a slacker, eh???

now that I've been called a slacker (?!?), I'll have to catch up on all my posting to save face. So onward in the midwest. From Kansas City, we took a short hop across scenic Missouri to St. Louis. It took about four and a half hours and we saw a few cows and corn fields. There was also an inordinate amount of billboards. After checking in and taking a quick look at the view of the ballpark from our hotel, we headed to the arch. It was crowded because one side broke (and we're going in this thing?!). From there, we went in search of the signature food of St. Louis. Yeah, we didn't know what it was either. We later found out that it's toasted ravioli and Imo's pizza.

Off to The Hill, a quaint little neighborhood dotted with Italian restaurants. We followed the footsteps of Rachel Ray and went to Cunetto's. It was funny, it looked like it was dead when we walked in. And then the hostess took us through the bar area around to the dining area and it was packed! We walked through the dining area, around the corner and the place is huge. Much bigger than I anticipated from the outside. The menu was chock full of traditional Italian fare. I asked about the toasted ravioli and was surprised to find out they were meat ravioli. I didn't order any, but my friend did. She described them as not quite fried ravioli, lightly toasted, nice marinara sauce. Way to go Rachel Ray! I ordered a house salad, which was essentially a giant bowl of cheese with some salad in it. Don't get me wrong, I like cheese, but this was a little over the top. If you really love cheese, you would love this salad, and the dressing was good too. Along came our entrees, spaghetti with a garlic, oil and anchovy sauce, and veal saltimbocca. It was generally okay food, but definitely not what we are used to being from the Italian capital of the USA, northern NJ and NY area.

From there, we found a local watering hole called Maggie O'Brien's, because it was touted to have lots of TVs and several satellites. This was going to be the perfect place to watch the Yankee game, and it was. We met some very nice (but very odd) local St. Louisites who kept us entertained after the Yankees started to lose.

We left there and headed back to the hotel, the next day was going to be busy.

*k*