SAA, Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of my SAA adventure! As promised, this one is about my St. Louis culinary adventures.

I had so much good food during the long weekend! It seems like I’ve eaten in every restaurant in downtown. Since the conference took a fairly pervasive break from noon to 1PM, us archaeologists hit downtown the same time as a lot of the business people. All of the restaurants at that time were bustling and the whole place smelled like food. The restaurant (which alas I didn’t enter) with the burger and hotdog grill outside was one of the guilty parties in making the atmosphere tasty.

I found that a lot of places have buffets for lunch. It works: it has low overhead compared to restaurants with servers, and it’s fast: perfect for the working crowd. To save even more, sometimes they’re open just for lunch! On Thursday I had Thai buffet at Sweet Basil Thai Cafe. I’ve never been to a Thai buffet before. It… works! It’s nice to try out a bunch of Thai food instead of committing to one (usually pad thai) at a sit-down restaurant. Friday lunch was Indian buffet at Mr. Currys. It wasn’t as wonderful as our own India’s House, but it was definitely more affordable and delicious just the same. I’ll sheepishly admit that I was the only one in my group who had a second plate of food. “Sheepishly” because I had lamb {om nom nom).

Saturday I went for a non-buffet to preserve my health. I also had a wrap and strawberry smoothie from Bubba Tea and Cafe. It was very crowded though and it took a while to get my food. Another point for the buffet system! I had to hustle back to the convention center’s talk to watch an MU presentation.

For dinners I alternated between hanging out with archaeologists downtown and taking it easier in Clayton. Downtown I had Chinese food from Bamboo Bistro, and tapas from Mosaic. I haven’t had tapas since my MA graduation. If you’re familiar with my cooking, you’ll know that I put no effort in presentation (example: I now put canned spinach on everything. Canned spinach makes everything look fifty times worse). So basically paying for pretty food is a weird concept for me.

Scallop tapas

{Scallop tapas at Mosaic}

I had a great time though and the food was indeed very good. Our group of 14 or so got to sit in a private room far from the packed bar and dining areas. And to top it off our server was the best. She must’ve been some type of robot programmed to be awesome.

I offset the cost of tapas by having dinners nearer to my hotel: with some yakisoba at Sansai Japanese Grill and good ol’ McDonalds. Yelp.com was instrumental in showing me most of these places. I was very happy with all of them! I posted reviews of all of these places in one big flurry of activity, which caught the attention of one of the Yelp elites:

Yelp comment

Next post: nobody knows!

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