respublica

A 4th of July tradition-hot dog eating contest

Nathan's Hot Dogs on Coney Island each 4th of July sponsors a hot dog eating contest.  Contestants see how many hot dogs and buns they can consume in 12 minutes.  This year the time limit will be shortened to 10 minutes in a nod to what someone discovered was the actual historical time frame.

Until last year, Takeru Kobayashi of Japan won the prized "Mustard Belt" and a check for $10,000, several years in a row.  It was thought no one was going to be able to scarf down enough hot dogs take Takeru down.  But last year, American Joey Chestnut won by swallowing 66 dogs and buns.

The contest will be shown on ESPN's Sports Center at 11 and 12 EST.

Sauce Reader's Choice awards for 2008

The July issue of St. Louis' Sauce Magazine has their annual insert section on this year's winners in the readers choice of favorite restaurants by category.  I put it down after reading it last night when it occurred to me something was obviously missing.

Only one Illinois eatery was listed in any category, the 17th Street Bar and Grill received an honorable mention for barbeque.  The 17th Street Bar and Grill is in Murphysboro!  That's it for the Illinois Metro East as far as favorite places to eat in the entire St. Louis area.  No doubt this place has outstanding ribs, it's nationally known, but how can this be?  You have to drive all the way to Murphysboro to find a favorite place in Illinois?

Do Metro East readers not bother filling out the Sauce entries?  Certainly Sauce has many readers on that side of the river and certainly there are good restaurants which have many fans.  I just don't get it. 

I can think of at least one place which should get either first, second, third or honorable mention in its category and that is Bobby's Frozen Custard.  It's a given that Ted Drewes will always take first, but Bobby's is as good as any, better than most others, and is always packed. 

There are good restaurants and bars and hamburgers and pizza and etc all over the Metro East.  This year's Sauce awards has a huge void and will lead many on the west side of the river to continue to believe the metro east has nothing worth the drive.

Are you a bread knife buying chump?

Bill Burge of Stl. Bites, has an informative post on cooking knives and bread knifes in particular. 

The bread knife, "a knife people either don't own or a knife they get bamboozled on."

Candy bar quiz

How many candy bars can you identify by looking a a cross cut of each?

I did pretty good, it's almost embarrassing to admit I know candy bars.

Flood economics

The flood waters swamping Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri are doing much more than forcing people out of their homes. Millions of acres of the best farm land are underwater, a catastrophe which will affect consumers all across the country in the coming year. 

While major cable news channels obsess over Obama's decision not to take public money for his campaign, the part of the country which will have a lot to do with rising food prices, gas prices etc, slowly drowns. 

"You may not load much corn meal or soybean oil into your shopping cart, but you'll pay more for eggs and meat in coming months. Those flooded fields mean that food-price inflation, which has been running at more than 5 percent, will remain a front-burner issue well into next year.

"Corn is the world's most important food crop, and the U.S. is the world's most important producer and most important exporter," said Bill Nelson, a commodities analyst at Wachovia Securities. "Nothing else affects food prices like corn does."

The price of eggs, the price of poultry, the price of beef, the cost of ethanol...all heading up. 

New Zealand Ice Cream Awards

Ice cream chefs (?) in New Zealand competed in that country's ice cream awards and a 22 year old ice cream maker entered 7 events and won 7 medals.

A couple of his winning ice cream flavors were:  Bacon and Egg and Poached Pear and Blue Cheese.

Totally beer

A restaurant in China is beer themed.  No, not posters on the wall and beer bottle salt and pepper shakers, but absolutely everything is beer.  All the dishes on the menu are made with beer, even desserts and coffee.

The waiters dress as beer bottles.

Like a Super Bowl after party whoosy dream.

Maplewood Farmers Market

Wednesdays 4-7.

Set up in the parking lot of the Schlafly Bottleworks.

Lots of beautiful greens today.

The first squash of the season and dill too.  And small potatoes.

You have to get to these places early because people start lining up well before the appointed time.  I can't believe there would be much left at 5 much less 7.

Now they've come for the tomatoes

And not a moment too soon.

A salmonella outbreak from tomatoes has had grocers and fast food restaurants scurrying to rid them from their shelves and sandwiches and salads.

This isn't the first time a vegetable has brought on this illness, we all remember the California spinach of a year ago and the lemon slices in restaurant ice water this year.  This salmonella bacteria is the oddly named, Saintpaul.  How does this happen?  Does washing the tomato eliminate the bacteria?  It must not or stores wouldn't be trashing their inventory.   

On the other hand, having fast food places deciding to just stop putting tomato slices on their sandwiches or salads is fine with me.  I always take them off anyway, they're just so tasteless, quite horrible really.  Do people who live where all these tomatoes are grown get a better version than what we are shipped?

We grow our own tomatoes in summer, but this year it will be some time before any are ripe.  But we can wait, it'll be worth it.

More hot dogs-this time Belleville

One week after Pam's Chicago Dogs and More opened in University City, selling authentic Chicago Vienna beef hot dogs, up comes a story in the BND about another new Chicago Dog place, this time in downtown Belleville.

Named, Hot Dogs!, it has taken over the space at 106 E. Main.  At this point it doesn't appear that their menu includes the traditional partner to Chicago Dogs, Chicago Roast Beef sandwiches.

It's always worth giving each attempt at a Chicago hot dog place a try, especially transplanted Chicago natives who as a group, never seem to outgrow their fondness for this food.

As to Pam's in University City, I've tried it twice.  The dogs are the real thing, the owner gave me a rundown of the provenance to each menu item, all come from Chicago purveyors.  However, Pam's really needs to come up with a more efficient way of filling customers orders and find a way to make get the hot dogs hot.

Both times the hot dogs were downright cold.  This may be due to their not having many customers right now and so they keep the meat frozen and then guess as to whether they've heated long enough when they get an order.  But it's unsettling to get a beautiful, perfect looking, Vienna red hot and then find the dog is cold.  When we got our carry out order home last night we actually took the hot dogs out and zapped them in the microwave.  ugh.  The buns were like ice, the dogs were like ice. 

I hope this practice doesn't last and that they succeed, but for right now, I've pretty much had the last cold dog for awhile.  On the other hand, the roast beef sandwich was hot, but the au jus was put on a little too liberally, absolutely soaking the gonnella roll into a limp nothing.  And with gonnella, that is hard to do.  The frys are hot and crispy and the place is clean as a whistle.

But, they need a chance to succeed, the parts are right, they just need more practice and more customers.  I'll be giving the Belleville Hot Dogs! store a try soon.