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Driving along Adie Road in St. Ann, you'd be forgiven for thinking the Sweet Meat Stix kebob kitchen is an Obama campaign office. The front window is papered with prominent Obama campaign posters, and most retail businesses take care not to wear their partisan politics on their sleeves, lest they drive away the contrarians.
Not so for Steve Hart.
Hart, who sells steak kebobs from the St. Ann storefront as well as at concessions at area fairs and festivals, isn't too concerned with the possibility of alienating any red-state carnivores.
There are two compelling reasons for this.
For one, his kebobs are addictively delicious, and the tongue simply wants what it wants. And then, too, Hart's late wife, Melanie Shouse had a very special connection to President Obama.
Here's how Hart makes a Sweet Meat Stick:
First, he buys sirloin from Creekstone Farms in Arkansas City, Kansas. They offer hormone-free Black Angus beef, raised humanely and led to its ultimate reward via calming technology devised by celebrated autistic livestock expert Temple Grandin. Then he fillets the beef by hand, slices it into thick strips, and impales the strips onto biodegradable skewers.
Then, it's magic time. Hart submerges the beef for eight hours in a proprietary marinade that gives it the "sweet." The marinade is made with sugar, soy sauce, garlic, cayenne, ginger, sesame oil, sesame seeds, and "secret spices." After marinating, the steak dries for eight more hours in the fridge, and finally, makes its debut. Sweet Meat Stix are grilled to order or sold raw for the home griller.
Here is what happens after they are grilled. You put them in your mouth, and they are juicy, savory, tender, awesome, and bursting with both umami and a balanced sweetness. You moan. You may start to scheme -- what if you bought a few pounds of these kebobs, grilled them on your deck, and pretended that you marinated them yourself? You would probably be called "partymaster" or "the man." Children would be named after you. Later, discreetly, women would mail you their brassieres. It could happen.
Actually, it could. Hart sells not only the kebobs, but the marinade as well as a rub he's created. He also sells steaks, plus hamburgers he makes from the ground sirloin.
"I love steak," he said. "I grew up on a little farm and we grew organic grains and cattle. I began cutting meat by hand as an 11-year-old at my grandfather's store. My dream food has always been a good steak."
Hart and Shouse started Sweet Meat Stix 19 years ago. His wife had an unabashedly blue sense of humor, and she thought of the company slogan, "The Best 12 Inches in the Midwest." She ran the business, and Hart ran the kitchen. Festivals quickly became their meat-and-potatoes, if you will. Try their kebob once, and you immediately want to try it twice.
"I work the same festivals year after year," Hart said. "People sometimes tell me they've been going to a festival for ten years, and they finally got around to trying my meat, and when they do, they say they can't believe it took them so long to discover how good it is."
This weekend, Sweet Meat Stix will be available at the St. Louis Scottish Games in Forest Park. Then, look for the booth at the Florissant Fall Festival, and then the Kimmswick Apple Butter Festival.
Hart is trying hard to keep up with demand, he said, but for the past few years, apart from sporadic, temporary help, it's been a one-man show.
He met his late wife Melanie at a political protest some 20 years ago. They were both progressives. She was one of Obama's most tireless campaigners in 2008, and when the new President pursued health-care reform, she campaigned hard in support of him again.
Not long after that, her fight became personal. Shouse discovered a lump in her breast. She was scared, of course, but doubly scared because she had no health insurance. She jumped through a lot of hoops to get marginal coverage for her cancer treatment. During an intense period of chemo, her coverage was dropped.
"The insurance company cut off her medicine," said Hart, "and she died not long after that."
Her impassioned speeches about the sort of fate she did not wish on others culminated with just that -- her untimely death at age 41 in January of 2010.
Her passing did not go unnoticed by fellow reform advocates, nor by the big guy.
Obama mentioned Shouse's struggle in this speech at the Democratic National Committee Annual Meeting about health-care reform. He mentioned the fact that Shouse had asked to be cremated in her Obama T-shirt. It was quite a moment -- and it still wasn't over.
A month after that, the President swung through town to stump for Sen. Claire McCaskill and to speak about health-care reform at a high school in St. Charles. A few days before his visit, Hart got a phone call.
"I picked up the phone and a voice said 'This is the White House,'” he recalled.
"I said, 'you're shitting me.'"
"The voice said, 'No, this really the White House, and the President would like to meet you.'"
They met in St. