Bob's Top Three Picks

The following are my top picks from the past year.  These are not straightforward picks of restaurants that were better than others.  One was just surprisingly good and I had never been there.  The other was a leisurely, comfortable dining experience, and the other has really good beer.

They are also not ranked...so the order does not mean anything.  This was hard, because there were so many fantastic places...and I have no deli's in there, which seems a shame to me.  But so be it.

I also had a difficult time picking just three, so I've compiled two lists.  The first is restaurants in the traditional sense.  The other is of places that aren't traditional eateries.

So for my top three favorite eateries, I choose:

Anthoninos

2nd Shift Brewery

Guidos

For my top three favorite places (non-restaurant) this past year, I choose:

Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate

Gaslight Studio

Missouri Baking


You can click on each of the names above to see the posts we did about them.

Honorable mentions go to:

Gioia's Deli
Joe Fassi's Sausage and Sandwich Factory
Pop's Blue Moon

Giro! Giro! Giro!

Here is the long-awaited Labor Day post; that isn’t so much about Marconi Bakery, but more about the Giro della Montanga.

Ok, let’s get the food part out of the way.

We knew from the start that our Marconi Bakery visit would happen in September because of The Gateway Cup timing. Luckily Marconi Bakery happens to sell pizza in addition to bread and pastries.

Bob had the I’m-gonna-have-all-the meat-that-Mel-doesn’t-let-me-eat pizza. And I had, wait for it, the veggie.  Most notable part of lunch was dining with some out-of-town racers, including a 15 year old young lady. They come to Saint Louis every year for fun as much, or more, than the racing. Our conversation lasted longer than the pizza did.

A couple more food things.

Every year we look forward to the arancini balls from the Saint Ambrose Parish Church. And new this year, Urban Chestnut Brewing Company beer. In the past, it was Bud, Bud Light and Shocktop.

So a fun UCBC story. At the previous day’s race, I volunteered as a course monitor – meaning I got to stop people from crossing the road. Amazing what power a flag and a vest provides. “None shall pass!”

As folks wearing UCBC shirts walked by, I casually mentioned how warm it was. And voila! Ten minutes later I was holding a Zwickel. I chuckled as the volunteer coordinator offered a water while I was holding said beer.

I volunteered at the Giro della Montanga too. And guess what happened. The UCBC guy walked past and said, “Hey, I remember you,” and kept going. Ten minutes later, I had Zwickel.

One more UCBC story. The next day I didn’t volunteer, but I still had some beer drinking to do. The UCBC guy recognized me again and wanted to give me more beer. “But I’m not working today.” “You helped out before, have another beer.” So I took it and put the five bucks in the tip jar.

Back to The Hill and the Giro della Montanga.

The Giro della Montanga began in 1986 as a single bike race. The Giro became the cornerstone of the Gateway Cup in 1998. The Hill continues this great sporting event and looks forward to many more years of Giro, Giro, Giro!  

Many Hill restaurants support the Gateway Cup:

Urban Chestnut Brewing Company (Super Sponsor!)

J. Smugs Gastro Pit

Mama's on The Hill

Volpi Foods

Favazza's

The Hill neighborhood also joins in on the fun:

Believe me, this is quite a hill they are climbing

There you have it, my final post of A Hill of a Year. And my final foray into blogging. It didn't take long to figure out it's more fun to eat out than to write about it.

Mining the Data...

I find it interesting that that there are a lot of different data that can be gathered from this blog service about the folks that look at your blog.  Not surprising....I guess if we were trying to make money or sell something from this blog, this type of data would be valuable.  To me it is a curiosity.

So, here are some of the data that I found interesting.

The post with the most views is Stop Me If You've Heard this One. This post had 227 "pageviews".  Not surprising because the lede involved a Catholic gradeschool's boy's soccer team and diseased hookers.

The post with the second amount of "pageviews" is Joey B's with some Homies.  This one was viewed 205 times.

And coming in third for "pageviews" is: Three Glorious Words.  About the Chocolate Factory on "The Hill."  This one had 175 looks.

Other data that I found interesting is that by far the vast majority of our viewers came to us through Facebook.  In fact nearly 3,000 views of our blog were through Facebook.  There were a few general searches through Yahoo and Bing and Google, but the vast majority were through Facebook.

Also, not surprising, is that the vast majority of folks viewed us from the United States.  Somewhat surprising, but maybe not after this past year, is that the second most "pageviews" came from Russia!  We had 24 views from Canada, 19 from the United Kingdom, 10 from Germany, 9 from Costa Rica, 7 from Ireland, 7 from the Northern Mariana Islands, 4 from Switzerland, 6 from Madagascar and 3 from Singapore... and a few from Thailand and Peru.  I can, interestingly enough account for all of these views....but the Russian ones, I can honestly claim that there was no collusion.

