Scotties Pub House

1235 Main
Imperial, Mo
http://scottiespubhouse.com/find.htm

Yes, it was stupid.
Earlier in the week a friend from work suggested this place, told me he had a great sandwich there. I'd not heard of it, but he said it used to be something else. I suggested it to the family, they looked at  the web site and said sure.
That was earlier in the week. Before we knew what that would mean.
We've been to many 'sports' bars/pubs and that is normally not a problem. This time it was, and I didn't realize it until we'd found a parking space and realized the place was crowded. "Must be popular." someone said. As we approached the door it dawned on me.
Who doesn't love to meet up with a bunch of happy, excited  friends at a big sports bar to drink and cheer for the local professional baseball team, sweeping its way through the post-season? Loud, frequent hooping and hollering, beer, lots of beer, high fives, and the roar of the twenty-odd TV's all cranked up to max volume.
Me, that's who doesn't love it.
We arrived just as the TV showed that the Cardinals were ahead of the Dodgers by one touchdown in the bottom of the seventh quarter, or whatever the correct sports-related numbers are.
Sure, I like it when the Cardinals win in the post season, everybody at work seems to be in a better mood.
Anyone who knows me at all though knows that I do not like crowds, noise, and can just barely work up a tepid interest in sports of any kind. I realize I'm in a minority about most of those things. I tend to try to avoid  all of them.
But we were screwed.
Sure enough the place was packed, a lot of drinking had occurred before we even got there, and the noise, from the crowd and the TV's was deafening. We also had a twenty minute wait for 'first available' seating.
The Place:
Big, dark, loud, smokey. I didn't pay much attention to the decor, except for the vast number of enormous flat screens on the wall. Edge to edge, surrounding all the separate areas. In the area we were finally seated in I stopped counting after fifteen TV's.
We were seated side by side at a sort of center bar, doubling as a room-divider. In front of us, in fact in front of everyone, no matter where they sat, the Cardinals played at their best.
Nate showed up and asked for our drink orders.
The Food:
I, of course, ordered tea. Angel and Adam chose Pepsi products. Everyone else around us had beer, lots of beer, buckets of ice holding bottles of beer. I could barely hear Nate, he didn't seem to be struggling with the din at all.
When he returned with our drinks we'd had plenty of time to scan the menu. Angel asked for the wings as an appetizer, I didn't mind, but didn't care either. I don't usually like hot wings at sports bars.
I knew it was risky, but since this was an Irish (U.K.) themed sports bar, a 'pub' no less, I ordered the fish and chips.
Angel changed her mind a dozen times, decided she wasn't real hungry so she ordered the Beer Cheese Soup and a Cob Salad. Adam went for the Sourdough Burger.
Nate hustled off and we were left watching the ballgame again. It was too loud to conversate, so we just watched. It was down to the last few innings, a heavy pitching battle in a one point game.
I don't recall how long things took to get to the table, the noise was distorting time and space. The wings arrived, I touched one and licked my finger. The taste was pretty good until the heat kicked in. I was satisfied. The wings weren't exactly flamethrowers, but there was definitely enough heat that I knew my delicate system would violently reject any sizable portion.
Adam and Angel went about them merrily though.
Her soup arrived pretty soon. A small bowl of thick, cheesy, bacon-sprinkled, creamy soup. There were also two tater tots in it. Yeah, tater tots.
I tasted it, thought it was pretty good. Angel agreed and lapped it down pretty quickly.
Soon enough, the main courses arrived.
My plate had more stuff on it that I really wanted to eat, but it was a standard order. The chips were actually house-made potato chips, which indicated that this place might not be aware that 'chips' in the U.K. are actually fries. The Brits refer to what we call potato chips as crisps. The British, and since they were conquered several times by them, the Irish as well, have really butchered up the English language. Anyway, when I want fish and chips I want fries.

Fish and 'Crisps.'

There was also a thick slice of un-toasted white bread, a small bowl of slaw, a small bowl of applesauce, and a ramekin of tartar sauce. I started by dousing the fish with the Nate-provided malt vinegar. I tasted the slaw....  very, very vinegary. Angel tasted it and sad it was like bread and butter pickles, which explains why I didn't really care for it. It wasn't nasty, but it was a lot more sour than I like my slaw to be.
The chips were crunchy, but since I'd geared up for fries, I didn't eat very many of them. The applesauce was sweet and fresh, but I am no expert. I'm pretty sure the last time I had applesauce was out of a baby food jar while feeding a baby, back in the 70's or 80's. So I tasted the applesauce and pushed it aside. I never did figure out the point of the bread.

