RFT 📰

Lion’s Choice is ready for Version 2.0 — and it's starting by giving one of its signature items an employee-inspired reboot. The Original Roast Beef Sandwich remains on the menu, but now you can also order what it's calling the Remix: roast beef, two slices of Swiss cheese and a garlic aioli sauce sandwiched between two pieces of buttered Texas toast. CEO Fred Burmer says the sandwich is just one piece of an "awakening" for the beloved St. Louis-based fast food company, which first debuted in 1967.

In March 2022, Bridgeton police investigated pediatrician Craig Spiegel for a possible sexual assault after the mother of a patient accused the doctor of forcibly putting his hands down her pants. The patient’s mother was in an exam room where, moments before, Spiegel had been performing a check-up on her son. That investigation fizzled after five months, with no charges being filed.

Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning drama August: Osage County takes an intimate look at a seriously dysfunctional family and its varied, often disturbing, dynamics. The Repertory Theatre St. Louis lays the troubled family’s turbulent relationships and dark secrets bare in a stunning production that is, frankly, the most compelling and captivating interpretation of the script I’ve ever seen. Beverly Weston, a professor and once promising poet, and his wife Violet have been married for a long, contentious time.

Alice Childress’ The Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White is a powerful examination of miscegenation that’s at once tender, hopeful and realistically prejudiced. The Black Rep explores this moving script in an excellent, nuanced production highlighted by captivating performances. From enslavers abandoning (or selling) their children born by Black women to laws against marriage between people considered to be of different races to prohibitions against affection and marriage among same sex couples, our country has constructed barriers and fought against love time and again.

The American dream is alive and well in Bevo Mill. What was originally a German-centered neighborhood has over the decades become home to immigrants from Iran, Mexico, Syria and more. In the late 1990s, the dense, walkable neighborhood housed so many refugees from Bosnia that it took on the nickname "Little Bosnia."

Tammy Surdam walked out of a “Youth In Need” facility nearly 45 years ago in St. Charles, Missouri, and was never seen again. Now, the first age progression photo of what she might look like has been created.  Surdam, then 13, disappeared on August 11, 1979, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. 

Dutchtown is getting a new public art installation to honor the neighborhood’s heart, soul and grit through visual storytelling. Artist Kyle Brandt-Lubart created Remnants, Shadows & Pathways, an assemblage of sculptures, by using discarded objects found on the streets of Dutchtown. Brandt-Lubart’s sculptures were inspired by the neighborhood’s history and nuanced identity.

Dara Daugherty isn’t just a slumlord, she's also running a "fix and flip" operation that maintains low overhead by forcing people to work for free. Those are among the new allegations against Daugherty and five family members and associates outlined in new court filings made by the City of St. Louis on Friday as part of a sprawling lawsuit initially filed in January. That suit accuses Daugherty and her crew of running an illegal rooming house operation. 

Rob Connoley of Bulrush has just been named as a nominee in the Best Chef: Midwest category of the James Beard Foundation’s (JBF) 2024 Restaurant and Chef Awards. The shortlist was announced this morning, with Connoley competing with five other chefs for the honor, with results to be announced in Chicago on June 10. Connoley says he’s “super excited” to be featured in the final round.

Bark your way to the Gateway Arch National Park! On Saturday, April 20, Gateway Arch Park Foundation and Purina are bringing Arch Bark back for St. Louis’ pups. The free, family-friendly event will take place in the North Gateway and welcomes those with or without dogs.

"I have discovered in 20 years of moving around a ballpark that the knowledge of the game is usually in inverse proportion to the price of the seats.” – St. Louis Browns Owner Bill Veeck When you go to a Cardinals game at Busch stadium, where you sit is very important.

As the St. Louis Board of Aldermen inches closer to the end of its 2023-2024 legislative session, a surprising budget problem is limiting public comment at key committee meetings: The four-figure overtime budget for its public access streaming service. A city ordinance requires the streaming of all aldermanic meetings, including committee meetings, via its STL TV service. But the budget for overtime pay for the service was a paltry $4,500 this fiscal year, and this year’s high volume of evening events has blown right through it.

When Jassen Johnson was an undergrad, he drove through Midtown St. Louis so much that it changed his entire life. At the time, Johnson was studying architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but he was working on a project in East St. Louis, and to prevent a long commute back and forth to campus, or a costly hotel stay, he crashed with a family member in the Central West End. At that time, 24 ago, streets like Locust were the obvious path.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that state marijuana regulators were within their authority to deny a cultivation business license to a company that failed to include proper paperwork with its application. Mo Cann Do Inc. applied for a cultivation license to grow marijuana in 2019. The company was denied when the state said it didn’t include a certification of good standing from the Missouri Secretary of State’s office in its application.

A basketball coach for MICDS was charged today with two counts of felony harassment for sending photos of men's genitals to minors. In addition to the two felonies, Lee Bogan Jr. was also hit with a misdemeanor charge of furnishing pornographic material to minors. Both of the minors are students at MICDS.

One of Chuck Basye’s favorite pastimes is fantasizing about whether or not his political opponents — and random people he interacts with on social media — are gay. "F*ggots," "fuckwad" and "fat bastards" are a few of Basye’s favorite phrases.  Basye is a former Missouri state representative and failed Columbia School Board candidate who is running for the state Senate as a Republican.

The attorney for a paralyzed detainee in the troubled St. Louis City Justice Center found him lying in his own feces yesterday, denied access to a toilet and the use of both adult diapers and toilet paper, she says. The attorney, Susan McGraugh, snapped a photo of the troubling scene she encountered. The photo is of Lamarr Pearson, a 35-year-old who was arrested Friday on first-degree assault charges.

A St. Louis city sheriff's deputy was charged yesterday with one count of endangering the welfare of a child after his two-year-old nephew shot himself with the deputy’s gun last month in Ferguson. The charge filed against Deputy James Short, 24, in St. Louis County is a misdemeanor. Prosecutors say that Short has been a deputy in the city since November. 

As March ends, we look back at the beloved restaurants we had to say goodbye to, but rejoice in the new spots we have to welcome.  First and foremost, the St. Louis sushi-burrito legend BLK MKT Eats closed its location at 9 South Vandeventer in the Central West End — breaking the hearts of many. But hearts will mend at their new location at 7356 Manchester Road in Maplewood.

Mariano and Anthony Costello plan to bring a taste of the Hill to Old Town Florissant. The Florissant-based brothers have painted the interior of the historic Narrow Gauge Railroad station house in Tower Court Park in the colors of the Italian flag, prepping for the upcoming opening of Costello’s Pizza and Subs. Currently, Mariano Costello balances two demanding jobs.