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The Arch has lost a lot of its appeal since they closed the McDonald's up on top. The zoo? Lovely, but too obvious. Ted Drewes? Have you seen that traffic lined up on Chippewa lately? You want to give your summer visitors a taste of St. Louis, both figuratively and literally? Take them to Salume Beddu.
Salume Beddu is one of those places you’ve certainly heard about. Their meats are used for dozens of dishes in all kinds of local restaurants. If you have not been to the source of those sausages, though, it’s way past time to get yourself down Hampton to the place itself, which serves as a deli—or more accurately as salumeria—as well as a tiny eatery.
By “tiny,” we mean that the best seats in the house are a couple in between a portable typing table. There’s a bigger, wooden table, with maybe enough chairs to seat the local Albert Pujols Fan Club. Basically, if you go for lunch, it’s good to note that Tilles Park is only a few blocks away and you can take your food there for a bit of al fresco.
You don’t know nearly enough about sausages is what you'll think when you step through the door of Salume Beddu and are confronted with the area’s most enticing collection of forcemeats and cured delectables. We could provide some sort of guide to what’s there but a) it changes all the time and b), being an internet reader, you have the attention span of a 30 year old male jacked up on Red Bull with a TV clicker in his paw. So some quick highlights:
Some of Salume Beddu’s offerings will be familiar. Soppressata, Sicilian style (below left), is a salami fragrant with oregano, wine, and garlic.
Chorizo (above right), dry cured, is flavored with paprika, garlic, and chilies, that’s sort of a compromise between Spanish chorizo and the Mexican version.
Pancetta has that dry, lightly smoky aroma that blossoms when it hits a pan and it’s just touched with cinnamon, that adds something interesting to the taste.
And of course, there’s salcissia, the pronunciation of which St. Louisans take enormous pride in butchering. (Get four links of the fiama salcissia here. Prick them a little, then put them in a hot pan and sprinkle on about a tablespoon of wine vinegar. When the vinegar in the pan’s evaporated, add a cup of good white wine and finish the sausages. Serve ‘em on slices of polenta you’ve toasted in the oven. Salcissia al vino. It’s a good thing.)
Other meats here, though, are likely to be exotic to most palates.
Cardamom and ginger give a sort of unusual kick to Veneto salami.
Lonza is a house specialty, a smoked pork loin flavored with an elaborate Moroccan concoction of spices called ras al hanout.
Anyway, back to lunch, which on any given day has about a dozen sandwiches and accompaniments, at Salume Beddu. The last time we were there, we dithered over the temptation of a chalkboard special, a muffaletta. We decided, though, on a couple of regular sandwiches.
Impossible to say too much good about porchetta, the pork roasted so exquisitely slowly the meat’s fat melts and glistens and adds a remarkable richness to things. They use a pork shoulder here, that spends enough time in the oven to be roasted to a perfect tenderness. Add some fennel that’s been braised long enough to take the harsh edge of the herb off, yet not so long as to lose its lovely pungency. Then slather on some horseradish aioli and sott’aceto, the last of which is a beautiful, pickled relish, spiky with vinegar. And it’s all squeezed in between some of the most splendidly crusty bread from Fazio’s Bakery.
The other sandwich we tried was one loaded with speck (right). Not specks, which would be bad, but speck, which is better than good. It comes from Tyrol, that part of northern Italy that’s pushed up hard against Austria as if it’s trying to escape out the top of the boot. This is Recia speck, made from a pig’s shoulder, deboned and cured with spices that lend the taste of garlic and juniper and bay. It’s sliced almost as thinly as the preserved lemons, a lot thicker than the leaves of Swiss Gruyere that are also both piled on. The bread in this sandwich is a moist, yeast-scented ciabatta. We kept going back and forth between the two sandwiches, changing our mind with each bite and deciding that, in the interest of serious criticism, we will have to go back again and try both. Or, well, maybe the poached salami cotto with provolone and thick, grainy mustard.
At any rate, we have a lot of unique places you’ll want to take visitors this summer. Salume Beddu (called "The Best Salami in the Country" by Forbes editor Larry Olmstead,an Italian cured meat fanatic), ought to be among the premiere tourists attractions in this town. And come to think of it, since it’s so close, you could take your sandwiches for a picnic over on the banks of the River Des Peres, to show your guests the famous salmon runs.
Salume Beddu 3467 Hampton 314-353-3100 Tue-Sat 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. salumebeddu.com
Photo credits: salami images courtesy of Greg Rannells; speck sandwich courtesy of Jennifer Silverberg.
