Concord Grill

11427 Concord Village Ave.
St. Louis, Mo.

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This was Angel's choice and she's all in on this 'no more crap' idea. If you get the hankerin' for a burger, drive past 20 or so fast food and franchise places and stop here instead.
Debbie at CG even custom made me a burger once, a Shrimp Alfredo burger, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was very good, but a bit above the price point to be on the regular menu. So make sure you ask for this when you go in. Have everyone at the table ask for one. They'll just ask you to make another choice, then you can get the one you wanted anyhow. Help me out on this.
Concord Grill offers a lot of different burgers, a LOT of burgers. The standard size is nine ounces, but for a dollar less, you can downsize to six ounces, which is what Angel and I do. Nine ounces is over a half pound (pre-cooked weight) and for lesser sized people with sloth-like metabolisms, that is a LOT of meat. Adam was able to join us for this burger run, I don't think he downsized his.
The Place:
Near Lindbergh and Baptist Church road in the southern part in St. Louis County.  Plug the address in to your car's fancy talking map machine, or you cellular telephone. They'll get you there.
It's an older building, post-war style and construction, I understand it has been a few other things before it became the Concord Grill.
It has a large deck outdoors, but on this trip it was hovering near the freezing mark all day, so no one was outside, even though the inside was all but busting at the seams. It's always crowded. Noisy, busy, crowded, yet we still go there. That should tell you a lot. I don't even like elevators with more than one other person in it. We just usually don't do noisy, busy or crowded.
We were seated right in front of the door, not a prime spot, but once again, for this place we didn't mind.
There's a nine foot flat screen on one wall, a few other human-sized ones scattered around the others. All seemed to be playing sports games of one kind or another. One I noted was a football game, Duke vs. Maine, two universities I have absolutely no interest in playing a sport I have even less interest in. Later, all three TV's that I could see were tuned to the same channel for a hometown favorite, the St. Louis Blues, which is a hockey team, I am told. Not a big hockey fan either.
Let's just get to it.
The Food:

Pimento Burger

We all got burgers.
Me: Pimento-Bacon Burger with fries.
Angel: Ultimate Shroom Burger, fries
Adam: Breakfast Burger, fries.
I had un-sweet tea, Angel had sugared-up tea, a Pepsi for Adam.
There was about a fifteen minute wait, not really long for as busy as they were.
The pimento was not on the regular 'Burger Tour' menu, it was a special. I had asked the cheery young lady that took our order about it. "Burger, bacon, topped with pimento cheese." Simple, straight forward, tasty sounding.
I grew up liking pimento cheese (the caviar of the south), all by itself on bread. As I recall we had it a lot, it might have been cheaper than real food. Which begs the question, "Just what the heck is a pimento anyhow?"
Well fans, I looked it up. It is a form of red chili pepper, in fact the word 'pimento' is derived from the Portuguese words for 'bell pepper'. BTW, there are more Portuguese speakers in Brazil than there are in Portugal. I'm not even sure Portugal even exists anymore. I'll look that up next week, maybe. Remind me.
So the red pimento slivers in pimento cheese and crawling out the pit-hole of green olives, is little more than a bell pepper cousin. It is slightly sweeter than common red bell peppers.

Breakfast Burger

There's actually a machine in olive factories that 'pits' the olive and inserts the pimento in one quick movement.
So how is pimento cheese on a burger?
Actually, it's a pretty good fit. The thing tasted just like a good burger topped with pimento cheese, which is mostly just cheese and mayo anyhow. It was a little messy, little blobs of the cheese spread fell out during the meal, but messiness is just part of the burger experience.
Adam's breakfast themed burger included hash browns, egg, bacon and American cheese. We decided that it does not really qualify as a 'breakfast' burger unless it also included Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs. Now you're talking!
He quietly wolfed it all down in no time.
Angel's, the Ultimate Shroom, was topped with extra mushrooms and horseradish sauce. I don't care for horseradish in any amount. Angel said her burger could have included even more. (I looked this up too, no, horseradish is not made from actual horses.)
Angel's biggest beef. . . get it? Beef? LOL. Angel's strongest comment wasn't about the flavors, she