Yeah, that's a 'salad'

The fish itself was okay. Once again I've had good fish and chips. Served as fish and chips the fish should have a crispy coating, usually thick. These were more like fish egg rolls, the coating was that thin. And the texture was like that of an egg roll, an egg roll that had been reheated in a microwave. The moisture inside the fish softened the coating enough that there was no crunch. It went limp and in many places slid off the fish. As for the taste, well, there's not much to say. It didn't have very much. Neither the fish nor the batter had much of a taste at all, so I ended up dipping it into the tartar sauce, something that is only required if the fish, breading and malt vinegar doesn't pump the taste up enough on their own. The fish was cooked well, moist and flaky, but since it didn't crunch, it was just fish. The chops didn't have a lot of taste either, not even salted enough, Angel noticed that.
Her salad was enormous. Lots of salad toppings, ham, peppers, eggs, tomatoes, other meats, and a relatively tiny portion of lettuce. She did get a soft pretzel stick with it though, and it was pretty good.

Sourdough Burger

I couldn't tell what Adam thought of his burger, since we couldn't hear each other. He only ate about half of it though.
The Cardinals finally struck out the last Dodger, the crowd went wild, and the pub decided to pump up the volume on their sound system even more. A waitress cam up to us and said that since the Cardinals had won they were offering something for three dollars, I couldn't hear what it was. At this point though it might have been a Ferrari and I would have still turned it down. I was starting to suffer long-term calm-damage from the incessant onslaught of noise. I just wanted to leave.
I finished my fish, about ten chips and three or four fork-fulls of the slaw, I was done. I couldn't tell if I was still hungry or not, my brain was too obsessed with finding and utilizing an exit.
Summary:
We paid up and left as quickly as we could. Nate did a splendid job considering the war zone we were in. The tab came in at fifty two bucks and change. Not too bad considering it covered three meals and an appetizer. Too bad the food wasn't all that great. The tea was pretty good; clear, fresh, an easy +3.
The food wasn't bad, but as we got into the SUV and chatted about it, even though my ears were ringing and a headache had kicked in, we all pretty much said the same thing. Adam's burger was plain. Not tasty, more like cooked ground beef with out any further effort.
The cob salad was huge, and since nothing had recipes or ingredients, it was just piles of stuff and the only thing Angel could say was that there sure wasn't much salad (lettuce) in her salad.
I usually don't order Fish and Chips in places that don't boast about their Fish and Chips. this night's meal was exactly why. It just wasn't up to my understanding of the dish and expectations for it.
So maybe we all ordered incorrectly. Maybe we could go back and try something else.... nah, we won't be doing that. None of us were really happy with what we had, the place was waaaaay too loud, so why would we want to go back?
If you like loud, smokey, really busy place that makes mediocre, almost bland food, this is a place for you to try. It was really busy, really loud, really smokey. . . Everyone but us seemed to be having a great time, but we just couldn't wait to get out of there.

Taytro's

343 North Creek Drive
Festus, Mo.

On the web.

On Facebook

 Sometime during the week I’d decided that this would be a great idea. We hadn’t been there in a while and we all like it. Without dissent we headed out Saturday evening. The day had been dark and dreary, December showing its true nature. Birthdays and holidays encroaching too quickly, associated stresses were building. I’d slept in and was late to my writers club Christmas party and arrived in an inexplicable and unforgivable asocial mood. Not harsh and rude or anti-social, just a-social, quiet and sulky. I get these moods once in a while and usually just have to wait them out.

I busied myself later by making my weekly run to Wal-Mart and engaging in a couple of other banal chores.

By Saturday evening the mood had subsided and I was coasting along in neutral. I looked forward to a pleasant meal at a nice place.

The Place:

The parking lot was pretty full but there were several good tables still available. I was pleased to see that Taytro’s hadn’t gone nuts decorating for the over-hyped holiday season. A single string of small lights entwined with a grapevine above the bar, I wasn’t even certain that it was holiday related.

We were led to a table in the front corner, a table that was too close to the occupied one next to it. We asked and were allowed to pull the table away. We sat and were told that Heather would be serving us.

The place, even near the window, was dimly lit, which is usually a good thing. Then we were handed the menus. There was a problem. The menus were black and lettered with small white type. Very classy, but nearly impossible for two middle-aged, bifocal-prescribed patrons. Angel and I struggled to read the thing. Adam helped translate, though his inherited eyesight wasn’t a lot better.

