Stop #18: Murdoch Perk (RIP)

Tim's Review: Slinger tour is in a major slump. Everything about this last trip was depressing. We first planned on going to Time Out on Gravois, but turns out the don't even serve slingers. Then we tried Kicker's Corner. We got this referral from a nameless friend that I shall refer to as M. Harnish. This mystery friend failed to mention, they only serve slingers for breakfast!!! It's ok. I do appreciate the suggestion, and we'll be sure to get up early some time to try it. Maybe it will end up being the new number one and M. Harnish will be my new hero.

So we finally end up at the snooze fest called the Murdoch Perk. I really had no expectation for this place. And no expectations means, I assume it will suck. I think I've had a bite to eat there before, really can't remember.  Doesn't matter.  It sucked.  It did have the spiciest chili on tour though. So at first I thought, hey! I like spicey! Then I realized it just tasted terrible. The chili was this insanely meaty mess and I just had this picture in my head of someone in the kitchen dumping a can of manwich on the plate. Apparently that chili was supposed to substitute the normal burger or sausage patty that was completely absent from this plate. There wasn't even toast. Clearly no top ten time for the Murdoch.

To top off the bad day, I seem to have lost my master list of destinations. So if anyone actually wastes time reading this, feel free to leave a comment about any place you know of that tries their best to serve up slinger. Tony and I will gladly choke it down. Thank you. I'm tired. Good night.

Tony Disclaimer: Before I destroy this slinger I do want to see that I have eaten at Murdoch Perk a bunch of times and their food is consistently pretty good and not a bad place at all.

Tony's Review: Alright we gotta do something here. I'm hitting rock bottom with these shitty slingers, it's getting hard to wake up in the morning and I often ask myself, "Why?" And then I remember all of our loyal fans who patiently wait by their blog feeds for a new post.* You are the reason we continue to eat this shit week after week! YOU!

Tim pretty much covered the bases on this one, another plate full of garbage. No meat came on this one just meat in the chili so already you know they don't know what the hell they're doing. This chili was disgusting through and through, terrible taste and so unnecessarily hot. The eggs were fine but who gives a shit and the potatoes were good but there were not nearly enough of them. Just looking at that picture above is pissing me off, it actually looks like a pile of shit. All I want is to eat a mediocre slinger...is that such a hard thing. This one is going in the Hall of Shit.

UPDATE: Just read that Murdoch Perk is closing at the end of the month. Kind of bummed but once you serve slingers like that its really not that surprising. 

*We don't really have any loyal slinger fans.

Stop #17: Southwest Diner

Tony's Review: Was pretty excited to give Southwest Diner a try, a new southwestern inspired breakfast spot seems like it would be a shoe-in for Bold Flavor City, USA right? WRONG! But before we get to crazy let's backtrack here, we had the pleasure of being joined by our buds Andy, Pooky and my girlfriend Lyndsay for extra friendship time. Southwest Diner was packed on a Saturday afternoon but it seemed like they had the right number of staff and some kick ass coffee which helped things out.

Now Southwest Diner doesn't offer a true traditional slinger but that's cool, they have home fries, two cheeseburger patties, two eggs, green or red chile and some green onions. So all four of us ordered a slinger (stupid Lyndsay had a spicy egg scramble, more of that later) with a mixture of green and red chile choices. As soon as we get our slingers the excitement level took a severe blow once we saw our plates, no strong presence of cheese and the lack of chili was a bit shocking even to a mature eater like myself. Instead I saw egg mountain with a moat of watery green chile and little bits of unappealing home fries. Right away you noticed the lack of seasoning across the board, the potatoes weren't crispy and had no flavor, the burger which had a lot of potential was wasted by the lack of seasoning and the green chile which may have been good to compliment a breakfast burrito didn't even begin to do the slinger justice.

I was seriously bummed about the slinger and was ready to write this plate off but then I tried my girlfriend's spicy egg scramble and was blown away by how good it was! And her potatoes were from a different batch and were cooked and seasoned perfectly. Just when I was down in the dumps after eating a shitty slinger I am lifted from the ashes by a spicy phoenix. I will return to Southwest Diner but I will not be ordering the slinger anytime soon.

Tim's Review: Unfortunately, the slinger tour seems to be a on a bit of a losing streak. From what I hear, this place has only been open for a few weeks, but come on!!! This slinger just isn't ready. I always get excited about new places to eat and I really wanted to like this place. When I get excited, I just set myself up for a bigger let down.

The red and green chili sounded like a great idea, but since I'm no fun and fear change, I asked for the red. I suspect it really didn't matter what chili I ordered though, because the red sucked and I was not jealous of anyone at the table with green. The main problem, as Tony said, is that this thing had no flavor. ZERO. I wound't even say the flavor was bad, but completely non-existent. And a dozen shakes of salt, pepper, and hot sauce couldn't save it. The other problem with mine is that nothing was cooked right. My burger was burnt and crispy. The hash browns were replaced by breakfast potatoes, also burnt. And my eggs were not cooked enough. Runny yolk = mmmmmm.  But when the white part is runny, that's kinda gross (I only learned a few weeks ago from a motivational speaker at work that the white part is called albumin. I was not motivated by this guy, at all).

