draggonlaady

Placeholder, to be filled out when I have time:

We went back to Rooster for breakfast, and it was wonderful again. This time, Bruce tried the Slinger, and I had the Smoked Sirloin #3. We did better when we split them, I guess - neither of us had big enough bellies to finish the large portions, but they were yummy up until we declared defeat. We asked our server (Chris) for directions to a nearby place to get gooey butter cakes, which we'd been told we had to try while in St. Louis. He said he hadn't ever even had any, let alone know where the really good gooey butter cake is, and went to ask his manager. She directed us to Park Avenue Coffee, which was just a few blocks away from Rooster, so we strolled off in that direction.

Park Avenue Coffee appears at first glance to be just a fairly typical coffee shop, and the name doesn't change that impression. They do not, however, sell a bunch of pre-packaged, shipped in muffins and bagels. They make their own gooey butter cake in 76 different variations. We actually got to talk to the owner, who was friendly and happy to talk to Bruce about baking and which flavors are most popular and some other cooking stuff that went over my head. I asked if they deliver, and Bruce laughed at me and said "not to Washington, they don't!" which got him laughed at by the owner, who said "Sure we do. We seal up fresh-baked cake and overnight it." Which we may eventually take advantage of, but what I actually requested was that they take a piece of the traditional over to Rooster for Chris. They happily agreed to do so, and packaged up a piece of traditional for Bruce and a piece of triple chocolate (oh, like you're surprised) for me. We took ours with us as we headed back to the zoo, because we were still quite stuffed from breakfast.

We headed back to the metrolink to catch the train to the zoo, but ended up on the wrong side of the station to catch the train going the direction we wanted. A very friendly metrolink security helped us navigate the ongoing construction, actually walking with us back out of the station, across the street and down the block to the other station entry that came down to the other trains. I am guessing this station doesn't get a lot of people changing trains!

We headed back to the zoo to finish out the exhibits we didn't get to see last time... we made it two days, but it could be done in one day. If you get there early and don't dawdle. The gorillas were out today; Bruce had been disappointed not to see them last time. No new close friends among the gorillas for Bruce, guess that's just an orangutan thing. We couldn't get in to the stingrays - the exhibit is closed for the winter - which was a bit disappointing, but apparently there's a huge aquarium at, of all places, the City Museum, which we are planning to hit tonight. We went through the children's zoo to see the fennec foxes and the tree kangaroo. Tree kangaroo was cute, and has a baby with her, but it seems like they went out of their way to pick nocturnal animals for the children's zoo. The only critters really out and about were the echidna (cool as cool can be, that critter) and the mole rats, who don't care about night and day. One of the fennec foxes is a tripod; apparently she came to the zoo already missing her front leg, and the keepers we talked to didn't know what happened to her. She was a pet that was released to the zoo. Talked to the keeper for a few minutes about how often that happens... mostly with animals in the children's zoo, apparently, which makes sense. Going to have more people with small exotics (rabbits, chinchillas, fennecs, hedgehogs, etc) that the can't care for than things like large cats, just because the little ones are easier to acquire. She also said that a lot of their pet-releases actually come through the humane societies, not directly from owners, so many of them have little history with them on entry.
We took a break from walking and watched the antelope play (well, mostly they lay around apparently enjoying the sun and their cuds...) while we ate our gooey butter cakes. Delicious concoctions of yumminess! It's like butter and sugar with just enough flour to hold form (plus cocoa in the case of mine). Between gooey butter cake and gelato it's probably best for my health that I not stay in St. Louis long term!
When we'd finished the cakes, we headed through "Big Cat Country" on our way to the monkey house. Lions look very smug as they bask in the sun. We got to see the keeper feed the Coquerel's Sifaka, cute critters that I'd never even heard of before this visit. The absolute most adorable of the primates (in my humble opinion) was the pygmy marmoset. Because I suck, I totally failed to get a picture of him when he came and sat immediately in front of me.
After the monkey house was the Herp Hall, with a variety of beautiful snakes and lizards, and Bruce's favorite, the Komodo dragon. Sad Bruce, that we don't have a proper enclosure for keeping dragons at home.