Ultimate Shroom Burger

was quite please with the taste. It was the bun/burger size ratio.  Our miniaturized burgers contained one third less beef than the regular burger. The bun though, was the same. Thus, her burger had about a half inch of bread edge all around it. Perhaps, she mused, if they flattened the smaller ones out a little more it would have been a better fit.
We were all quite pleased with our meals. I still couldn't finish my entire plate, but that does not mean I did not thoroughly enjoy it.
I asked the family about the fries. I'd noticed that they were sprinkled with pepper. To a person, yes, that was quite a nice touch. I tend to forget to put salt on fries, I can't say it ever occurred to me to pepper them as well. I may start doing that.
Summary:
This place is just plain great. Debbie and her crew are true pros. The wait staff I observed were not just professional and competent, they were not just friendly, they were actually, genuinely cheerful, as if they were enjoying themselves. Very helpful, always smiling and all over the floor taking care of this and that.
Yes it was busy, yes it was noisy, but it was a happy place. The customers were all laughing and joking with each other.
The food is exceptional. Occasionally they offer fish or fried chicken, I've heard that it is just as good as the burgers, I don't doubt it. Debbie has created a nearly magical combination of great staff, great food and fantastic, intelligent and very, very handsome patrons.
The Concord Grill deserves every one of the many, many accolades that have been heaped on it.

Hot Shots

12664 Dorsett Rd.
Maryland Heights, MO
http://www.hotshotsnet.com/

Doug and Rob, posing.

Once again, a last minute invite to go out for lunch with Rob and Doug. A beautiful, unseasonably warm, March day. Rob drove again, Doug sat in the front seat and I in the back. I am not quite as altitude-privileged as Doug or Rob, so for me it’s not about who sits up front with whom, it’s merely a matter of physics and anatomy. I fit better in back seats than grotesquely tall (over 5’10”) people. It doesn’t bother me; I’m still waiting for my promised growth spurt, some guys are just late bloomers. Once that finally happens, all bets are off.

I’d not heard of Hot Shots, but learned quickly that it was one of the many sports bars in the area, within a metaphorical stone’s throw of Maryland Yards.

It sits in an upscale strip mall, blending in quietly with its retail neighbors. Another thing Rob and Doug have become accustomed to is the delay for me to take a picture of the storefront, this time they even pseudo-posed at the door.

The Place:

As soon as we opened the door we were met with a sonic storm. This wasn’t background music, it was well into the foreground. It was turned up happy-hour loud which I found distracting, especially since the music selection wobbled between twangy country and what I believe the kids today refer to as hippity-hop. I’m not a big fan of most music, these two genres in particular, I was not impressed.

The place was only sparsely populated with fellow cubicle drones, and we were told to find our own seating. The main floor around the bar was equipped by tall tables and stools, and each tall table sported a condiment rack as well as an ashtray. I didn’t actually need to see the ashtrays to know it was a smoking-allowed place, the ambience, the aroma had already given that away.

The walls were lined primarily with large, bright, flashing flat screen TV’s all showing sporting events and channels. On the largest screen, as well as a few of those on the sides, a Hockey game was starting up, the local Blues playing against the Chicago Blackhawks. Every time I looked up at the screen, it seemed yet another fist fight had broken out. Why they pretend to be about ice skating and sportsmanship I can’t imagine. Why not just dress up in bright, stupidly-fitting clothes and swing big sticks at each other and be done with it.

We’d already started the sports talk in the car. “So should we get the sports out of the way now or wait until we get there?” Doug had asked. I was ready this time.

“As a matter of fact I’m sort of into this March Madness thing, have you heard about it?” I asked the front seat.

They both looked a bit startled, so I explained.

“My grandmother, my mother, and my sister all graduated from Murray State, in fact my beloved, yet dreadfully homely sister recently retired from there as the Registrar.”

They seemed impressed.

“And my older brother attended Western Kentucky.” Whose team I knew to be wild-carding their way into the tournament.