I finally have a picture of something that isn't covered in chili. I always mean to get a photo of the outside of the building and I always forget. I did manage to snap this picture of a picture in the bathroom. Is that John Wayne showing off his sidepipe? I admire his confidence.

So as you can tell, I was totally disappointed, but I'm actually looking forward to going back and trying anything else.  Anything that isn't a slinger. I saw some breakfast burritos and pancakes at the surrounding tables that looked great. Plus they have malts and shakes!! I'll try not to get too excited about it though.  

Stop #16: 12th Street Diner

Tony's Review: We ended up at 12th Street Diner by accident, we were SUPPOSED to enjoy a fancy lunch slinger at Copia on Washington but instead some dummy thought it would be a good idea to close the place for a full week...good thinking. So we ended up down the street at 12th Street Diner...kind of wished we just took the week off.

As you can see in the picture this thing is covered in cheese, as my buddy Nick Rouley would say, "TOO CHEESY," I had cheese hanging all over my face with every bite. Some of you might think this is cool to have a lot of cheese trying to hide gross flavors but it sucks and you're a dingbat. Second this had chili and gravy on it (a ying-yang or a toby), which I thought would be sweet city but it turns out it made a detour into suck ass city. The chili had zero flavor and it was hard to tell the nasty oily cheese and the shitty gravy apart. No burger or sausage in this masterpiece instead we had chopped bacon which actually was the best part of this piece of shit. And don't forget the hash browns which offered zero help in the flavor department. And oh yeah there was a stupid biscuit at the bottom of this thing, now I'll be honest I was excited to see it on the menu but when I took a bite of it guess what...that shit was rock hard and sucked major ass. What a waste of a biscuit.

I think this is the first slinger that could truly pass for a big pile of puke so I would like to congratulate the 12th Street Diner on that accomplishment. Probably going to start a Hall of Shit with the worst of the worst to warn the good people of St. Louis.



Tim's Review:
Sometimes restaurants suck so bad, you just never want to go back. This is what I like to call the 2 strike rule. If I go somewhere for the first time and the food is crap, maybe it was just a bad day. I'll give it another shot, but if it sucks a second time, then I'm done. Tony is a little more forgiving than me and he likes to use the 3 strike rule. He will eat 3 bad meals before he decides he won't go back. 3 !? Really?!? The way I see it, after you eat two piles of trash, then you go back, you're just asking for another disappointment. The reason I bring this up is, before this last slinger outing, the 12^th street diner got its 2 strikes from me (neither time did I try the slinger). This just shows how dedicated I am to eating every slinger in town.

This is the first place we've been to that offered the choice of tamales in your slinger. For the record, I love me some tamale! Sounds like it might be a good idea, but we decided to go for the more standard dish which came with bacon. Plus, I just don't see the 12^th street diner having the best tamales in town. Like Tony mentioned, it had both chili and gravy, and there was also a biscuit hiding under that mess. After taking the first bite, I wasn't completely turned off. I would say, maybe about 3 or 4 bites in is when I realized this was a loser. The cheese was clearly out of control and reminds me of the disaster from the city diner. And the biscuits were just uncalled for. I guess it was a nice attempt at trying to add a little something, but I'd rather take my toast on the side.

So needless to say, 12^th street diner doesn't even get close to the top ten list and I don't think any tamale could have helped. This just confirms my faith in the 2 strike rule.   

Stop #15: Jefferson Avenue Bistro

Tony's Review: It had been a while since I've visited Jefferson Avenue Bistro but the times I've had it in the past have been pretty good. For some reason my girlfriend never wants to go there, guess she didn't get the memo that says their breakfast food is pretty good...women—can't live with em—can't take em to an ok place for breakfast.

When we got there the bar had a decent crowd and the only bartender/waitress was pretty busy so it took a bit to get our order in but no sweat, she was a hard worker. When we did get our slinger it was visually not great looking...at all. A big white plate with a mountain of thick, dark chili and no signs of what treasures are hidden below needless to say I wasn't thrilled about getting in. The chili actually wasn't too bad, very meaty but lacked the pizazz that my exquisite taste palate requires (not serious). No burger on this slinger, instead two thick as hell sausage patties which I thought were too thick and they kind of grossed me out. Hash browns were legit and I had some pretty tasty bites of that over easy egg.

All in all the slinger at Jefferson Avenue Bistro was passable as ok but probably won't be on the top 10 for very long.

Tim's Review: 

Whooaa, that picture reminded me, this was definitely not a good looking slinger. I know I'm judging a mess of chili, but I've been carefully examining these piles for nearly 4 months now and the slinger at the Jefferson ave. bistro gets no points for good looks. I think that's the closest thing to dog food we've seen so far.

But let's not judge on looks alone. This thing was actually pretty weak all around. The sausage patties were basically crap and the hash browns were average at best. I guess I would say the best part of this slinger was actually that disgusting looking chili. And someone forgot the damn cheese and onions! Well, I guess it was me that forgot to ask, but that should come standard. OHHh and I almost forgot, no toast!! geez!

So this wasn't the worst stop on the tour, but it was definitely not any better than hammerstone's and therefore gets zero time on my top ten list. Maybe I'm being a little harsh on the Jefferson ave. bistro, but guess what? I'm not writing here to be nice to every jackass who dumps a spoonful of chili over my breakfast. Let's not forget, we're looking for the best slinger in town. The tour must go on.