On our way to dinner after the zoo, Bruce was hit up at a bus stop by a guy who said he was homeless and needed money for food. The guy was very focused on Bruce, and never actually spoke to me, it was a little trippy. So we walked with him to a nearby McDonald's and Bruce paid for his dinner.

Then we made a quick trip to a neighboring thrift store while waiting for bus connection, but didn't find good shirts to go with any of my growing collection of skirts with no matching tops. We did find a pair of cut-off jean shorts for me in a style Bruce likes for fifty cents, so couldn't pass that up. And back to the bus stop we trekked to head off to Farmaus for dinner. Due to the vagaries of bus travel, we arrived quite some time before our reservation, but they got us seated right away. We split the Butcher's Plate (the online menu has already been updated, so what we got was not exactly what is currently listed), which was a taster plate of meats and cheeses. The porchetta was yummy, especially paired with the Marcoot Jersey Creamery Alpine cheese. Pork pie surprised me - I had always imagined it served hot, but it came out cold and was quite nice. There was a lamb pate of some sort (name started with an r, neither Bruce nor I can remember and it's one of the things changed on the menu) that was interesting, but we didn't eat much of it - fairly reminiscent of tuna or chicken salad. Whipped lardo is basically what you'd expect - cured pig fat, processed into a spread. It was good, but I didn't eat much for fear of what straight fat would do to my digestion. The New Orleans style butter pickles tasted to me like pickles (not a fan, sorry), but Bruce said they were probably the best sweet pickle he'd ever had. As entrees, Bruce had the nachos (YellowTree Farm sweet potato chips, Salemville blue cheese, cherry wood  smoked bacon lardoons, pickled Fournie Farms jalapenos, fire-roasted red pepper catsup ) and I had the bacon-wrapped meatloaf. The nachos were pretty damn good - the blue cheese was even mild enough on the "mold" taste that I could enjoy it in small amounts. The red pepper catsup was definitely a good touch. The meatloaf was good (for meatloaf, says Bruce), and the bacon was bizarelly easy to cut but still tasted like bacon. It came with mashed potatoes made with both sweet and Yukon gold potatoes, which was was pretty damn yummy. We didn't take dessert there, opting instead to head back into town for dessert at a different site.
On this trip, we had a very friendly bus driver who gave us directions on transferring to a bus that would take us directly to the restaurant. Unfortunately, said transfer was a 30 minute wait and then a 15 minute ride, and trusty Google maps said the place was  only an 18 minute walk away. It was chilly and windy but not raining, and we didn't want to sit at the bus station for half an hour while the weather decided whether or not to soak us, so off we walked. We ended up getting side tracked about a block from our original destination (back to Chocolate Bar to try some of their other options) and stopped at Eleven Eleven to see what they had on their dessert menu. We stayed and tried the sampler. The chocolate torte was good, as expected (what can I say, my taste in these things is predictable). The creme custard napoleon was mostly Bruce's, and not bad but the phyllo pieces were quite sharp/brittle, making eating them a little uncomfortable. The caramelized bananas were, well, bananas in caramel sauce: good, but not what I expected. The gooey butter cake was a disappointment, and made us very glad we'd been to Park Avenue Coffee before coming here, or we may have never tried it elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, just...uninspired. It tasted alright but was basically just flat pound cake. We made immediate plans to return to Park Avenue for breakfast tomorrow for really good gooey butter cake.

We walked back to the metrolink, caught the train out to the bus station in our area of town, and then sat in the cold drizzle while the bus driver refused to let people on the bus, saying that she wasn't going anywhere - she shut the door right in Bruce's face and sat in the darkened bus talking on her cell phone for 20 minutes before she opened the door again and started letting people on. We were not impressed. It is probably unfair, but I'm going to go ahead and blame her for the fact that I am all congested and stuffy-headed again now, when I had been feeling better.