On The Road: Nick Tahou’s Hots’s Garbage Plate

Here we go...

So, Andrew Veety has been on my case for some time regarding the slinger being a variation of the garbage plate. Recently we came to an understanding about these dishes.

So, of course I had to try one right?

I was visiting friends and clients up in the Buffalo and Toronto areas, and I decided to go to a hockey game. Due to simple availability, the Rochester Americans won out. My brother in law tells me that I need to get a garbage plate while I’m there….then the slinger garbage plate twitter conversations spring forth anew! In the end…even though I was by myself in a strange city…I ate a garbage plate and saw the Amerks fall to the Toronto Marlies 2-1…

Beer Squared #24: India Pale Ales

80-84...85 not pictured.

Welcome to another round of India Pale Ales. No matter how many of these we drink, there are always another fifty of these wonderful hoppy ales in the fridge to try. This time we even added a sixth to the proceedings as we had extra time and no one was around to tell us not to!

I really like the line up we had for this round. We have a well thought of craft brewer, Goose Island, a craft brewer that I don’t think gets enough press, Dundee, a highly reputed craft brew that you can’t get in St. Louis, Dogfish Head, a wonderful Scottish Brewer, Belhaven, a new to St. Louis craft brewer, Green Flash, and an English brewer, Greene King.

Small Batch Flights #1: Ellicottville Brewing Company

The Flight.

Welcome to the first edition of Small Batch Flights!

Just as with the next one, I am talking about a brew pub that’s not anywhere near St. Louis. My first edition of “Small Batch Flights” comes from Ellicotville, NY nearly 900 miles east of home.

While on my recent trip to Buffalo, NY to visit my buddy, he took me way out to the little ski village of Ellicotville because he said this brewpub was just great. He had a growler of their stout in the fridge, and we did drink that all up, and I have to say that it was quite good.

So, I was a bit excited to check out the place after we arrived. Aside from my beers, I had a very nice fried fish sandwich…the same thing I had when I was up in Burlington, ON for a call…I really like fish.

St. Louis’s Perfect Slinger #34: Bailey’s Range

The Range

On a Friday evening that saw the Four Hands Brewery opening up for their soft opening, we ended up at Bailey’s Range. When we arrived at the Four Hands, we were informed that they had been out of Four Hands beer for over an hour. Well, we were disappointed but then we decided to hit up the Range.

Bob had told me that at the new Bailey’s restaurant was serving a slinger burger, and well I just had to try it. That was also kind of nice since we struck out on new local beer, I was happy to go to  the Range because it has 29 taps of local beers and I’ve not tried the vast majority of those beers.

St. Louis Steaks #9: Biggies

Another lunch on a Saturday and another trip to get a steak sandwich. I really can’t help but feel like it’s been far too long since I’ve had a tasty, tasty steak sandwich.

This time we ended up at Biggies just kind of by happenstance. Like most instances in this column, my wife, my daughter, and myself were out running errands at we all got hungry. So, as we were driving down Chippewa St., I said I was hungry and that we should go to Biggies. I think I have been to this establishment about five or six times…most times with my mother and father in law. In fact, she called while we were waiting for our food and was a bit disappointed that we were eating there without her!

Beer Squared #23: Pale Lagers

73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, and 79.....

As a family, we went downtown and watched the St. Louis Cardinals victory parade down Market Street. Afterwards we went home and as our wives went shopping, we started drinking.

I’m going to stop saying that we have any kind of set number for how many beers we do in a sitting, because it never seems to stick. I do believe, however, that we have eclipsed the number that any sane person should do in a single sitting, but this is what happens when we are left to our own devices. We thought of the beer in terms of time and not beers.

In this round, we have seven different pale lagers from literally all over the world. We went with some macro lagers, imports, craft, etc. I think we have a very good mix of them. Because we’ve chosen beers from all over the world, we’re just going to call these pale lagers instead of Pale American Lagers, but it’s close enough for government work.

Beer Squared #22: Scotch Ales

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68, 69, 70, 71, and 72.

With the release of Backwoods Bastard, we decided it was good to hit another round of Scotch Ales, one of my favorite styles that we’ve only done once. Once again, we rolled out a bevy of five beers for this tasting. We started outside and ended up inside…because these beers took awhile to go through. It would have been nice to stay out in the backyard for the whole tasting, but time got away from us as we sampled each of these beers.

Bob: As we’ve occasionally stated, our tasting groups comprise brews of similar but not necessarily identical styles. Today we sampled offerings of the Scottish persuasion, in order of increasing alcohol content. Like the stouts of our last session, these ranged over a pretty wide spectrum of tastes.

Beer Squared #21: Stouts

63, 64, 65, 66, and 67.

We decided that for lager posts, we’ll do five beers and for heavier beers, we’ll do four, but there is far too much beer to plow through right now and we didn’t really have anywhere to go…so we got out five very different stouts and headed upstairs to enjoy them.

Bob: While official beer tasting judges may categorize these stouts into several categories, we chose (due to budget, time and other constraints) to sample all beers labeled stouts together, regardless of alcohol content (imperial, etc.) or composition (oatmeal, bourbon aging, etc.). That certainly makes for a more diverse gouping, but it’s only one reason we found a remarkable range of flavors and effects, with brews differing wildly, in this tasting session. Most differences were due to the brewer’s choices of ingredients and brewing methods. Following our usual method, we sampled these stouts in order of ABV, from lowest to highest.

Beer Squared #20: Autumn Beers

59, 60, 61, 62, and a greatest hit.

We were watching the Cardinals in game one of the NLCS and had planned on a beer tasting…once they imploded in the fifth inning, that really seemed like a good idea to begin. After our Pumpkin Ale post from a couple weeks back, we’d decided we need to do another round of Oktoberfest beers, but we ran into a bit of a snag, not enough of of them to do a complete tasting, so we added a greatest hit, and a couple of other beers of somewhat similar styles and we’re calling this one Autumn Beers. So, this tasting contains beers fifty nine through sixty two.

Bob has been going through the warchest of beer down in the basement and has pretty much forbade me from bringing over any new beers for our tastings. and I walked home with a pick a six from downstairs last night too. So, that’s kind of why we stuck with what was available. Not really any room, and Bob had to offload some beer on me. Jealous?

Bob: It’s October, time to dip into those amber lagers known as Marzen or Oktoberfest beers. We have two from Germany and one from St. Louis, MO, plus an amber Vienna lager that is (supposed to be) just a little lighter. Plus a dark lager that should have just a little stronger taste. We did our tasting from light to dark (beer colors–not the time of day!)

Courtesy Diner Kingshighway Revisted

Welcome back.

A friend of mine from out of town, Kalamzoo, MI to be exact, wanted to try her first slinger. She’d seen me eat a couple and she was finally ready to throw down.

Well, I had to think where could I take her that I knew would have a good slinger? Well, my first thought was to hit up The Buttery Restaurant..because it was good and I’ve just been wanting to get back there for quite awhile. Well, it turned out they were closed, so we ended up on the other side of Tower Grove Park to go to the Courtesy Diner Kingshighway, and it got me thinking about the time I did a quick update on the Chris’s Pancake House slinger…and how it had gotten pretty awful since I’d last had one.