3,080 views (that's 60% of all views) came through Chrome web browser, while 1,241 (or 24%) came through mobile sources.

While were on the topic of mobile, 2,199 (43%) of those views were from Android devices, while 1,541 (30%) were from iPhones.  There were a few Windows and even Linux devices mixed in there with others to fill out the rest, but those two were the bulk.

That's the rough breakdown of the Hill of a Year Blog for the past year.

Mission Accomplished!

We did it!

Thirty-three places in one year, in one neighborhood.  All locally owned and each one unique.  What a trip.

One thing ardent followers of this blog may notice (Are there any ardent followers of this blog?) is that we have two left to blog about.  I'll cover the final resturant in this post.  Mel will cover a place we visited way back in September, in her own time, at some future unspecified date...maybe.  Every time I ask her about this post, she laconically states, "I just haven't put my mind to it."

So Charlie Gittos.  We saved this for the final one as it is one of the more ritzy places in The Hill neighborhood.  It was a bit of a celebration for us.

In addition to this meal accomplishing our "Hill of a Year" goal, we also accomplished some other goals. We repayed a favor, and took a good friend along and met new friend.  Dr. Fidy and Liz joined us for a lovely evening earlier this month.

As expected, the wait staff was very attentive and extremely helpful. And, as one of the places on The Hill that claims to be the birthplace of Toasted Ravioli, our server encouraged us to try theirs.  So we did.  You can see some of the origin stories of T-Rav's by clicking on this text.

Charlie Gitto's menu is well balanced and not overwehlming, and there were a few specials offered that evening. You can see it here.

Each of us had a different meal.  Mel, of course, got the Eggplant Napoleon.  This is layers of breaded eggplant fried, filled with layers of Charlie Gittos special blend of cheeses, roasted sweet peppers, pesto, pomodoro and Asiago cream.

I got the Chicken Saltimbocca.

Here's some pictures of the other dishes for those of you intersted in pictures of other people's food.

It was all very good.

To top it all off...the final dining experience in our "Hill of a Year" ...we got the cannoli.  Oh my, this was good.  The shells are made at Missouri Baking (the first place we ate at in our "Hill of a Year" adventure....way back on January 6th), and then Charlie Gitto's fills them with their own special filling.  It was a perfect way to finish our year of dining out.

Keep in mind that our goal was to eat at every place in "The Hill" neighborhood in 2017.  It was not to blog about it all within the calendar year.  So we can proudly state, "Mission Accomplished," with this post.  And who knows...Mel may "put her mind to it" within the few days remaining in the year.

And now for the obligatory Mel and Bob pic in front of the joint.

It certainly has been a "Hill of a Year!"

And Then There Was One...

We are serously coming down homestretch.  We knocked off two more nearly a month ago.  

But first the list:


Places we have eaten:

• 2nd Shift Brewery
• Adrianna's
• Amaghetti's
• Anthonino's Taverna
• Cha,Cha,Chow
• Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate
• Dominic's
• Favazza's
• Five Bistro
• Gaslight
• Gelato di Riso
• Gian-Tony's
• Gioia's
• Guido's Pizza
• Joe Fassi's
• Joey B's
• J.Smugs GastroPit
• Leo Oldani Sausage (Eovaldi's Deli)
• Lorenzo's
• Mama Toscano
• Mama's on the Hill
• Marconi Bakery
• Milo's
• Missouri Baking
• Mona's
• Pop's Blue Moon
• Rigazzi's
• Shaw’s Coffee
• Steve's Hot Dogs
• Vitale's Bakery
• Viviano's 
• Zia's

Places we have left to eat at:

• Charlie Gitto's 

Gian-Tony's

Way back in October, we had two-fer.  We went to Gian-Tony's and the Pop's Blue Moon and had a lovely evening.

Gian-Tony's is located on the corner of Dagget and Macklind and has been there since 1989.  I pass it twice a day when I ride my bike to work and can't recall ever eating there.  

This southern Italian restaurant is, like so many other restaurants on The Hill, a family affair.  Excutive Chef, Tony Catarinicchia uses vetables and herbs from his garden to prepare the meals.  

Their menu is farily exetensive and you  can take a look for yourself.  Everyone enjoyed their meals, and I took home some left overs.  The salads were very good as well.  And Mel, of course, got the Eggplant Parmigiana.

