Ann Lemons Pollack
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Mandarin House
Mandarin House, in a large strip mall on Page Boulevard west of I-170, has been serving Chinese food to St. Louisans for more than 40 years. It’s one of the roomiest spaces in the area, with a large picture of The Great Wall still dominant, though the sharpness of its colors has faded a little,
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La Boheme
Not many grand operas have second lives on a Broadway stage. But then, not many operas are like "La Boheme," the Giacomo Puccini classic that kicked off Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s 34th season on Saturday night at the Loretto-Hilton Center. The tragedy about the "Bohemians" of Paris’s Latin Quarter, young artists and romantics who drink,
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The Merry Wives of Windsor
Shakespeare’s comedies are light and breezy, filled with word plays, bad puns, slapstick and unlikely love affairs, often carried out in disguise or under a pseudonym, kind of a nom d’amour. They are perfect for a spring night with an occasional breeze, a blanket to sit on, a glass of wine at hand. And so
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Santa Rosa & St. Helena, CA
A recent West Coast trip left us with a little less time to spend in the wine country than we would have liked, but we did find two exemplary spots to eat, one lunch-like and the other more dinner-esque, one each in Napa and Sonoma Counties. Dinner was at a Sonoma spot called Willi’s Wine
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The Girlfriend Experience
Chelsea is a hooker. Not a Hollywood hooker with a heart of gold, but a New York hooker who charges $2000 an hour, frequents extremely stylish boutiques and lives with a man who does not seem to mind how she brings money to the family checking account, as long as she keeps it full. That’s
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Gigantic
Remember Paul Dano, the boy evangelist from "There Will Be Blood"? He’s back as Brian, a mattress salesman, in "Gigantic," in which he rides an aura of confusion and bewilderment through an interesting, mostly enjoyable movie that displays bad manners and worse taste by men – John Goodman and Ed Asner – who are old
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The Limits of Control
As fierce a figure as has ever appeared on a movie screen, Isaach De Bankole dominates "The Limits of Control," speaking so little as to make Clint Eastwood seem like a babbler in his spaghetti Westerns. It’s a strange movie written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, with Christopher Doyle’s cinematography a glorious palate, stark in
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Spiro’s West
Spiro’s West can be seen in several ways. One is as a pleasant, mostly middle-of-the-road restaurant for lunch or dinner. Another is as a semi-Greek restaurant, its heritage obvious in the rather tasteful wall decorations. It’s one of those places that seems larger once you’re inside. One dining room leads into the next, a fireplace
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A New Picnic In The Park
Planning a trip to the Shakespeare Festival in Forest Park? We hope so. The admission is free, although there’s a fee if you want to sit in the chairs that are already set up. But there are lots of folks with lawn chairs and blankets every year, everything is very casual and the theater itself,
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Nachomama’s
When a fast-food operation gives up the ghost, its space often is a temptation to a potential restaurateur. After all, kitchen equipment is often ready to go, there usually are some parking spaces and, maybe a deal-closer is the existence of a drive-through window, maybe ready torumble. John St. Eve took such a chance 15