After the March Race to the Rocker 4-mile run, my mom and I enjoyed lunch at the Back in the Day Cafe with a Cuba native named Jane. Jane had offered to give us a tour of Cuba’s fantastic murals, but first, we needed lunch. Back the Day Cafe sits in one of the Cuba Historic Preservation Commission’s official historic buildings.

Immediately inside the restaurant door sits a long, pink buffet used for Sunday brunch. Behind it is one of Cuba’s unofficial murals depicting a young girl, an adult farmer, and rolling Missouri farmland.

On the opposite side of the cafe is another large mural depicting women making bread and cake:

The cafe serves soups, sandwiches, bakery items, sodas, coffee and teas. I’m not sure exactly what the Sunday brunch or lunch options are, but if the sandwich and fruit bowl I ordered are any indication, the other meals at the Cafe probably taste good and are reasonably priced.

The Back in the Day Cafe is located at 615 East Main Street in Cuba, Missouri and can be reached by phone at 573-885-0122.

It should be noted that both of these coworkers are my elders, and both eat beets regularly at lunch. Being the young, tactless coworker that I somehow manage to be all too often, I chimed in that I also associated beets with old people, specifically with nursing homes.

Flash forward a few days…

Great friends, great beets. @ Local Harvest Cafe, photo my MilliGFunk

Yesterday I took two of my very close San Franciscan friends to lunch at Local Harvest Cafe in South City, St. Louis. Having recently developed a fascination with borscht, my friends ordered a bowl of it with their sandwich. I ordered the Farmer’s Market salad, which came loaded with beets.

Farmers Market Salad from Local Harvest Cafe, photo by MilliGFunk

If you love beets, or if you’re old…or if you’re not old and you don’t like beets…or if you’re vegetarian, vegan, a fan of local foods…and/or if you’re looking for fantastic soups, salads, coffees and deserts in St. Louis, I highly recommend Local Harvest Cafe.

Across the street from Local Harvest Cafe is the Local Harvest Grocery, which carries – among other things – my favorite Missouri brie, made by Baetje Farms in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. I wrote about Baetje Farms last fall.

Local Harvest Cafe is located at 3137 Morgan Ford Road, just south of Tower Grove Park in St. Louis, Missouri. Local Harvest Grocery is located diagonally across the street at 3148 Morgan Ford Road.

***

I dedicate this post and my beet-filled salad yesterday to my two fantastic, beet-eating coworkers. Judy and Cat, beets aren’t just for old people. Thanks for opening my eyes to the beauty of the vividly-colored root vegetables. And to my coworker Julianne, thank you for teaching me about Local Harvest last year when I’d just moved back to this area.

Picasso's Coffee House, photo by MilliGFunk

Work required me to travel to St. Charles yesterday, so I took advantage of the opportunity to have a quick cup of coffee in Historic Downtown St. Charles with my friend Elizabeth (@ekcutshall) and two of her three kiddos.

I went to college in a very old Louisiana river town, so I’m no stranger to rod iron railings and brick streets along a river. My college town’s historic district was three blocks long, though, while St. Charles’ brick streets continue for blocks and blocks, with beautiful buildings lining both sides of the street. Most of the buildings appeared to house shops, bars and restaurants, so I assume that an entire day could be spent window shopping and dining in Old St. Charles.

Apparently the Katy Trail –  a 300 mile bicycle path – runs through Old St. Charles, too, so a long bike ride, shopping and eating great food undoubtedly lies in my not-too-distant future.

Elizabeth and I met at Picasso’s Coffee House, St. Charles’ expert on the ‘art of coffee’,  on North Main Street. They exclusively serve coffee roasted in the St. Louis area, their breakfast menu is catered from LaBonne Bouchee Bakery, and they offer a full lunch menu from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.  In the evenings, Picasso’s serves wines, beers, and its famous Masterpiece Martini. The cafe itself is clean but creative, artsy but warm.

I may be forgetting to mention the most important part about Picasso’s: it’s coffee. I ordered my usual skim latte, and I was impressed. The temperature was just right, the coffee was smooth, and the milk had great flavor.

***

Picasso’s Coffee House is located at 101 North Main Street in Historic St. Charles, Missouri. To read more about St. Louis-area coffee shops, check out my October 2009 post on wifi and coffee in The ‘Lou. To learn more about Picasso’s, visit their website.

