RFT 📰

I was a vegetarian for many years, believe it or not — and one of my family’s favorite go-to meals is the Tofu Pour Over. If you prefer, you can easily swap in chicken, and it is just as delicious. Ingredients: 1 lb firm tofu, frozen and then thawed Seasoned salt to taste Garlic salt to taste 1 lb broccoli thawed, from frozen 1 can (10.5 oz) low-fat cream of broccoli soup 4 cups cooked jasmine rice

Josh Hawley hates fun. That’s, like, his whole thing. And if he thinks that liberals like it, he hates it extra hard.

If you’re driving downtown and see streaking yellow lights against a parking garage, don’t be surprised. Those curving lines are an LED "tentacle-like" sculpture titled Ribbons of Light. The display was created by St. Louis sculptor Jacob Stanley.

LaWanda Jackson is planning to sing "Amazing Grace" later this week as part of a new original show The Golden Record. "When I was young, I always wanted to sing," Jackson says.

In 2019, New Jewish Theatre introduced audiences to the Jerome family, the central characters in Neil Simon's coming-of-age trilogy, in their production of Brighton Beach Memoirs. The family's bittersweet, effectively comic story now comes to a close with the company's heartfelt and touching production of Broadway Bound. The year is now 1949.

Dan Isom has stepped down from his role as interim director of the St. Louis Department of Public Safety after holding the position for two years. The role is one of the most prominent in city leadership. Isom’s departure kicks off a national search for his replacement, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones announced in a press briefing today.

Alan Hunter, one of the original VJs during the first years of MTV, is a very close personal friend of mine. Or at least, that's how it always seemed. I mean, we go way back.

St. Louis County has quietly removed a historical marker noting the date when “the county was first visited by white colonists” — but one of the people who advocated for its removal isn’t happy with how it happened. Geoff Ward, a professor of African and African-American studies at Washington University, believes the county’s quiet removal, without public conversation or publicity, was a missed opportunity: “It was taken down in a way that deprives the community of an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of its removal.” Ward remembers seeing the sign not long after he arrived in St. Louis in 2018 to start his faculty position.

St. Louis Metropolitan Police took a 26-year-old Eureka man into custody Friday morning for allegedly causing the death of two people when a stolen car he was driving collided with an SUV. Brian Richard Kelly is facing two counts of felony murder stemming from a crash that occurred November 23 which killed DeVonne Wilson, 53, and her younger sister Ayanna Woods, 42. The two women were in a Chevy Trax near the intersection of Meramec Street and Gravois Avenue in the south city neighborhood of Dutchtown.

Here in St. Louis we’re always getting jerked around by weather predictions. Ask anyone in town, and they’ll tell you that it seems like trained meteorologists only have a 50/50 chance of guessing local weather accurately. Just earlier today we reported their prediction of 3 to 6 inches of snow for the St. Louis area, but now the National Weather Service is saying that we could get anywhere from 5 to 10 inches of snow by Wednesday.

The founder of an organization supporting unhoused people in St. Louis says she’s dissolving her nonprofit after becoming the victim of “online targeting.” But other advocates for homeless people in St. Louis say the story is much more complicated. Ramona Curtis, a former journalist who became a prominent local advocate under the name Unhoused STL, says online harassment she’s received will make it impossible for her to raise money, so she’s calling it quits.

Viola STL (2001 Olive Street, violabrands.com), a new dispensary located across from Citypark Stadium, held its grand opening on Monday, doubling the number of Black-owned dispensaries in St. Louis from one to two. The dispensary is owned by former NBA players Al Harrington and Larry Hughes, who played together on the New York Knicks from 2009 to 2010, as well as Abe Givins and Dan Pettigrew. Hughes is a St. Louis native, who grew up in Carr Square Village — not far from where his dispensary is — and played basketball at Saint Louis University.

A boy band described by Billboard as a "K-Pop Act To Watch" is coming to town tomorrow night. ONEUS will be playing The Factory (17105 N Outer 40 Road, Chesterfield; 314-423-8500, thefactorystl.com) in Chesterfield Tuesday night as part of its Reach for Us world tour. The five-member band has been prolific over the past two years, putting out a studio album and two EPs in both 2021 and 2022.

This time of year, the promise of a semi-sweet, fluffy grilled breakfast treat is about the only thing worth getting out from under the covers for. Though our fair city has an embarrassment of breakfast and brunch riches, these five take the (hot) cake when it comes to that quintessential morning staple. Grand Pied The undisputed champion of St. Louis’ pancake game, Grand Pied’s  (3137 Morgan Ford Road) version of the breakfast classic is like a beautiful marriage of a pancake and flan that actually jiggles when it hits the table.

MONDAY, JANUARY 16 St. Louis sees three different homicides in a span of three hours. KMOV reports that the third, at Gravois and Russell, involved a masked man walking into a gas station and blowing away a customer. Brand-new Police Chief Robert Tracy has his hands full.

It’s January in the Midwest so it’s not entirely unexpected that there is snow in the forecast this week. Just how much snow we’re going to get, though, is a matter that always seems to be up for debate with local meteorologists. As of right now (which is midday on Monday), the National Weather Service in St. Louis is saying that the St. Louis area should expect between 3 to 6 inches of snow dropping from late Tuesday into early Wednesday.

It’s true that New York, New York, is a hell of a town — and, sure, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But when it comes to great American cities, St. Louis has New York City licked.

St. Louis has been starved for good bagels. That was immediately apparent upon pulling up to the soft opening of Bagel Union (8705 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves), the new effort from Ted Wilson and Sean Netzer, owners of the beloved Union Loafers Cafe and Bread Bakery. Arriving just 15 minutes after the soft opening's start time of 8 a.m., I found the line to get into the small corner shop stretched down the block and around the corner.

For the first time in 27 years and 9,439 days (minus the pandemic), Beatle Bob will not dance at a concert tonight. The St. Louis native, whose real name is Robert Matonis, announced on Sunday evening through social media that he has been living with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, also known as ALS, since February 2022.

For the past four years, Alberto Juarez and Laura McNamara have been serving traditional Mexican coffee, beverages and food specialties to patrons at their Yucatán cafe, Brew Tulum. Now, the husband-and-wife team are offering that same experience to this side of the border with a second location of Brew Tulum (5090 Delmar Boulevard), located in the Delmar Makers District, which opened in late November. For McNamara, Brew Tulum's St. Louis location represents the culmination of a coffee journey that traces its roots back to her time abroad in Rome, through Vietnam, then Latin America and ultimately to Mexico's Yucatán region.