When I was 5 years old, and probably had never been west of University City MO, on Lindbergh Blvd, just north of Clayton Road, a family opened a restaurant called Kreis’ Steakhouse (not to be confused with Ruth’s Chris). It is still going strong (to put it mildly) and we had dinner there with two friends last night.

Edie had salmon, our friends both had prime rib, and I decided to order something I probably haven’t had in well over 50 years – Weiner Schnitzel Holstein (that is, a breaded veal cutlet with a mild tomato sauce, topped by a fried egg and anchovies!).

I basically stopped eating red meat in the late 1960s. At that time, I had two exceptions – Chinese restaurants, and Roy Roger’s roast beef sandwiches. The exceptions gradually faded away, and I became strictly a fish and fowl guy.

When we opened our new law firm at 1 Thomas Circle in 1991, there was a small carryout lunch spot off the lobby which had fresh roasted turkey every day which they would carve off  the bird when you ordered your sandwich. That became my lunch maybe three times a week, and it was delicious.

But one day, as I was walking towards the elevator, God spoke to me (for the first and last time), telling me that I had had more chicken and turkey that I was ethically entitled to, and I should eat them to more. I had no choice. I stopped “cold turkey”.

I then told myself that if God had ordered me to stop eating chicken and turkey, he probably wouldn’t want me to eat fish either, but that he probably just hadn’t considered it yet. So I decided to become a strict vegetarian.

I stayed a vegetarian about ten years, gaining a reputation that I still have in some quarters. But in spite of everything you read in books, being a vegetarian didn’t seem to offer me health benefits. Weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and more all were going in the wrong destination.  So, a little after the turn of the millennium, I decided that it was okay to start eating meat again.

God had nothing to do with that decision as far as I know. Instead, it was the result of the menu at the Bluefin Bay resort on Lake Superior north of Duluth, which featured venison. I had always thought that venison would be the way to end my meatless decade, and I could not resist. It was delicious.

Basically, though, I decided to go back to my fish and fowl diet, avoiding red meat. Today, and I don’t know exactly when it started, I have an informal rule of not more than two red meat dishes a month. Yesterday was the 27th of October and I had no recollection of recent meat meals, so the schnitzel seemed okay.

Well….

The schnitzel was excellent. The warm soft bread with the very hard crust was excellent. The green beans almondine were cooked to perfection. The hot apple strudel with vanilla ice cream was just right. Even the coffee was top notch.

What more could one want?

By the way, Robert Reich’s blog this morning about Elon Musk is very worth reading. Reich concludes that Musk outside of government may be even more dangerous than he was inside government, discussing Tesla, Space X, the Boring Company and more. He reminds us that Musk’s demand for a trillion dollar compensation package from Tesla (to keep him in focus on the company) is the equivalent of a thousand billion dollars, or a million million dollars. Worth it?