Ann Lemons Pollack

  • Circus Flora 2014

     Circus Flora is back. The big top is erected behind Powell Hall, the cotton candy is ready, and the air crackles with the excitement of children of all ages – including big kids like me. The 2014 edition is one that would have done the late and much-lamented David Balding, Flora's creator, proud. The story

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  • St. Louis in London?

    Embarrassingly fortunate, I was in London again in late May after visiting my former neighbors outside Vevey, Switzerland – another story to be told there at another time. But having been reminded of its presence by running into another attendee at April's Chowzter conference, I went by the Covent Garden location of Danny Meyer's Shake

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  • The Good Pie

    After more than a year's wait, The Good Pie has reopened in the Delmar Loop, moving from the orbit of St. Louis University to that of Washington University. And yet, if there were ever a not-your-college-pizza-joint, this is (still) it. With a new pizza oven, wood burning, a lovely robin's-egg blue, it's still turrning out

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  • Goody Goody Diner

    The recent announcement that Goody Goody Diner was being sold cause a ripple of anxiety among certain of us. The first time I ever went was around 1970, and my primary memory was of it being a hangout for the St. Louis Police Department's Mobile Reserve, making it safer even than Crown Candy. It's expanded

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  • For A Good Time

    Tired of all those food competitions that leave you salivating and hungry – because you can't eat what they're cooking? Well, there's a summer-long series of barbecue burn-offs – excuse me, cook-offs – that offer food, drink, music and a sense of higher purpose. What began as a good-natured argument a couple of years ago

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  • Grapevine Grill

    America, the land of the Great Open Road, has just about left behind the idea of a pleasant drive in the country to achieve destination dining. Maybe it was all a figment of Hollywood's imagination, back when movies were the drivers of our fantasies. Those couples in convertibles gaily heading off to some quaint inn

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  • Old Jews Telling Jokes

    When you're young, you think about Old People as being stiff, arthritic in both their movement and their thinking. And then you realize thirty years have passed, and you're more like Them, except you don't feel like Them. I suspect that's universal. I once asked my feisty mother-in-law, when she was 95 or so (and

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  • London: Two Meals at Dishoom

    It's taken me three years to get to Dishoom. After eating very trad food on the last short visit to London, it was time to enjoy the Indian food the British Isles offer in such variety. I'd read about it before our 2011 visit, but an unexpected funeral to attend ended that idea. Now my

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  • What I Did On My Spring Break

    In London with food bloggers from four continents at a weekend planning (and tasting) conference for the website www.chowzter.com, which I'm starting to do work for.  The Wall Street Journal had something to say about it: http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2014/04/30/bangkok-named-foodiest-city-in-fast-feasts-battle/

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  • Cakespeare: Bard + Birthday

    It's the big 450 for William Shakespeare, and in honor of that occasion, the Victoria & Albert asked people to bake him a cake. Herewith a collection of them, via the Telegraph. More tweeted under the hashtag #Cakespeare. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/william-shakespeare/10782067/Cakespeare-in-pictures-Shakespeares-birthday-bake-off.html  

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