How did I end up in St Louis you may ask? Wedding. So out went, sans wife and kids. Sleep was great but otherwise I don't really like going to weddings w/out my wife anymore. Not looking to hook up w/ bridesmaids and not looking to get blackout drunk so really I am just missing my dance partner. Anywho, St. Louis is an interesting city. Not like cool interesting but like odd interesting. Very small but spread out. There is no traffic. The houses are mostly small brick numbers. It seems friendly enough I suppose and pretty livable. The cool section is not cool though and it is not really nice or special in any way. It is just very nondescript. I suppose that is fine. It is like that super average person drinking a boring beer, eating a burger no cheese at the local Applebee's. I was staying at the Moonshine Hotel on the Delmar Loop. It was nice. Big clean room, nice shower, friendly service, not expensive, nice rooftop bar. The loop itself is supposed to be very hip. It isn't. It is fine, there are a couple places to eat and some ok bars, and a couple comic book stores and vintage clothing stores. But it just doesn't have that "something". It is a safe but slightly seedy area. For instance, there was a nuisance abatement van in the local gas station all weekend, and a random guy tried to get in my parents' rental car, but I never felt unsafe.
Highlights? I had a very nice lunch at the Mission Taco joint. It had good, well seasoned fresh tasting ingredients. I would say it is similar to El Cortijo locally but quite a bit better. I had Neploata (?) or cactus, a beef brisket, and a slow roasted pork shoulder. All three were great. Service was not awesome. It was pretty inexpensive. Interesting sidebar... St. Louis seems to be pissed that Bud sold out to a non-U.S. company. They do not sell it in decent places and treat it like Old Milwaukee. They do have a bunch of local breweries and a large selection of different beers. None of them are good. Schafly in particular is a bland over malted glass of crap. But they love it? Ok, That night we had a party at Pi pizza. We had mostly deep dish style pies. They were ok. I mean, pizza is never really that bad right? This was good, I liked it fine. Pretty solid apple pie. The next morning I stopped by Piccione Pastry shop. Store hours say it opens at 9AM. Door was still locked at 9:30. This was not atypical. While generally friendly, service was slow and a little blase. Save for the Moonrise which was very attentive. The pastries themselves were good. The bomboloni, or donuts... were awesome. The meringue cookie was a little dry but pretty good. To be fair I ate that one when I came back drunk after the wedding so, you know, take that review w/ a grain of salt. Finally, the Blueberry Hill. A total tourist trap owned I think (at one point) by Chuck Berry. They have a walk of fame by the way which has all sorts of funny characters. So back to the Blueberry. They stole their food from Denny's. It was terrible. Pretty good Bloody Mary. The walls were covered w/ chatchkies and all sorts of crap. We did have fun playing BuckHunter on a big flat screen for awhile. Otherwise it is a pass.
The arch is actually pretty impressive. So there you have it. No reason to go there unless to want to chill out and watch a ball game. But if you do go it will be fine and you will probably have a fine time?
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