Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts
Finally, St. Louis has several places giving us really good breakfasts, a real mark of urbanity. Now we can add to that group—and indeed, rank pretty close to the top of the list—Southwest Diner. It even serves breakfast during lunch hours, before closing to rest up for the next daybreak.
Plenty of morning sunshine, some adobe-colored walls (which predate the restaurant), and better-than-diner coffee (thank you, Kaldi’s) get things off to an encouraging start. The delicate of stomach can be assured that not all of the offerings pay homage to the chili pepper. There are cornmeal pancakes and build-your-own omelets, for instance—but we enjoy some heat.
The components of the immense breakfast burritos are at the whim of the diner. The burritos are sided with seasoned refried beans and rice with cumin and onion, more than many places’ casual overcooked gesture. Huevos rancheros include a corn tortilla covered with those refried beans, two eggs (over easy, in our case), and chili sauce—red, green, or for the curious, some of each, which makes it “Christmas-style” in the Southwestern dining idiom. The green is spicier, but it’s the red that seduces, with layers of flavor for taste buds to explore. Here, fried potatoes are individual chunks, rather than hash browns, good for swabbing up the sauce.
It’s hard to pass up biscuits with chorizo gravy, but the real find is Jonathan’s Famous Fiery Scramble: Colby cheese–laced scrambled eggs with Thai chili paste to add snap. The joyous amalgamation comes with potatoes and toast, but for another buck, in lieu of the toast, we chose a hot, greaseless sopaipilla. It was a good match for the eggs, and just as comfortable desnuda as it would have been with the squirt bottle of honey that accompanied it.
From the sandwich department, first and foremost is the green chili cheeseburger with longhorn cheddar, an excellent two-fisted burger with a modicum of heat, but nowhere near incendiary. The black-bean burger is also quite good. It has little tendency to fall apart, yet it isn’t tough—and it, too, is nicely seasoned without bursting into flames.
Then there’s the Navajo taco. We’ve had the pleasure of consuming Native American tacos in situ, as it were, on a round of fry bread, much like a flour tortilla but thicker, fried and topped with a chili-based stew whose meat could well be lamb or venison instead of beef, with lettuce/tomato/onion variables, and cheese often not included. The Southwest Diner’s version is plate-size and definitely knife-and-fork food for anyone whose hands are smaller than a catcher’s mitt. It uses chili verde made with pork and green chilies. The dish is a delicious combination of tastes, temperatures, and textures, chewy-crunchy-smooth-hot-cold-spicy-mild.
Service, which was erratic when the restaurant first opened, seems to have settled down pretty well. Guests at this diner range from casual business lunchers to the deeply hungover. Beverage options run a similar gamut, from fresh-squeezed orange juice to craft beer to a bar stocked with appropriate potions and elixirs.
The Bottom Line: A focused, modern-day diner. Would that St. Louis had more such gems.
Southwest Diner
6803 Southwest
Maplewood
314-260-7244
southwestdinerstl.com
Breakfast and lunch daily