Mocha, photo by smalltowngirl

I support local businesses where possible, and I also work remotely from locations around St. Louis regularly. I’m always watching for locally owned wi-fi hotpots where I’m welcome to sit with my laptop for 3-4 hours at a time, working.

I’ve fallen into the St. Louis Bread Company habit, and frankly, that depresses me. I don’t like their coffee that much, and the place just takes a little from my soul each time I work there, not unlike the way shopping in Wal-Mart kills my brain cells.

Exposed Brick, photo by smalltowngirl

Though it may at first seem unrelated, it was the Atomic Cowboy’s exposed brick walls last night at the #SeattleCatTweetup that made me realize just how much I hate working from Bread Company.

Not one to sit in discontent for long, I asked some St. Louis twitter friends today to make their suggestions for great wi-fi/work hotspots in and around St. Louis. As far as I know, all of these businesses are locally owned and have wi-fi. If you see a mistake here or you have additional suggestions, please leave a comment for me.

If you like this list, you should check out the list of St. Louis restaurants and bars twitter friends helped me generate in July.

***

Kayak’s Coffee (on Skinker near Washington University)

Park Ave Coffee (Lafayette Square; open fairly late with great patio)

Bauhaus Kaffee (Farmington; serving Kaldi’s coffee)

Mississippi Mud (Cape Girardeau and St. Louis on Cherokee Street)

The Royale (South City)

Hartford Coffee (South of Tower Grove Park on Hartford Street)

Coffee Cartel (Central West End, Open 24 hours!)

Provisions (on Olive – This one was suggested, but I wouldn’t have thought of it as a work/wifi spot. Can anyone confirm or deny this is a potential laptop-friendly wifi spot?)

Murdoch Perk (closed Mondays; on Murdoch btwn S. Kingshighway and Hampton in Southampton)

La Dolce Via (closed Mondays and Tuesdays; on Taylor in the Grove/Forest Park Southeast)

Northwest Coffee (two locations; Central West End and Clayton)

Companion (Central West End, Clayton and Ladue)

Wired Coffee (Sunset Hills)

Foundation Grounds (Maplewood)

***

(Thanks to @michaeltomko, @poppymom, @Lisa_S_47, @threefourteen, @meporter, @cjonescgp, @elsicomoro, @jrobmartin, @allabuzz and @theroyale for recommendations and more information about these businesses)

You’ll notice that there is a mobile home in the background of this drive-through coffee shop. Fittingly, Espresso to Go is actually a metal shack. Here’s to small town life.

Shack, photo by smalltowngirl

Kaldi’s is one of two coffee companies in St. Louis that I’m aware of that roasts its own beans (Northwest Coffee is the other). Kaldi’s also has delictable sweet treats and lots of vegetarian food options for full meals.

I ordered a black bean burrito and cozied into a table near a window, ready to upload and edit the 200+ photos I’d taken at work that morning in Shaw Park. When the barista called my name to give me my burrito, this is it said:

My Name is Not Alyssa, photo by smalltowngirl

For those of you who know me only as smalltowngirl or @milligfunk, I’ll fill you in on a secret; my name is not Alyssa.

That said, the coffee, the burrito and the cookie I got for desert (a giant one with chocolate chunks) were all good, and I really liked the no-wireless-internet, authentic-coffee-shop feel of Kaldi’s.

Kudos to local, independent businesses, even if they decorate their burritos with the wrong name.

The coffee shop is lovely, with refreshingly happy and down to earth staff (no snobbish yuppy baristas here). There is a quirky turquoise mural of a tree with white flowers blossoming on the wall, and mismatched (but coordinated) upholstery covers high-backed chairs.

The pear and brie sandwich I had for lunch was lovely (fair warning though – it was onion heavy, though the onions were raw and easily removable). The iced mocha wasn’t bad either. Foundation Grounds gets brownie points for using biodegradable plastic cups, made from corn.

In the cold case, I found Kambucha, organic juices, Honest Tea, and Stonyfield Farm yogurt – a fairly forward-thinking collection of foods and drinks for this part of the country.

To top off my visit to Foundation Grounds, I overheard someone speaking Mandarin Chinese, and turned to find a husband and wife speaking Chinese to one another. The husband, a St. Louis-born acupuncturist and his wife had just moved back to St. Louis three days ago from years in Seattle and Asia.

