Stop #30: Local Harvest

Tony's Review: 30 big ones! 30 big piles of trash! 30 big pounds gained! Not really, we're experts at this...we don't gain weight like amateurs. This week we go to the heart of downtown and visit the new Local Harvest, you can still suffer in their tiny, annoying restaurant on Morganford or you can stretch your legs (and dick) in their spacious new downtown location in the old post office building. This place really pushes the whole local angle which a lot of people care about, lucky for you Tim and I don't give a shit about that crap so we won't bore you with where the garbanzo beans came from.

This is another vegetarian slinger, aka a hippie slinger, which personally doesn't bother me but I do enjoy the warm grasp of meat on my arteries. But like some of the previous veggie slingers we've had this one didn't fuck around and took me to a place I like to call, Flavor Country, USA. This was the first slinger we've had in a long time that came with toast which are always bonus points in our book. Start off with some good but overly mushy potatoes as your base, there could of been a little more of these but it didn't ruin it by any means. The eggs were good and cooked properly and cover that shit with some homemade, veggie chili bursting with garbanzo beans and other bold flavors, it was top notch. Then they cover that with mozzarella cheese...what?...mozzerelli belongs on 'za and 'za rollers not slingers, but in this case I didn't notice or care, it worked.

Local Harvest surprised me with their sweet new location and their sweet slinger. I would definitely recommend this to any of youz guyz out there especially if you want to impress your new girlfriend with your high class, hippie tastes.

Disclaimer: We noticed after we ordered that the slinger had a bacon option for an additional fee...I bet that would of made this even better so don't blow it like we did. Take your time dummy!

Tim's Review: This is one of those stops that I wasn't exactly looking forward to. I've never had the slinger here before, but I did hear from an insider that said it was “a little weird” (by insider, I'm referring to a former employee, who is also my neighbor (woop! Woop!)). Describing a meal as “weird” might sound like we are headed for disaster, but in this case, “weird” turned out to be a great surprise.

Since I didn't want to waste any time looking at the menu, it took me a minute to even realize this was a vegetarian slinger. This vegetarian chili was fan-fuckin-tastic! Honestly, I don't even think I realized what the chili was made of until Tony spelled it out. Good thing he's a slow eater and actually pays attention. All the parts of this slinger were done right and the nice crispy piece of toast on the side made me realize how many slinger's we've eaten that don't have any toast at all. That's a little bullshit in my opinion. One slice of bread, toasted and cut in half. It's probably the easiest part of any slinger, but it's pretty awesome when you can use it to soak up some bad ass chili. Sometimes I'll load up the fork with a little bit of everything and slide it across the top of that toast like some beautiful, brown, lumpy spread. Mmmmmm I'm getting hungry thinking about it.

Although Local Harvest isn't going to make it into the top ten, this was a quality effort and I would suggest any slinger fan to give it a try. A small stretch from the traditional slinger but they make it work and if this thing came with a solid burger patty in the mix it just may have squeezed its way onto the list.

Stop #29: Pat's Bar & Grill

Tony's Review: Well I've never been to Pat's before this, I've had people they tell me that they have good burgers—they might—but as far as slingers go they pretty much fucking suck. This is an "exclusive" Sunday slinger only so make sure you guys set your alarms so you can wake up and eat cheese covered shit.

First of this thing is called an Irish Slinger, I have no idea why there wasn't a damn thing Irish about it had all the toppings of a normal slinger except all of them sucked. It didn't say it would come with hashbrowns on the menu but surprise, surprise there they were on the plate! Oh what's that? They were cooked 6 days ago, they're rock hard and taste like flavorless brick strips! Wowee Zowee! On top of that layer of gold were three gross, oddly thick, sausage patties that were probably microwaved. The chili wasn't pure garbage, I would say it was 72% garbage so we had that going for us. The one thing Pat's did figure out what to do was to cover that filth with about 2lbs of some kind of white cheese, didn't taste like mozzarella, maybe it's a Pat's exclusive cheese made with cat's milk?

While this slinger was pure garbage I don't feel it truly qualifies to be entered in the mega VIP "Hall of Shit" but it is knocking on the shit-covered door, maybe I'm just grumpy. Like I said before Pat's didn't seem like that bad of a place, I hope they do have a good burger, just don't waste your time on their bullshit "Irish" slinger.

Tim's Review: Pat's.......What a mess. No time to mess around here so lets just jump right in: This slinger sucked. I can't really think of one positive thing to say about Pat's. So even though Tony and I clearly have an agenda for these little meetings, I usually take a quick a look at the menu anyway. You never know, something might catch my eye and I might have to make a trip back. For the record, that is not going to happen with Pat's.

The description of slinger said “3 eggs...” ooohhhh, that sounds great, I love eggs, but then there was the whole hash brown fuck up. The sausage patties didn't help the situation and the chili, the one thing that is supposed to bring all this crap together, was absolutely gross. All that excitement about the extra egg was completely destroyed by the disappointment that was brought on by the rest of the stale shit.

I'm sure I've explained plenty of times how I'm a little piggy and tend stop eating about 27 bites after my belly tells me I'm full. Well, I couldn't even finish half of this shit. That's a bad sign. Like Tony said, Pat's isn't going to make it into the hall of shit, but it sure seemed like it was trying.   