The offerings had changed a little since we were last there, maybe, some things seemed to be missing, though we could not recall exactly what.

There were specials being added to the chalkboard as we arrived. Fish and Chips and Chicken Picatta stir fry.

Taytro’s makes po’ boys, a great, simple sandwich. The  more I thought about it though, the more the fish and chips sounded pretty good.

The Food:

  Angel’s choice was hardly surprising. Crawfish Etouffee. Adam chose the Buffalo Chicken Po’boy with chips, I ordered the fish and chips with fries instead of chips which is what fish and chips actually means. In Great Britain, which is somewhere between England and the United Kingdom, ‘fish and chips’ is peasant food, street food, meant to be eaten on the go, like a hoot dog.  This is an important characteristic of the offering that I will get back to later.  Anyway the first fish and chip shop opened in London in 1860. This fact surprised me since I thought Long John Silver's had invented fish and chips sometime in the 1970’s, that's where I first heard of it anyhow.
For some stupid reason, the British call French fries ‘chips’. This is not really surprising however since the British are quite happy to butcher the language for no good reason. What we, God-fearing, freedom loving Americans call ‘chips’ are stubbornly referred to as crisps’ in the UK, even though the word ‘crisps’ sounds silly and is quite cumbersome to pronounce. An ‘s’ followed by a hard ‘p’ and then another ‘s’. It’s just much more oral calisthenics that is necessary. Go ahead, say the word. It’s a lot of work.

Angel got a salad with her meal, I did not. Too bad, Taytro’s salads are quite tasty, the house poppy seed dressing is rather sweet, though the salad is not drowned by it.

They also decided on fried ravioli, that St. Louis area staple, as an appetizer. I like it okay, but I’m not nuts for it. I had three.

To make them you take or make meaty, cheesy ravioli and boil it like you normally would. Then you let it dry a little, bread  and deep fry. Why deep fry? Because, like I said, this is America! They turn out as crispy finger food. Traditionally they are served with a marinara sauce for dipping.

Buffalo Chicken Po' Boy

Our drinks arrived before the appetizers and salads, as they should. Tea for me, Diet Coke for the lady, and root beer for the boy. The tea was actually quite good, a rare occurrence in the area.

Overhead the flat screens played sports, real sports, women’s volleyball. This was a college match and was taking place on a hard surface indoors. That of course takes a little something away from the purest form of the game, namely the skimpy bikinis that are worn by the beach-version contenders. It was still far better than football, baseball, basketball or that bewilderingly popular non-sport NASCAR.

The appetizers and salad came and went quickly. Quite good.

The place continued to fill at a regular pace. It was good to see a locally owned and operated joint doing so well.

The plates finally arrived. Angel’s etouffee was just as expected. Two bright red crawdads sitting atop a brown, saucy stew and two dollops of rice. Adam’s sandwich and chips looked good, he’d ordered his without onion and they complied.

Crawfish Etouffee

 My fish and chips looked. . . off… somehow. Small chunks of cod lightly breaded, fried and mixed among a plateful of fries, a small metal ramekin of sauce on the side. 

I’m used to fish, when served as fish and chips, to be thin filets, heavy-battered, fried crisp with the thick fried batter holding the flaky fish together, like at Long John Silver’s and every other place I’ve ever had fish and chips.

Then things started falling apart, literally. I picked up the first chunk of fish and the breading slipped right off, like knickers off a trollop . The cod flaked off and fell into the dipping sauce. I ended up using a fork to get it all out. The rest of the nuggets proved to be just as much a struggle.

Fish and Chips

The taste of the fish itself was bland. Not bad, in fact the amount of cooking was perfect, the fish moist and flaky but it had no flavor and the light breading offered up. . .nothing. The dipping sauce was wrong, all wrong. It was not tartar sauce, it was something else. Not sweet, sort of savory and maybe made with chipotle.  The taste of the sauce, the texture and frail mechanics of the fish made for a disappointing meal for me.
Angel and Adam though were quite pleased. Angel disassembled the crawdads and slurped down the luscious meaty bits. “Good as always.” She sighed. Adam’s only remark was about the amount of bread on his sandwich: “Too bread-y.”

Summary:

We really like this place. Most everything they serve is excellent. The service is great, the atmosphere is cozy and friendly, and Taytro’s offers dishes that no one else around does. The bill came to a reasonable $46.59.
My gripes about the fish and chips are serious, but not bad enough to keep me from going back. They offer many things I like quite well, I just thought I’d mix it up on this visit. I cannot recommend the fish and chips, it simply doesn’t work as served. Perhaps a more traditional approach would be better, and there’s really nothing wrong with plain tartar sauce.

