Tag Archives: restaurants

When in Rome . . .

. . . eat Indian food???  Absolutely!

When we were in Italy last spring, our first dinner in Rome came after we’d been traveling in other parts of the country for over a week, and, quite frankly, we were ready for something other than Italian food.  We made our way to Shanti, an Indian restaurant recommended by one of our guide books, and enjoyed one of the best meals of our entire trip, including one dish in particular.

Fellow blogger Nupur (One Hot Stove) was kind enough to help us identify the dish as malai kofta (see her comment on this post for recipe links).  We haven’t gotten around to making malai kofta ourselves, but we identified a couple of local Indian restaurants that serve the dish.

Over the weekend, we finally made the trek to House of India for our fix.  I liked the idea of their lunch buffet, but I called to investigate and they told me that the malai kofta is never on the buffet.  Further, they ONLY offer the buffet at lunch time.  What to do?

Go for the lunch buffet and order malai kofta from the takeout menu, which is available any time.  Clever, no?

We enjoyed a nice buffet lunch and left with a double order of malai kofta to enjoy later.  I brought a glass container to avoid polystyrene or other disposable plastic to-go containers, and our server agreed to use it, no problem :-)

We heated half of the malai kofta for dinner last night, and it was every bit as delicious as we remembered.

Weekend bicycling whirlwind

The weekend’s bike trips (and restaurant visits — three in one weekend!!!):

Friday

  • South Grand — Lunch at Basil Spice, a Thai restaurant, with Matthew and my FIL.  We dined while watching construction work on the South Grand Great Streets project.  Pad See-iew for him, Pad Thai for her, both with tofu, both off of the $6.95 lunch menu.  We shared our dishes.   Both were good, though we really enjoyed the Pad See-iew.  I came prepared with my own take out containers and was disappointed with the clean plates that resulted from the smaller lunch portions :(
  • The Hill — Errands at the Italian shops.  Purchases included olive oil, dried porcini mushrooms, farro (an Italian grain that I’ve been wanting to try), and Swiss cheese so we can make more reubens.  Unfortunately, our source for affordable dry active yeast has dried up, though I did see a mobster in the bakery, so the stop there wasn’t a total waste.
  • The CWE — Dinner at Terrene.  Terrene, with a focus on local food and sustainability, has been on our radar for some time, but until January, it was on the “allows smoking — do not patronize” list.  (Yes, two restaurants in one day — crazy for us, but we had a Groupon-type thing that needed to be used.)  I’m still a bit hesitant to whip out the camera in restaurants, so no food pics.  We ordered the flatbread, half veg sausage, half mushroom; the gnocchi, and the vegetarian meatloaf with mushroom gravy.  We enjoyed the first two items, but the veg meatloaf was missing something.  I realized later that the only trace of the gravy was three small oyster mushrooms — wish I’d realized that earlier and asked for more gravy.

Saturday

  • Tower Grove South — Winter farmers’ market.  With the beautiful weather, two vendors set up outside the church.  We purchased spinach, a HUGE head of bok choy, green onions, and carrots.
  • Tower Grove South — Trip #2 to the neighborhood for my prenatal appointment at River City Birth, followed by a stop at the new-and-improved Local Harvest Grocery, featuring a nice, spacious bathroom — the highlight of the visit for my poor, cramped bladder ;)   We also bought some bulk dry goods and a local Colby cheese.
  • After this trip, we returned home, where I proceeded to take a 2-hour nap :)   And then there was a car trip :( to Young Ethicals game night for good snacks, games, and fun times.

Sunday

  • The Grove — Church at St. Cronan’s.
  • South Grand — Lunch at Pho Grand with Matthew and my MIL.  We split a vegetarian special and a special curry, though there was some contention about the way they were split — the hungry, hungry hippo pregnant lady may be taking more than her share ;)
  • Interlude to make lemon squares (from our lemons — frozen juice and zest) and do laundry.
  • The Y — if my bike isn’t already out, I usually just walk to the Y, since it’s less than a mile away.  If I’m out and about, and know I might be biking again that day, I lock my bike up outside to save lugging it down and up the basement stairs an extra time.
  • Aaannnddd, another nap — the active transportation takes a lot out of me these days!

