Certain foods have become synonymous with St. Louis over time: gooey butter cake, Provel cheese, the fried-brain sandwich. That’s not to mention, of course, the authentic fare found in our food-loving neighborhoods: Italian on The Hill, dim sum on Olive Boulevard, Mexican along Cherokee Street…
Recently, though, the menu of options in St. Louis has expanded exponentially. By our count, more than 200 restaurants have opened in the past two years—with 45 slated to open in the last quarter of 2011 alone.
Just what’s driving this impressive growth? I posed the question to dining editor George Mahe, who quickly shot back his four-course analysis.
1) The economy. It might seem counterintuitive that the restaurant industry would expand during a recession, but the market has produced opportunity. New restaurant owners and chefs can try less expensive/more casual concepts, and patrons have the pleasure of seeing whether they’re viable.
2) Natural selection. It’s never been cheaper to get into the business; time takes care of the rest. Poor operators disappear in a soft economy to make way for fresh concepts. While the market encourages experimentation, the next new thing need not be cutting-edge. If a restaurant owner can execute a sound concept, then the demand is there from hungry diners.
3) Food TV. At one time, Julia Child’s The French Chef was the cooking show. Now, options abound: the Food Network and the Cooking Channel; Travel Channel’s No Reservations, Man v. Food, and Bizarre Foods; Bravo’s Top Chef—not to mention Gordon Ramsay’s slew of shows on FOX. The result: a proliferation of interested, savvy food aficionados who long to experience what they’ve just seen on TV.
4) The hip factor. Whether it’s because of inspiring chefs like Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià or the rise of food TV, it’s cool to be a chef again. And more chefs mean more robust culinary schools, which ultimately raises the dining bar for everyone—as witnessed here in St. Louis.
And so, with the resulting wealth of culinary creations to consider, SLM’s dining team set out to find the best dishes around. Their 50 choices—spanning everything from bánh xèo to house-made pasta, escolar to something curiously named “squirrel fish”—might surprise less-adventurous diners. But the feature also reflects the region’s diverse dining scene.
You know, for those times you’d like to branch out beyond T-ravs.
