Fried Brain Sandwich

India's Rasoi is planning to relocate their Central West End location. They will move from the smallish space on 4569 Laclede around the corner into half of the ground floor in the Forest Park Hotel Apparments that once housed Harold's Deli.

Annother change on Euclid is the opening later this month of Pickles Deli in the site that was formerally the home of Strata.

I am vacation this week. I'll be at my parent's hurricane escape home in Columbia, Mississippi for a couple of days. Then we are driving over to Birmingham, Alabama to check out the food scene and perhaps hit some Bar-B-Que in Tuscaloosa. Check back for reports on what we find.

Update:
Our restaurant schedule so far:
Saturday 7/14:
- Lunch: Frankie & Johnnies, New Orleans
- Dinner: The Backdoor Cafe, Columbia

Sunday 7/15:
- Lunch: The Round Table, Columbia
- Dinner: Chez LuLu, Birmingham

Monday 7/16:
- Lunch: Niki's West, Birmingham
- Dinner: Bottega, Birmingham

Tuesday 7/17:
- Lunch: Bettola, Birmingham
- Dinner: Highlands Bar and Grill

Wednesday 7/18
- Lunch: The Bottle Tree Cafe, Birmingham
- Dinner: The Hot and Hot Fish Club, Birmingham

Thursday 7/19
- Lunch: Archibald's Bar B. Q. Tuscaloosa

STOP THE PRESSES! Food Fit For Feasting Found in Flyover

The New York Times in an article by Joe Drape on Wednesday was Shocked! Shocked! to discover that "...smaller cities such as Kansas City, Mo., and St. Louis have sustained not just good individual restaurants but packs of them."

The article focused mainly on KC, but extrapolated its findings to other Midwest cities -- St. Louis, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis. Two major themes emerged. Top quality local restaurants are springing up or are being reinvigorated -- 40 Sardines, Bluestem, and American Restaurant. And serious food outlets from the coasts are expanding into the heartland -- Dean & DeLucca and Lidia Bastianich (Lidia’s) in Kansas City, and Wolfgang Puck and Jean-Georges Vongerichten with restaurants in Minneapolis.

I had the chance to eat at Debbie Gold's 40 Sardines last summer and it was one of my top five meals of the year.

All this week (July 23 through 27, 2007) the New York Times is inviting questions from readers to Pete Wells, the Dinning Editor. Click here to go to the NYT website and ask your question. Below is mine:

My basic question is who will replace R.W. "Johnny" Apple. The easy answer, of course, is that no one can. Mr. Apple ranged from Sydney to Oxford (MS and Eng.) to Walla Walla, going where the food was. His death last fall has left something of a gap in national (and international) food coverage. Perhaps not coincidentally, there appears to be a new voice on the food page. Joe Drape wrote about horse racing on the sports page up until June 15. After a month "off" his byline has now appeared twice in the food pages, both on articles about food (or least restaurants) in other parts of the country. What exactly is Mr. Drape's beat, and does it focus more on food (which Mr. Apple tended to do) or more on the business of food.

Follow Up: Here is the answer to my question from Mr. Wells.
You're right, I'm sorry to say. R.W. Apple Jr. truly was irreplaceable. He died the week before I started here, and I'll always regret missing my chance to work with him.

Joe Drape isn't trying to fill those big shoes but I'm happy he's here. He is pinch-hitting for Dining while Julia Moskin is on maternity leave. The summer is a quiet period on the horse beat, apart from the races in Saratoga, so Joe is working some new muscles as a food reporter. (And now I will stop using inappropriate sports metaphors.) He and I are looking together for stories about the culture of food and dining; the piece he wrote about Tao Las Vegas was, it's true, a bit of a business story, but I think he'll get a chance to explore some other ways into the subject we cover. I've never thought that one needed to be a "food writer" to write about food.

August is tough on restaurants. The heat, the vacations, and the looming start of school conspire to make August the worst month for most restaurants. One solution is to close up and go on vacation yourself (the French proprietaires do this en masse in August, to the consternation of everyone else). The American solution is to rally around the Chamber of Commerce (or something similar) and have a sale. Thus we have the third annual St. Louis Downtown Restaurant Week.

Running from August 13 through August 18 2007, 25 downtown restaurants are doing 3 course meals (tax and tip not included) for $25. There are no tickets to buy, no coupons to clip. Just show up at your favorite restaurant. Better yet, call and make a reservation. (Let's see, 12,500 people showed up last year at 25 different restaurants over 6 nights and left Cahokia at 1:15 traveling west at 53 miles per hour. Yeah, according to my math, reservations are a really good idea).

Even better yet, make reservations at 6 of your favorite restaurants on 6 different nights. Or 5 on 5 nights. Or even 4 on 4 nights. The list of 25 is solid from top to bottom and it includes some of the stellar spots in the city -- An American Place, Lucas Park Grille, Mosaic, Red Moon, and Wasabi. A $25 three course dinner is a very good deal these days and this is your chance to get downtown and see what all the buzz is about.

Below is the complete list of restaurants. Click here to check out the menu that each is offering. Rosemount wines is helping to sponsor Downtown Restaurant Week, and most of the participating restaurants are offering pours at $5 a glass. You can also make a donation to Operation Food Search, by including a $5 Extra Helping on your final bill.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about an emergency run I made to La Vallesana on Cherokee Street. I was in such a hurry to score some Tacos al Pastor that I didn't bring my camera. Shooting some good food porn is surely enough of a reason to go back.

Tacos at Pastor

I went inside to place my order and noticed some shrimp on the grilled. They had been marinated in oil and chili paste and had some onion tossed in. It reminded me of a dish I created many years ago at The Upperline -- Grilled Shrimp on Cornbread with Garlic Mayo. I asked for an order whatever it was they were making and they brought out a Quesadilla Camarones. The flour tortilla was grilled crispy on one side and had some melted cheese, the shrimp, lettuce, and a dab of sour cream on the other. The textual contrast between the crispiness of the shell and the softness of the shrimp was good. But the creaminess of the cheese and sour cream tended to over-envelope the flavor the shrimp.

Quesadilla Camarones