denial” is great.

The Pitchfork review is worth a read but to give you an idea of the grandeur of the songwriting and the angst:

“Teens of Denial is guitar-driven music filled with book smart lyrics concerned largely with depression, which naturally means that Toledo has been championed in some circles as an “indie rock savior,” whatever that means.”

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21673-teens-of-denial/

I mean Pitchfork is too pretentious 90% of the time to gush.  How uncool is that?  But they nail this one.  Will Toledo is the driving force behind it and in this heroin age he writes of denial, dysfunction and a personal dystopia that the sick and the lame (me) need as we thrash around with out brilliant, depressing, mundane, fabulous, perfect, disastrous and disappointing days.

I don’t have the strength

(I don’t have the time)

I poured myself a drink

(I told myself a lie)

You know I’ve worried

(You know I’ve tried)

Don’t you know I’m not strong?

(Don’t you know I’m not kind?)

Someone’s getting lucky

(Someone’s calling the cops)

Someone take me away

(Someone make it all stop)

I had a bright tomorrow

(I spent it all today)

Now I am silent at last

Now I have nothing to say

If I’m being honest with myself

I haven’t been honest with myself

-Vincent

Now I have to be honest.  I love songwriters who reference Van Gogh.  I love clever word play and if you don't listen to lyrics than you cannot appreciate how brilliant this guy is.  I always figure when I hear something like this that I am catching a guy who is peaking and it is a brilliant feeling.  Most of them never become greats who crank out brilliant music for years.  Their personal psychosis and their talent allow them to deliver a shooting star and then they thrash around but god help me I love the rush of feeding on his brilliance.  

Every song has trite, clever chestnuts.  I remember reading someone talking about alcoholics anonymous and saying the hardest thing is to give yourself up to the cliches like “one day at a time” but equally hard was realizing that those cliches tend to encompass huge and Biblical truths. In his upbeat song “Fill In The Blank” Toledo explains….

I’m so sick of (fill in the blank)

Accomplish more, accomplish nothing

If I were split in two I would just take my fists

So I could beat up the rest of me

You have no right to be depressed

You haven’t tried hard enough to like it

Haven’t seen enough of this world yet

But it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts

Well stop your whining, try again

No one wants to cause you pain

They’re just trying to let some air in

But you hold your breath you hold your breath you hold it

Hold my breath I hold my breath I hold it

I could go on reading and quoting his lyrics all day but the bottom line is this a great lyricist who with his band sounds like the great Ray Davies of the Kinks.  That is a distinctive voice and I don't think I have ever heard anyone and thought…”Ray Davies”.  How cool is that.  The atonal thrash that I love so much is Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Junior cacophony of brilliance and sometimes veers to the brilliance of my fave Built to Spill.

Buy this.  Rent this. Stream this.  Dream this.  You need music and you need to be distracted and you need to be reminded that your pain is not suffered alone and that maybe your pain isn't pain at all.  Thank you will Toledo.  You can bleed for me anytime.

The Best Steak House: The Diner Review

Soooo...what is the best steak house in St. Louis?  Mortons? Ruth’s Chris?  Flemings? 801 Chophouse?  Prime 1000?  J. Gilberts?  Annie Gunns? Certainly they all have much to offer but for lunch?  For 20 Bucks for a steak, salad, potatoes and...TEXAS TOAST!  There is only one choice and it is the obvious choice.  The Best Steak House!

So there are those in my little silo that eschew meat consumption.  I have always insisted on eating meat at every meal.  The evidence is monumental and incontrovertable that this diet is not good for you and my gut is likely living proof but the science says avoid meat.  I politely disagree and am hitting and age where I can look and see that I would have missed a lot of good food and lot of pleasure and if that has been the cost for meat… well it has been a price worth paying.  But meat cannot be good for you.  It tastes too good.  Let’s not even discuss the ethics of consuming piece of one of God’s creatures. I generally agree with the Reverend Horton Heat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQynViAF6Ds

Midtown and Grand Center and the SLU campus have certainly been brought back by Father Biondi, the resurgent FOX, KWMU, KDHX, Channel Nine, Jazz St. Louis and for God’s sake Pappy’s and now Southern.  Many good things but there is only one place that has been doing the work at Midtown, day after day since 1964.  Three years after I was born!  One of the Kennedys (one of the better ones anyway) was still alive when they opened.  52 years! More!

http://www.beststeakstl.com

This place is awesome.  Their peak time according to Google (Google knows all) is 3:00 in the afternoon.  They are only open from 10-9 so you cannot count on them for late night elegant dining or really elegance of any kind but what you can find is a unique steak and chicken cafeteria experience.  There is normally street parking on Grand with a meter and if not there is surely parking within one block.

So…. You walk in and go through the line.  Normally when you are about 10 people away from the counter the man grilling the meet calls for your order.  Your choices are steak, chicken, hamburger and shrimp in several different forms.  I think I normally go for the 12 oz sirloin but they also offer rib eye.  I have never tried the burgers or the chicken or the shrimp but I think on my next trip that there is a steak and shrimp option.  The shrimp is of course as God intended...fried.

Each meal comes with a salad, baked potato and Texas toast.  They will fry some potatoes on the griddle for you and normally have a mess of them sitting on the counter and they will of course cut up onions in them and melt some cheese on them… because that is the way you like it.  But the baked potatoes look pretty good too.  The salad is a parsimonious affair of iceberg head lettuce with a tomato slice.  When you reach the counter you can chose Italian, Russian or 1000 Island dressing. By the time you have made it past the salad dressing your meat should be cooked and you check out.

Their drink selection is my only real complaint.  No brewed iced tea, only fountain drinks and fountain tea so bring your own or opt for bottle water because… fountain soda is really just carbonated cancer.  That might be editorializing a little.  I think the price is about 12 bucks so with a dew bucks in the tip jar it is a $15.00 dollar lunch and it looks like this.

Now this is not my wife’s idea of a food steakk.  I like the taste fat gives meat but don't enjoy a lot of gnawing so you need to put the steak knife to work.  Most of the regulars get their steaks well done but I cannot cotton to that and so go medium rare and the steak is nothing if not delightful.  A healthy dose of salt and pepper and it is a really nice break from your regular lunch.

The clientele are eclectic and delightful and generally pull me out of my bubble of Clayton professional people.  I always feel like I am the one who has never been there as the crowded place seems full of regulars.  There is an older man and woman who walk table to table clearing trays and picking up glasses.  You will need to set aside 45 minutes to an hour for the lunch but take a break from your usual affair and treat yourself to a quick steak served by nice people.  Fresh cooked food, pretty fast.  It is not Ruth’s Chris, or Morton's and for that I think midtown can be grateful. You also get change back for your $20.00 which will not get you a salad at any of those places mentioned.  Bring a friend!