Hooters

11835 Lackland Rd.
St. Louis (Maryland Heights) Mo.
www.hooters.com

This was a last minute get-together. Alex, the intern, polled the group and Keith, Doug and I agreed to tag along with him to this bastion of  almost pathetic male chauvinism. I’d been to a Hooters before, the one in downtown St. Louis. I’ve never been to the one in Springfield, Mo, the place where my lovely and precious daughter used to work.
Yeah, I’m so proud.
Actually I am. She knew what it was about, she knew exactly why she was there and why the customers were drawn to the place. She was more than adequately qualified, and she racked up huge, some would say enormous, tips.
That's tips, people, TIPS!
Let’s be realistic, let’s be honest. Patrons are not drawn to this place because of the fine cuisine.*

The Place:
Located at an intersection near my office complex, it is built large and rather rustic. Inside it is dark, but not too dark. Small spotlights line the exposed heavy wood rafters.
The whole place, ceiling to wall to floor all the way to include the booths and tables are heavy wood.. Along with the small spotlights are strings of faux Christmas lights, reminiscent of the big bulbed strings that were common back in the sixties, the ones that burned down a lot of houses. These were actually bigger, more plastic looking, probably not even dangerous.
We were seated at a high table in the back next to a shaded window. Alex and I were in the lead, Doug and Keith lagged a little. Alex and I sat against the window looking out onto the floor. I took this position for the same reason I always do, to get a full view of the goings-on for this report. Just ask my family, I always choose a seat with a view.
This arrangement meant that Keith and Doug’s view was of the shaded window, and if they squinted between the mesh, they could almost see out to the parking lot.
There were a dozen or so flat TV’s mounted and muted around the place, sports, since Hooters claims to be a sports bar. Nobody was watching them.
Scanning around I made an observation. The place, almost completely packed, was filled almost exclusively by men, middle aged men at that. There were a few women customers, though all of them with larger groups of men. I struggled to maintain my shock at this.
There were a few kids too, mostly accompanied by fatherly types. I found this interesting if not a little creepy. There’s lots of eateries around that are dying to fatten up our kids that use toys and cartoons to draw them in. I’m not exactly sure what the kid-draw was here.
We where handed menus and asked about drinks. Alex and I ordered tea, unsweetened, Doug ordered a soda, I don’t recall what Keith ordered.
Our waitress, whose name I will not mention, was wearing the same outfit as all the other waitresses, tight black micro-shorts and an equally taut black titular (bearing the title of the establishment) tank top. Hers didn’t fit too well, there were tanned and perky curvy parts leaking out from all the edges of the garments. I tried not to stare, but couldn’t actually come up with a rational reason not to.
I glanced over the menu as well, typical sports bar fare. Burgers, wings, sandwiches. No BLT though.
The Food:
I decided to order the same thing I used to order at the downtown location, the fish and chips. I wasn’t in the mood for a heavy, very heavy half-pound burger, I had work to do later and needed to stay non-comatose.
The waitress brought our drinks and placed them incorrectly around the table. We had to swap them with each other to get it right.This didn't seem to concern her much, she might just be new at this gig. She was, coincidentally, quite young and attractive, reminding me a bit of Debi Mazar (Space Truckers, Entourage) long, straight raven hair, bright blue/green eyes, lip and eye accentuating makeup. She didn’t chat a lot, but she did seem attentive to our orders. Doug chose the spicy chicken strips, Keith, a smothered chicken sandwich, and young Alex opted for the buffalo chicken sandwich. He also ordered a side of curly fries.
The sandwiches were priced at seven to ten dollars, and did not come with fries, they came with either baked beans or slaw. Alex’s fries order added nearly three dollars to his tab.
While we waited, Alex and I scanned the floor, there were a dozen or more of the youthful, curvy ladies in the too-taut uniforms bustling about.
Alex talked more than the rest of us, he’s better at it than we are. He’s young and doesn’t really have that many more stories to share, he just has more willingness to share them. He spoke a bit about his brother/uncle/cousin, I don’t recall which, as I wasn’t paying as close attention as I appeared to be, a terribly bad habit of mine. Anyway this relative of his works in refineries around the world, tough, manly, dangerous work. Recently he was in Zanzibar. “It’s and Island off Tanzania I think.” He said. Keith shrugged his shoulders, either he didn’t know if it was or not or he wasn’t paying that much attention either.
“Zanzibar?” I inserted. “That’s where Freddie Mercury was born!”
“Really?” Keith asked.
“Who?” naively added Alex.”
“Lead singer for ‘Queen’”  Keith informed him. Alex didn’t really respond.
It would be rude of me to have all this vital and important knowledge bottled up in my brain and not share it with others from time to time. It’s really not very often that the opportunity arises on some of this stuff I carry around.
The food arrived, except for Alex’s, we politely waited until his finally came. This was okay since I could hear the sizzle of my fish and feel the intense heat of the dish rising off of it. The thing about breaded fried fish is that it’s like the Hot-Pocket of seafood. It holds that heat for quite a while. A smart person such as myself will crack open a couple of filets and let them cool a bit before committing one's tender, sensitive but ruggedly handsome mouth to them.
I had to peel open the container of tarter sauce anyhow.
His sandwich finally arrived, and a few seconds later Doug’s paltry and otherwise barren plateful of spicy wings disappeared. I didn’t even see him pick one up, I did hear a sort of liquidy buzzing noise though, like a hundred thousand beetles dismantling a field mouse. Doug eats fast, I think I’ve mentioned that before.
I was immediately unimpressed. The curly fries, the ‘chips’ on my plate were not at all crisp, and seasoned only with salt. The four fish filets, though still moist on the inside, were a bit greasy. The slaw was completely bland, no color, no zing, just cabbage with a little generic mayo.
I was unimpressed, but not disappointed. I’ll explain later.
The waitress stopped by once or twice. “How does everything look?” She asked. I’m sure she was talking about the food, not her cleavage, but the honest answering of that question was a bit awkward. At least it was for the other guys, I was on the job, a true professional, undistracted by the, by the, umm… where was I?
This might surprise you but the food, by consensus was overall, unremarkable and in some cases disappointing. Nobody in the group said anything close to “This is the best darned thing I’ve ever eaten!”
Mostly it was a tentative “Good” from Alex, who later added that he’d been gypped on the sauce, not nearly the vampire-killing garlic coating that had been advertised.
“Not as good as expected” and “Not as good as Train Wreck.” Keith piped in. I knew what he meant. Train Wreck is a place about five minutes away in Westport Plaza that makes a hell of a good burger, for about the same inflated price.
Doug’s “It was okay, not too dry, but I’ll wait for about a half hour to see how it settles to be sure.” Doug not only eats fast, he also likes to talk about his digestive system. It’s kind of charming.
Summary:
I said earlier that I wasn’t impressed, but I also wasn’t disappointed. This is simply a result of my low expectations for the food at this place. I’ve never found anything at Hooters worth getting worked up about, at least on the plates. It’s too pricy, my modest meal put me out nearly fifteen bucks, the other guys' maybe a little less since Doug and Keith opted out of ordering the fries that Hooters is unjustifiably so proud of.
None of the food was awful, I’ve had awful meals before. But the food here is just not really all that good. As I said, just across Page Avenue from this place is the Train Wreck, using the same ingredients, for the same price range, and their sandwiches are quite memorable. Hooters just doesn’t seem to even try. Of  course, as even as my son Adam knew and pointed out, “Nobody goes to Hooters for the food.”

