Benton Park Cafe

Happy 2014! Our New Year's Day tradition is going out for breakfast. The first year we went to McDonald's. Luckily, we've only gone up from there. After some "best breakfast in St. Louis" research, I decided we would try Benton Park Cafe. It was the right choice.

The kids ordered chocolate milk. The waitress apologized for the chocolate milk taking so long because they had to melt the Godiva chocolate to go in it. What!? Why are my kids the one's drinking this deliciousness?

The food was so good! I ordered non-adventurous french toast, but it came with a cream cheese spread that was to die for. The bacon was also some of the best I've had in a long time.

We had to order a BP Slinger after we saw one delivered to the table next to us.

The waitress recommended the South of the Border Burrito.

The food all tasted good. It had lots of flavor, a little kick to it, or just a little something extra. The kids gave their pancake breakfasts a thumbs up, and Brenton said I had made a good choice on where to eat (he had been hoping for IHOP).  The best part of our New Year's breakfast though was that Grandma and Grandpa flew in the night before and got to joins us. Yay for visitors, family, traditions and holidays!

You can check out where we ate last year here.

Must Stop for Treats on I-44

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is rolls and pie. Everything else, I could skip! This year was no exception. There is something fun and delicious about pie. Have I ever mentioned I host a "Pie" event on "Pi" day, 3/14? Plus, one of my favorite pies is also one of Oprah's Favorite Things. Last spring, Casey and took a trip to Branson for our anniversary. One of the highlights of the trip for me was the food we discovered on the way down. So if you're ever headed South on Interstate 44, part of the old Route 66, make sure you stop by one of these gems...

We reached Rolla just in time for lunch. I wanted to try something new, so we stopped at the visitor centers to ask for suggestions. The host informed us of a few local lunch spots and then added, "But we're really known for "A Slice of Pie." She had my attention! We got some lunch, since pizza is the only kind of pie my husband eats, and then headed for this hidden gem. It's next to a laundry mat and looks like it hasn't been updated since in was opened, but it was divine.

My pictures, taken in the car, do not do these pies justice.

I had also texted a friend who traveled between Springfield and St. Louis frequently asking if she had any good suggestions on where to eat. She mentioned a Rocking Chair Restaurant in Conway, Mo with cinnamon rolls the size of your head. Casey thought she was joking...she wasn't.

We stopped here on the way home. It was packed for being in the middle of nowhere.

We ordered four cinnamon rolls. One ready to eat and three frozen for later. Yay for getting to enjoy the deliciousness for a couple days afterwards. So yummy!  

The section of I-44 south of St. Louis has lots of fun roadside attractions (a giant rocking chair, vacuum museum) and some great food!

Busch Stadium and Downtown St. Louis

Baseball season is right around the corner, so what a perfect time to tour the St. Louis Cardinal's Busch Stadium. I read an article several months ago that called St. Louis "one of the last great baseball towns." It really is. I tell people all the time when they move here that they'll love the Cardinals before long. They usually respond, "No, we're not really baseball people." Wrong! This isn't about baseball folks, this is about a sense of community. St. Louisans love the Cardinals and their love is contagious. Trust me people, I think baseball is boring too, but there is nothing boring about St. Louis' adoration for its baseball team! Go Cards!

Anyway, this was an awesome adventure because Aunt Cari was visiting! She had two requests, to see the Eads Bridge and ride the MetroLink (the closest thing we have to a subway system or L-Train, though I've ridden both and the MetroLink hardly compares). Since I felt we needed something else to do downtown as well, I suggested the Busch Stadium tour (Cari has done the Arch a couple times). Cari, who loves baseball, said a stadium tour would have been on the top of her list if she would have known they had one.

The tour starts outside of Busch Stadium at the Stan Musial statue. "Stan the Man" is the best Cardinal of all  time. He died earlier this year and I was seriously tempted to attend the viewing, but thousands of people and a predicted 2 to 3 hour line kept me at home. The local channels even televised the funeral.

During the tour, you get to check out the Cardinal's World Championship trophies.

The Cardinals have won a 11 Word Series, second only to the Yankees.

You also get to see the various club rooms and places we'll never have the money to hang out in.

The view from the radio broadcast room is amazing! Too bad I didn't take a picture. However, the highlight of the trip was getting to visit the Cardinal Dugout. You can't walk on or touch the grass, but Ethan was so excited to walk on the warning track to the dugout.

After the tour we headed to Laclede's Landing, next to the Arch. Laclede's Landing is where St. Louis got it's start. In 1763, a French merchant Pierre Laclede Liguest wanted to set up a trading post near the mouth of the Missouri river.  The original area was too swampy and they staked out a place 20 miles south of where the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers meet. The following year, Liguest left Auguste Chouteau to start a trading post. When he return, he called the settlement St. Louis after the King of France. Today, St. Louis' oldest district, Laclede's Landing is home to several restaurants, clubs and shops.

We headed to one of the few kid-friendly places in Laclede's Landing, The Old Spaghetti Factory. The service was good, and the decor is fun, but I don't need to go back.

We then checked out the Eads bridge. The Eads Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River. When it was completed it was the largest arch bridge in the world and the first made primarily of steel. It was also a lot of other firsts you can read about here. Another fun fact, they used an elephant to prove it was safe because, supposedly, elephants will not walk over anything unstable.

