In August staff photographer Elie Gardner wrote a post about the “Perks of the job.” In it she wrote about how her dog got to model for a recent photo shoot.

I recently experienced another such perk.  When another photographer was unable to photograph and judge toasted ravioli with Joe Holleman and Gabe Hartwig for this weeks issue of Go!, I got the lucky job of replacing him. This will be an occasional series that feature the “best of” St. Louis.

Though I’d never tried toasted ravioli before, I’m a big fan of trying out local cuisine.  I’ve lived in quite a few places in my life before moving here and have enjoyed such food as scrapple, stadium mustard, buckeyes, boiled peanuts, whoopie pies, and Runzas. Bonus points for anyone who can identify where all these food are from.

Our quest featured the best of the best that St. Louis had to offer.  Our destinations included Lombardo’s, Gentelin’s on Broadway, Trattoria Marcella, and Charlie Gitto’s.  It took us about five hours to complete our mission, but it was definitely worth it. I came away completely stuffed and feeling a little more like a St. Louisian. You’ll have to check out this week’s issue of Go! to see which one we selected as the best.