Farmhaus, a review

On Thursday night, after a week of wrangling middle schoolers on bicycles in increasingly hot temperatures, I mustered the will to hop back on the bike for a dinner date.  We were torn between Stellina Pasta Cafe (an old favorite) or Farmhaus (something new).  I’d read a couple of good reviews about Farmhaus, so it was on my list of places to try.

Matthew voted for Stellina, and I was too tired to care much one way or the other, so we biked there, only to find a thirty minute wait (not outrageous, but it was already 7:30pm and we were HUNGRY).  Fortunately, Farmhaus was only a few blocks away, so we decided to try our luck there.

We walked in the door and were immediately hit by the strong fishy smell (the seafood is the main component of their menu that is NOT local).  We exchanged a look.  Ultimately, they had a table and a menu with some nice vegetarian options, so we stayed.

We choose between three or four salads that all sounded fabulous, settling on the marinated vegetable salad (not sure that’s the exact name).

It arrived in a canning jar — fun! For ease of eating we dumped it out on the plate.  A flavorful and fresh start to our meal, the corn melted in my mouth, buttery and sweet, a nice compliment to the other veggies.

By this point, after the initial wall of odor and adjustment period,  our olfactory systems became desensitized to the fishy smell.

Next up, sweet potato nachos.  These were only so-so.  To be fair, we made some changes to this dish.  We ordered it without bacon and subbed goat cheese for the blue cheese because someone doesn’t like blue cheese.  They came with some kind of a house-made catsup.  Our homemade catsup beats Farmhaus’, no contest.

We discovered a new wine, a “sweet” shiraz (Jam Jar, S. Africa) that was basically a perfect red wine for us.  Not really “sweet” in our book, but definitely not dry — a perfect dinner accompaniment.

For our entree, we shared the vegetarian succotash, tomatillos, grilled okra, corn, and peppers, served over spoon bread.  Mmm, spoon bread — my first, but definitely not my last, encounter with this food.  We ate this and were very sad that we couldn’t lick up the last bits in the bowl :(   In some cultures, that’s considered very polite.

I don’t have a dessert pic, but we ordered a peach and ricotta pastry.  The pastry was light and flaky, with a generous amount of fresh, local peaches, served hot out of the oven with peach sorbet on top to cool things off.

We chatted with our waiter about local biking options and headed home after a delicious dinner adventure, both glad we ended up at Farmhaus.

Sausage on the side

Everything about the vegetable and sausage panini at Bixby’s in the Missouri History Museum sounded good to me.  Everything but the sausage, that is.  I would have ordered sans sausage, but my grandpa offered to eat the sausage.  I doubt they would have lowered the price of the sandwich if I omitted the sausage, which would have annoyed me, so this worked out well all around.


Hibernating

Are there any animals that hibernate in summer?  If so, I want to be one of them — crawl into a dark, cool cave and not emerge until the temperature returns to somewhat sane levels (i.e., below 80-degrees).

On Friday night, we biked over to Local Harvest Cafe for dinner.  We shared their vegan Green Plate special and a bowl of chilled borscht.  Borscht is basically beet soup, which sounds weird (at least I’ve always thought so and never tried it before), but this soup was amazing!  Mmm, I could eat bowls and bowls!

After dinner, we hit up Tower Grove Park.  I morphed into a little park creature (i.e., put on my Five Fingers), and we played frisbee for awhile.  Before calling it a night, we visited our community garden bed and harvested some beets, carrots, and rutabaga.  Some of those beets are destined to become borscht!

From the time we returned home Friday night, until my 6:15am run this morning, I entered hibernation mode.  I didn’t leave the apartment, other than short jaunts to water the plants on the porch, for over forty-eight hours.  What can I say — I took the heat advisory seriously, but all good things must come to an end.

Happy summer solstice!  (But, Weather, I really don’t need 100-degree heat to convince me it’s summer.  I believe you, okay?  Can you just back off a little now?  Please???)