Should you find yourself in St. Louis

St. Louis is like our second home. Family, friends, old haunts. We may live in Chicago, but we spend a lot of time in good ol' St. Louis. Though we spend the vast majority of our time with family, we've recently starting venturing into the restaurant scene. First, we had date night last year at Home Wine Kitchen. It was fantastic. We highly recommend it and I wish I had blogged about it last year because, of course, we can't remember much about the food right now.

And then on New Year's Eve, we took advantage of grandparent babysitting and headed out to Basso. This new gastropub is getting rave reviews. It's been open only a year and it's located in the basement of the Cheshire Inn bar (more on that place in a minute). 

It's dark and warm with a huge open kitchen and a large fireplace. The food is designed to be shared in small plates and we found it to be very reasonably priced (though we're probably jaded by Chicago prices). Our first course was curried orzo with pine nuts and currants and a bowl of shishido peppers (Japanese peppers, not too spicy) that you pick up and eat whole. 

We had a main course of crunchy meatballs and an order of fresh made pasta over pork cheek in a celery puree. And we might have also tried the maple bourbon cheesecake. But who can remember these things?

Mike had stumbled upon Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA at a specialty grocery store the day before and picked up some to take to a friend's house. When I saw it on the menu, I knew I wanted to try it also. Very hoppy, but good.

If you're in St. Louis and want to try something a bit more "foodie" and a bit less "White Castle" then you should consider Basso. We already want to return and try the rest of the menu. 

And, by the way, we booked a night at the Cheshire Inn. For those of you near St. Louis, did you realize the place has had a total makeover? It's a British lodge, complete with stuffed bear, roaring fireplace and English paintings. Every room is named for a British author and you can find a book by that author when you arrive in the room. 

I found myself thinking this place would be fun to take the kids to because it really does feel like an old English lodge. Don't get me wrong, the rooms themselves are quite modern and this is in no way a "kid" place. But can you imagine reading Jane Austin or Sherlock Holmes and then going to stay in that room? It could be fun for a kid who loves to read, I think. 

So should you find yourself in St. Louis with a little time to spare, consider these restaurants. We thought they were terrific.

Christmas ornaments 2013

We made our annual trip down to the German Christkindl market at Daley Plaza in Chicago again last week and, per tradition, the kids got to pick out their Christmas ornaments. I have this dream that one day when I'm old and gray, they will bring their own kids to my house and my grandchildren will place all these little wooden ornaments on the tree. Is that weird? No, don't answer that.

Anna chose a little angel ornament

Shockingly, Abe selected a train ornament

As I gently unpacked the kids' ornaments I realized that nearly every ornament we have for Abe is a train. He's got an ornament style. Anna has a pretty wide range of ornaments, I can never predict what will tickle her fancy. This year she was adamant that her ornament have a girl on it.

We get them from the German Kathe Wolfhart shop that pops up at the Christkindl market each year, which is the same ornament shop we visited when we traveled to Rothenburg, Germany, during our honeymoon ten years ago. I dearly hope we can always accommodate this tradition. I took the kids out of school and we played hooky in order to make it happen this year!

And as we were standing in line to purchase the German candies and sweets, I thought perhaps one day the kids will walk down those cobblestone streets in Rothenburg themselves. Or maybe we can take them some day. Who knows...

Daydreaming prior to purchasing a giant box of chocolate covered marshmallows can be dangerous.

Okay, maybe I am a little weird.

Tea and croissant at Standard Market

My mom is visiting from Kansas City and I always struggle with little adventures that are easy for us to handle with the kids in tow. Add some Chicago snow and ice and that adds another layer of complexity. 

However, Abe's preschool nativity play was yesterday afternoon and my mom and I had a small pocket of free time after the play concluded but before we needed to pick up kids from school. I wanted to take advantage of the weather because more snow is expected on Sunday. It will definitely be a white Christmas...

We made a quick drive to Standard Market in Westmont, a neighboring suburb. This is a high end grocery store with a restaurant and I thought we could grab a cup of tea/coffee and maybe a pastry there.

Standard Market opened a couple of years ago. It's very clean and white and actually looks like a giant gray and white barn from the outside. They have all your standard grocery items but then specialty wines and cheeses and a pastry shop. It's very visually stunning. Lots of white. The colors of the food really pop against the background.

The Standard Grill restaurant has a limited but nice menu. Think organic grass-fed burgers and fancy milk shakes. We ordered pastries at the pastry shop and then just placed drink orders in the restaurant.

My mom ordered a blueberry streusel muffin and I got a chocolate croissant. I have a chocolate croissant habit developing, I fear.

My english breakfast tea came in the cutest little cup with a lid that allowed the "tag" or in this case the leaf, to stick out. It was cute enough to take a picture of. 

It was a quick outing and then we were back for school pick-up. I grabbed some Anchor Brewing Christmas Ale for Mike to try. And my mom spotted a pomegranate tart that looked good. I don't know what my Christmas Eve or Christmas meal plan is quite yet. So I may be back at Standard Market soon.

Scenes from a pumpkin patch