 We then took the MetroLink across Eads Bridge. Cari was very excited.

A view of the Arch from the other side of the river.

Most of our adventure travel took place by the MetroLink. Ethan loved taking the "train." It was nice to be able to hop on and off between stops, especially since it was cold outside. I'm still debating how economical it was for our outing, but if you don't want to have to mess with parking and are just going to a specific event or place, you might want to give it a try.

We miss you, Aunt Cari!

The Dough Depot

I feel like I need to give a shout out to The Dough Depot in historic Kimmswick, MO. The Blue Owl seems to get all the publicity, but in my humble opinion, this is the place to eat in Kimmswick. I just discovered it earlier this year after receiving a gift card as a Christmas gift. I took the kids for my first time and was so impressed that I took a friend back for her birthday, and then later planned a girl's day out lunch there. It's unique, affordable and yummy! 

Any sandwich I've had on the pretzel bread has been so delicious! I've heard wonderful things about their mandarin orange salad, but the house-made Strawberry Vinaigrette for the Hawaiian salad is so good, I haven't wanted to try anything else.

 The kid's meals are inexpensive. Always a plus!

I've tried a dessert, too. So good! It's all good. I think I'll have to find a reason to go back soon, even if it's just Ethan and me.

Chris' Pancake & Dinning

Happy New Year (a few weeks late)! Our New Year tradition is going to out to breakfast on New Year's Day. This year we headed to Chris' Pancake and Dining on The Hill. One of my favorite native St. Louisans, Lindsey, had mentioned it several times as one of her favorite places to eat. Plus, it's been recognized several times for having the "best breakfast" in St. Louis. There's not many people out early on New Year's Day. In fact, the only place we really saw any people was at Chris'. Guess they know it's a great place to eat, too.

The menu said they have the "Best French Toast" in town. It was really good!

The service was good, the food was good, and it was great way to start off the new year!

Gooey Butter Cake "Food Feuds" and Lafayette Square

So...I have rewritten the beginning of this post a couple times, mostly since I've been working on it since November. I'm not feeling very creative right now, so I'll just stick with the last one, and insert some current commentary...

What a wonderful time of year (though now we're in January and I think it is my least favorite month)! So many things to celebrate and be grateful for! One of the many things I'm grateful for is all of my St. Louis adventures! I'm also grateful for all the yummy food we get to enjoy this time of year (until we make resolutions to eat better). I'm so going to have to go on a diet in January (who knew it would take me until January to post and even longer to go on a diet?). Speaking of food, we took a St. Louis adventure the day before Thanksgiving to kick of the holiday with not pie, but Gooey Butter Cake! It's very likely I had gooey butter cake for the the first time at a St. Louis Thanksgiving.

What is Gooey Butter Cake? Well, it's an accident made by a bakery in the 1940's that has stuck around Saint Louis ever since. You can buy it in most St. Louis area grocery stores and bakeries, but lots of St. Louisans swear by their mom's recipe. Paula Deen also has a version out now nationally, but it truely started here in St. Louis (Wikipedia will back me up). Gooey Butter Cake is a dense gooey cake (maybe similar to a pound, coffee, or butter cake). To be truthful, to me it's kind of an acquired taste. Even though it took me years to like, I enjoy eating it now and my kids love it!

We started our Gooey Butter Cake adventure at Park Avenue Coffee in Lafayette Square. While leaving a parade in July, I saw a sign at their downtown location advertising they had been the winner of Food Feuds on the Food Network. Food Network equals St Louis adventure to me, even if takes a few, or many, months.

Here's their trophy for winning Food Feuds on the Food Network.

Here is their Gooey Butter Cake.

They make over 70 flavors and had about 12 flavors available the day we visited. We tried chocolate chip cookie dough, red velvet, triple chocolate and pumpkin caramel pecan (which I think is the one they won Food Feuds with). They were all delicious! The triple chocolate was my favorite. This is Hailey's Red Velvet.

The coffee shop has a patio you can use behind the shop with fireplaces. The kids loved it. It was a fun place to eat our cake (and probably kept all the customer without kids inside happy).

Then we explored Lafayette Square and the park. Lafayette Square is a Victorian-style Historical District and it is GORGEOUS! Who doesn't want to live in one of these cute houses?!

The park is supposedly the oldest in St. Louis. It's beautiful too! My kids were mostly concerned with the playground,which isn't that old.

The park has a couple of statues and Revolutionary War cannons.

These cannons are really cool. They were on a British war ship that was sunk by American ships in Charleston Harbor in 1776.

After a fun, beautiful morning in Lafayette Square, we headed home by way of Gooey Louie's. They were Park Avenue Coffee's competition on Food Feuds. Gooey Louie didn't come out the victor on Food Feuds, but elsewhere it's been voted the best Gooey Butter Cake in St. Louis for the past four years.

We had to buy a whole gooey butter cake at Gooey Louie to try out. It was only $12 for this Chocolate Chippewa cake.

It was nothing like the gooey butter cake at Park Avenue, but still delicious! I think it tasted more like the gooey butter I've come to know in St. Louis than Park Avenue's. Either place though, you can't go wrong if you're looking for a tasty St. Louis treat!