Stop #28: Benton Park Cafe

Tim's Review: I've been to Benton Park Cafe so many times, this wasn't really much of an event. Although I've never had their slinger, I've had just about everything else on the menu, so I pretty much knew what to expect. This is one those biscuit and gravy types that I'm not really a big fan of to begin with. It was good, but just really not my style. I had no idea there would be so many goddamn biscuits when I signed up for this tour. I like biscuits, I just never realized they found their way on to so many slinger plates.

The best part of this guy was definitely the bacon. Nice and crispy, just the way I like it. I might say some of the best bacon on the tour, next to Copia. I even snatched up some of Tony's bacon. That guy almost never finishes a plate! The biscuits and gravy part of it was actually pretty good too and now that I think back, probably the some of the best biscuits on the tour. But that's not saying much considering any slinger with a biscuit so far has completely sucked (12^th street diner, kickers corner). I was also a big fan of the potatoes, and I just realized they were in a separate bowl. Why didn't I mix that shit up!! Ohhh well.

So despite my lack of enthusiasm for this slinger, the simple fact that I'm a repeat customer will have to tell you that I like this place, but I'm just not really excited about it anymore. I'm sure I'll eat there again, but I'm sticking with the breakfast pizza.

Tony's Review: You dorks probably thought we forgot about the coveted Benton Park Cafe! HA! We were just saving this for when we needed to eat a good slinger. This place is easily one of the best places to get breakfast in St. Louis and if you're Mom is in town take her here, she will love it...at least my Mom did. Like Tim I've been here a ton of times and will continue to come here for a solid breakfast and this place has one of my pre-tour favorite slingers.

Like Tim said this is one of those biscuit and gravy slingers so it may not be for everyone but I personally like a good biscuit and gravy slinger. Benton Park has some of my favorite biscuits, not like the flaky ones you fruits like but a nice, dense as shit beer biscuit that will put hair on your butt. This slinger is totally covered in awesome gravy that I'm sure is slowly killing me. The eggs were fine as usual and the change of bacon really fits this well versus having a burger in there. Normally their hashbrowns are some of the best in the city all full of creaminess and bold flavors but when we were there, Sunday at din-din time, they were some of the worst I've had there. Clearly these potatoes are meant to be enjoyed at breakfast hours and not long after. If you're there when the potatoes are good you should mix them up like Tim said, but in this particular case I'm glad I didn't.

Unlike Tim I love the Benton Park Slinger, even though this particular time wasn't the best I've had, it is always one of my top picks for a B&G slinger. And if you haven't been to the Benton Park Cafe yet you are not a true St. Louis resident and you need to get your ass over there pronto you jabroni. 

Stop #27: Lemmon's

Tony's Review: What! Lemmon's! I thought they only served pizza, wings and some other non-slinger crap. Well you are correct. We had the exclusive honor of being treated to a VIP only...Slinger Pizza created lovingly by St. Louis' own Denny Dyer. Denny debated for weeks on the proper way to execute such a high profile task and spoiler alert—he nailed it.

He decided not to go with the thin crust but go all the way with a large Chicago-style pizza with middle toppings of cheese, bacon, jalapeno, hamburger and onion and on top of that was your layer of over easy eggs, chili and an unreal amount of cheddar and I'm probably missing an ingredient. This thing was over the top everything, huge in size, probably weighed 8lbs. and was intimidating to say the least. Luckily we had some friends to destroy this thing and I was barely able to finish my one slice let alone having two, Tim tried to eat two but he ended up just wasting pizza...what a slob.

Honestly I was reluctant about this slinger pizza, I mean this just look at that picture it screams "instant diarrhea" and "you won't make it home" but I accepted the challenge, I'm glad I did and my pants are clean! Denny nailed the crust, super crispy and it helped contain all of that garbage on top of it. The flavors were surprisingly evenly distributed with highlight bites of tasty bacon. One of the bigger accomplishments was getting the eggs to work, they didn't have the runny yolk like we had hoped but they still had a good thing going. This thing was really good, I'm happy to have a bud that would work so hard to make a trash pile like this slinger pizza. If you want to try the elusive slinger pizza talk to Denny at Lemmon's and if you give him $100 maybe he'll think about it.

Tim's Review:

I wasn't afraid of this thing for a second. This was actually my third slinger pizza from Lemmons and I say it like I'm bragging, but I probably just sound like a disgusting pig. I don't even know why that first one was made. I think Denny just gets bored at work and starts looking for stuff in the kitchen to throw in a pizza . I remember one time he made a pizza with fruit on it.... it was a little weird. They can't all be a raging success.

You want to know what was great about this Lemmons slinger? It had all the great qualities of the classic Lemmons deep dish: it was massive, it was filled to the top of that thick ass crust with mouth watering goodies, and after once slice you feel instantly tired and depressed. I think Tony actually started sweating a few minutes after he finished. I did try to eat two pieces, but I wouldn't really call it a waste. No one else was going to eat that shit. Besides, the only reason I didn't finish it was because I'm trying to exercise a little self control. Once I made the mistake of participating in a pizza eating contest with a co-worker. We each ordered our own large deep dish at Lemmons to see who could eat the most. I only ate 5 ½ slices so I lost. So embarrassing.

I'm sure it'd be nice if you could all try this delicious treat that Lemmons doesn't have to offer, but I'd rather you not go ask Denny to make it for you, for the simple reason that I would not feel as special. If this were a real menu item that every chump could enjoy, I'd put it in the top ten for sure.