His Chinese was far more fluent than my own (embarrassingly rusty) Chinese is, but it was so uplifting to meet another person who has moved back “home” to this part of the country after seeing the world in hopes of contributing something to the communities we grew up in.

Today’s coffee shop encounter is a reminder that when things happen (like servers crashing), there’s often something better in store. It’s been a rough last week for me, but with my hope and optimism restored, I’m looking forward to what the rest of this week holds.

The top 10 things I’d encourage you to see, do, and experience in and around this small town:

1. Millstream Gardens State Conservation Area, seven miles West of Fredericktown, Missouri on Highway 72.

2. A drive through Downtown Farmington

3. Bauhaus Coffee

4. The Factory

5. Elephant Rocks State Park

6. Bonne Terre Mines

7. Farmington Farmer’s Market (Saturdays and Wednesday in Spring and Summer)

8. Farmington’s Mennonite Farmer’s Market, Ole Tyme Pantry

9. Crown Valley Winery

10. 12 West for dinner and drinks

I love this coffee shop.

Still new (open for less than a month, I believe), Bauhaus Kaffee is the newest addition to quaint, downtown Farmington’s collection of stores and restaurants.

The owners, who are from Fredericktown, Missouri, have spent the last two years renovating the space.

I’m not sure how old downtown’s buildings are, but my guess is that they’re from the early 1900s. The sidewalk outside is red brick, and two tables with two chairs each, sit just outside the cafe’s front doors.

The cafe’s two floor-to-ceiling picture windows let sunshine stream in, and offer a view of the side of the court house, around which downtown Farmington was built.

Gleaming, subtly distressed hardwood floors are offset by black granite-topped tables and contemporary black leather sofa and armchairs.

Prints of German artwork hang on the red, exposed brick, and a piano sits in the back.

Beside the piano sits an empty guitar stand – empty because someone in the cafe has inevitably picked up the instrument to pluck out acoustic melodies each time I’ve been in the cafe.

I like to think that by way of my Sunday afternoon latte ritual, I’m helping keep Pat, the owner’s spirits high. Today we chatted about their scones being hand made from scratch each morning, and about the anticipation over the arrival of their new stove, which will accomodate homeades soups in addition to their already homemade baked goods.

Today, craving something sweet, I ordered a mocha. The taste was just as great as the presentation:

Among Brooklyn’s most well-known eateries is Almondine, a patisserie in DUMBO known for it’s baguettes and pastries.

When the ex-boy called to see if I wanted to get together one last time before my move, it seemed like a good opportunity to check out Almondine.

(@andrearosen gets a mini-credit for unintentionally inspiring this trip with a tweet this morning about Almondine’s stuffed pretzels.)

The food was tasty. I had tomato and spinach soup, a grilled vegetable sandwich, and some sort of blue cheese that tasted great broken up into my mixed greens salad.

For desert, Jeff and I split a coffee and a fruit eclair that vaguely resembled a footlong sub, only in miniature and with fruit, not deli meat. As good as the real food was, the eclair kind of made me wish we’d just skipped lunch and gone straight for sharing deserts.

I can now cross Almondine off my NYC to-do, to-see, to-eat list. While I don’t think that St. Louis is without good bakeries, I would guess that this one is a notch above, so the final score on Almondine:

NY = 1; MO = 0.

Empty coffee cups at Almondine
Photo by smalltowngirl

***

On the bright side, my ex doesn’t live in Missouri, so I won’t have to make decisions about whether to see him once I’m gone. Every time I see him it gets a little easier, but it’s still awfully hard. On the ex-boy front, the score is:

NY = 0; MO = 1

***

As an addendum to the “I like your boots” story, I owe MO an apology for under-estimating its supply of cobblers.

My mother kindly informed me that my hometown has a large shoe repair and boot shop now. I no longer feel pressured to have my boots fixed before I leave town.

Thanks, Mom!
NY = 1; MO = 1

***

And, finally, I’ve been assuming that MO would get the cow credit over NYC. How wrong I was.

This photo, taken on our walk back from DUMBO today, is evidence that this midwest ain’t the only cow country ’round these parts. Where cows, go, I’m sure rural MO will have more real ones, but I have to give NYC a point for trying…

NY = 1; MO = 1smalltowngirl with cow
Brooklyn, NY
Photo by the ex-boy