“And of course I’ve got all kinds of ties to U.K., My saintly mother even listens to their games on the radio. In Kentucky, where there are only one or two huge schools, and several smaller ones, it’s not unusual for a person to root for two or more at a time. You can be a fan of Murray and U.K., or Louisville and Western, it’s not seen as a contradiction there.” I was making this part up, I never attended college in Kentucky myself. “So I even filled out one of those bracket-y things I saw on Yahoo, picked U.K to take it all.”

That was the extent of my contribution to the sports talk, as I’d hoped, they didn’t pop follow-up questions regarding scores, players, stats or team mascots.

The menu was a simple two sided affair the typical sports-bar offerings. Burgers, sandwiches, pizza, etc. They obviously served alcoholic drinks as well, squeezed between the TV’s were a plethora of beer banners and neon signs, mostly touting Budweiser products. The bar looked well stocked as did the petite bartender. I couldn’t see any further down on her than her neck, though the taller Doug pointed out that she was wearing a tight tube top.

The servers were all wearing referee-like black and white striped shirts and black spandex short-short-short-shorts, all clothing three sizes too small.

It’s a sports bar thing. I could go on for pages about the sociology, psychology, and anthropology of scantily clad, fetching waitresses at sports bars, but I won’t. Suffice it to say if I were to open an eatery next door, tuned to the  Lifetime Channel on big TV’s, played gospel music on zithers and accordions in the background and clad the wait-staff in Amish midwife apparel, who do you think would go out of business first? I don’t try to rationalize or defend the business model, it’s cheap and tawdry, and it works$$.

The Food:

I asked what on the menu was good, my two pals shrugged their shoulders. They mentioned the Royale, a big sloppy burger that included a fried egg and bacon. Though that sounded really good, I could almost hear the Lipitor pills begging for mercy from their bottle.

Doug ordered one anyhow, along with a side of horseradish. Oddly enough, though the actual origin of the name 'horseradish' is unknown, one thing that is known about that particular root is that it is poisonous to horses.

Rob went with the ‘Upper Deck’, a turkey club sandwich with a little bacon. Both the boys asked for the Hot Shots house chips.

I’d had a burger recently and a beef sandwich the day before at a Panera-catered meeting. So I decided to pretend to be concerned about my red-meat intake and ordered 'The Fisherman', a beer-battered cod filet topped with cheese and served with lettuce, tomato and tartar sauce, and a side of traditional fries. Not that a battered, deep fried cod filet is that much healthier than a burger, it just sounds like it. Rob and I cheaply asked for nothing more than water, Doug asked for tea.

They continued sports talk, I glanced around the joint. I noticed an upper deck, a loft area with regular tables and chairs that was unoccupied. The place was bigger than it seemed from the outside, more beer banners and neon. I’d heard the place gets pretty packed during its happy hours, but for a Wednesday lunch, not bad at all.

The food arrived rather quickly, nothing splashy or fancy, just baskets of lunch. My filet was brown and crispy, the fish well cooked, moist and flaky. The fries were okay, nothing special. Rob handed me one of his chips, eager to know how they would fare in my review. They were actually pretty good, though it did seem to be a bit soft in the middle.

Our waters got refreshed, Doug wolfed down his horseradish-laden Royale in near record time, as expected. He was panting and red-faced, a state he seems to enjoy. Rob and I didn’t even try to compete, there’s simply no point.

When polled, they seemed quite content with their meals, as was I. I told them that in places where fish was not a main item that it’s easy to screw it up. Breaded fish filets, usually frozen, don’t fry up like burgers or fries. They have to be nursed through the process to avoid cold spots or over-doneness. They did just fine here.

Summary:

Not bad, not bad at all. I finished my sandwich, left some fries, the other guys cleaned up. The service, aside from being scantily clad was efficient and professional. The bill for all three of us came in at just over twenty four dollars, well below the ten dollar lunch barrier. I picked up the tab since somebody else did the last time, the boys thanked me like it was a big deal. For all their other flaws, and there are quite a few, Doug and Rod are genuinely nice guys. That is unless you bring up politics, then Doug goes all zealously scorched-earth.

I can’t speak for Hot Shots at prime-time, but for a working day lunch it was pretty good, except for the ashtray smell and the too-loud music. Given those two things I’d prefer Maryland Yards just across the street.