Timothy's, The Restaurant in Creve Coeur 3-26-2022

 I'm not sure when this restaurant opened, but I think it was during the pandemic...which is very brave of them.

It is in a old strip mall by a Schnucks on Olive Blvd.

The restaurant is small but nicely decorated.  The first room has the bar and is dark.  It only has a few tables.  The main dining room is lights and has nice big windows.  This room maybe has 10 tables.  So, it's still pretty small.  We were seated at a small table for two but we were lucky that while we were dining, no one was at the table next to us.  

The menu is small.  They have one steak, one chicken dish, one fish dish, etc.  

We each had a cocktail.  I tried their "Winter Cosmo" and it was very good.  They took a cosmo, took out the cranberry juice, added a lot of fresh lime juice and berry liquor.  

We weren't going to get an appetizer but decided on a warm cheese pot with bread and apples.  It was OK.  The cheese was just kind of blah.  It was warm and all.  The bread had been lightly oiled, salted and charred.  But the cheese needed to have more zing or something.  It was just warm and neutral.  

Mike got the mac and cheese with added chicken.  I was afraid it was going to be the same cheese as our appetizer.  He said it was not.  It was fine.  He took over 1/2 of it home.  Anna ate it for lunch the next day.  

I got the scallops.  Wow, I had forgotten how expensive sea scallops are.  This was $35 for 3 scallops.  That's more than steak!!  They were salted and dusted with smoked paprika and then seared.  They were on a edamame mash (which is a little weird...it was like they had put a bunch of edamame through a food processor.  I kept looking at them, they were green, and expecting them to taste like avocado cream (my brain was playing tricks on me), but they didn't.  They kind of tasted like a starch (potatoes) but blaher), surrounded by a corn broth (this too was weird, it was really thin (like a broth) and I expected it to have a really big tasted and it totally didn't.  It was just like vegetable broth with a little bit of corn taste), there was roasted corn kernels on top.  Overall the dish was a little odd, but the scallops were divine!!  They were cooked perfectly and I really enjoyed the paprika on them. (I even took 2 photos of this!!) 

  

Since Mike and I were going to The Fox after dinner, we were looking for a dinner and dessert that didn't fill us up so much we wanted to sleep.  My dessert was perfect...one tiny (golf ball sized) scoop of tangerine sorbet.  Mike got a little Key Lime Brule.  Both were light and perfect. 

 

They were out of the wine we asked for with dinner, so we both had a glass of the craziest named wine "Plungerhead."  Look at the bottle!!  It was good and not very expensive.

So, I think Timothy's is a nice place to try.  They have such a small menu that unless they change their menu (which I will check for online) every season or so, we probably won't be back.  If they DO change their menu, I think they have a decent chef and I'd come back and try things off their new menu.  

Charlie Gitto's on The Hill 3-25-2022

 I know it seems odd that we went to any Italian restaurant other than Cunnetto's on The Hill, but Cunnetto's is going through some problems and we decided to do a little looking.

We've been to Charlie Gitto's in the past and always found it fine.  I think that's what we still think.

The interior and the service are superior to Cunnetto's.  It is lovely inside Charlie Gitto's.  The staff is knowledgeable and very inviting.  Our waiter even talked Mike into an expensive bottle of wine.  

We ate the most traditional foods/desserts that I didn't even take photos because you can see them in your head.

Cocktails, Toasted Ravioli, Bottle of Orin Swift's "Abstract" wine, lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, cannoli, chocolate cake. 

The wine had a very fun label.  It is a massive collage of old photos (Old commercials, Elvis, Marilyn, etc.)  It was fun to look at. 

The food was good, but not as good as Cunnetto's.  

We are torn.  We love Cunnetto's and don't want it to close, but it is becoming a dump inside and the food has been cold or not good the last few times we've been there.  It is a conundrum.  

Meskerem Ethiopian Food on South Grand 3-23-2022

 This is a place Anna and I have been wanting to try.  So, we talked Laurie and Vickie into going out for lunch with us.  They were up for an adventure.

It was a rainy Wednesday but there were several other diners in this small restaurant and people were constantly coming and going while we were there.  It is a busy place.

It seems to be run by a husband/wife team.  He is the chef and she does all the front of the house stuff.

We knew we wanted to do some sampling, and I had looks at reviews and photos online, so we got the Meskerem and Vegetarian Sampler for 4 people.  

Imagine a very large Pizza Hut Pan Pizza pan (with the sides).  That comes with this very thin, very spongy twangy tasting bread in the bottom.  On top of it all all these plops of what kind of looks like different baby foods in a variety of colors.  You are each given your own huge circle of the spongy bread (folded).  You are to tear off some bread and use it to pick up some of the colored stuff and put it all in your mouth.  

Let me see if I can tell you all the things we tried...In order from 12:00 (if this pan were a clock)...curried chickpea mash, green beans and tomatoes, a different tasting curried lentils, roast beef in a beefy sauce (tasted like Sunday roast), spicy red lentils, cabbage and carrots in a twangy (vinegar) curry, brown/tan chickpeas...kind of spicy, beef that tasted like sloppy joes/bbq, collard greens, in the center was very tender chicken in a spicy kind of Indian food tasting sauce, with a hard boiled egg on top.

Many things reminded me of the spices of Indian food.  After about once around the clock you felt kind of full.  Laurie said, she wished we had forks so we were filling up so much on the bread and could just eat the stuff in the clock.  I agree, but I understand why they do this.  It is just like when Mollie was in Malawi in Africa.  They use the cheapest thing as a filler.  The whole family would maybe have one or two of these things in this clock and they need everyone to fill up on the bread.  I remember that when Mollie was living with her family the Peace Corps provided the family with a chicken once every few weeks.  That was a huge treat, as they don't have meat/chicken that often.  So, I know this clock of items was typical of the kinds of food they'd have in Ethiopia.  It just was not typical of what Ethiopians would eat at one meal!!