__________________

* The ladies here are all adults, they choose to work there, they all get it. I refuse to believe that there is any actual manipulation of them going on. If anything, those being 'used' are the men, the customers. Pandering to the lowest, most basic, almost reptilian brain function of a male creature to yank money out of his pocket is a proven and successful business model. To deny the attraction of a red blooded male towards a youthful, healthy, nicely proportioned woman is to ignorantly deny reality and millions of years of evolution. (or thousands of years of divine creation, I'll not bait that particular discussion here)
I like looking at pretty women just like I looking at expensive, flashy sports and luxury cars. Because I admire the art, the craftsmanship, the care, the beauty and the sleek lines in no way means I want to be responsible for one. They're finicky, expensive, break down at the drop of a hat, cost a fortune to keep in shape, and complain, complain, complain. . .   Young women are nice to look at, but they are also filled with a mountain of volatile and emotional 'challenges'.  

The guys I was with on this trip, except maybe for Alex, are mature and responsible husbands and fathers. I've seen them smile with pride and joy when they talk to or about their wives and kids. Sure they, like me, will take notice, admire the curves and lines, crack wise perhaps, but it is beyond my comprehension that they would ever take it any further than that. These guys don't want any part of the high priced and constant maintenance involved, they are quite content, happy in fact, with the aging, faded, rust-cratered, frequently-overheating yet comfortable and practical mini vans they have at home.
Hold it, we are still talking about cars right?