But no dessert for us that night, 'cause we were drinking ours.  We went to:

Pop's Blue Moon 

Pop's Blue Moon is a place that has always intriqued me.  You can see it from the highway and it never seems open.  But boy was it open that night.  In fact they had a yard sale of sorts out front as you walked in.

 Need a used pipe?  Maybe some scissors, or a vintage ashtray....they had it.  Inside was lit with neon and festooned antique bar decorations.

Beer selection was good and they had whiskeys, so, we were set.  They even had pinball.

 At one point in the evening a dog opened the door and walked in.  We assumed that this was par for the course until we realized that no one in the bar claimed the dog.  However, the dog eventually, just went back out the door when somone opened it up.  I guess the thing that impressed me the most was that there was no real reaction from the patrons.  That's why I'm going back....

After a few drinks one of our friends was inspired enough by the place to write an ode of sorts...here it is:

Untitled 

by Patrick Connolly

Whose bar this is, I've no idea.

We're celebrating a Hill of a Year.

Thirty-two spots down and two to fall.

Let's have some shots and cheap draft beer.

Skulls and Masks hang on the wall

Meg tries her hand at the Pinball.

A round costs twenty bucks - no lie.

We may just stay until last call.

A giant mutt just walked right by.

How'd he get in?  Don't ask me why.

Like Gene Kelly in Brigadoon,

We walked into a magic night.

So, went our night at Pop's Blue Moon.

Good drinks, Good time and awesome tunes.

I hope they'll bring us back here soon.

I hope they'll bring us back here soon.

Pat writing his ode.

From A to Zia's

This post is waaay past due, since we went in March. Anyway, here goes…

Opened in 1985, Zia’s has become a Hill staple. On a chilly Friday night at 6:00p, we still had to wait 45 minutes for a table. So we headed to the bar for a couple of spritzes.

Spritz diversion ahead:

Again, we received some white wine and club soda, which we all know by now isn’t a proper spritz. The drinks were whisked away and probably poured down the drain. Bob then ordered a merlot, while I sat and stewed. And it turns out, we were billed for a pino grigio.

We finally made our way to one of the well-appointed large dining rooms. There looked to be a rather large party behind a partition, so the dining room could have been even larger. Like I said Zia’s is a Hill stalwart. They even have their salad dressing sold in the local grocers. 

(Notice the notebook in the top right corner)

We both got specials. Bob – wild mushroom ravioli. Me – chicken prosciutto asparagus with a side of garlic cavatelli. I should’ve stayed with my standard eggplant parmigiana. I'm pretty sure they served canned mushrooms and maybe the asparagus too because there were mainly stems. But as you may know by now, I’m not a foodie. So what do I know? Menu

Our wonderful busboy boxed up our leftovers (in Styrofoam) and left. I don’t remember, but we may’ve had a real spritz when we got home.

Lorenzo's Butter? Ah what the heck! They all can't be creative...just read the post and you might get the reference......

Coming down homestretch, Lorenzo's Trattoria is one of the few places left for us to visit this year.  Neither of us have been here before, and I'm glad we went.

First off, one of their trademark items is gratis.  They have homemade breadsticks and gorgonzola butter.  Pretty much with these, a glass of wine and a salad....I would've been happy.

The breadsticks are made daily...just before the place opens for dinner.  And the dipping butter is all gorgonzola-y. Yum!  Here's a recipe for making their breadsticks and butter.

The house salads were very tasty with toasted pistachios, Volpi prosciutto and asiago cheese.

Lorenzo's Trattoria is, for the time being, the only Northern Italian style restaurant in The Hill neighborhood. Some obvious difference between Northern and Southern Italian Cuisine, is that the Northern food tends to be more influenced by it's European neighbors, France and Austria.  Think more butter...less olive oil.  Also pasta is not as central to Northern Cuisine...but Risotto is.  Polenta is a big Northern Italian dish as well.  

For a Main Course, I had the Roasted Portabella Mushroom Tortellini with proscuitto, roasted red peers and peas in a cream sauce.

Mel had the Eggplant Penne.

The menu shows some of these different choices.  Click here for the menu.  They also 

have a nice wine cellar as well, with plenty of choices in a wide range of prices.  

Although, Mel was once again chagrined that they did not offer an Aperol Spritz. For some reason, this traditional Italian cocktail seems hard to come by on The Hill.

Also, they happen to run the Gelato Di Riso, which Mel and I visited in July.  Click on their name in the preceding sentence to read about that visit and all they have to offer.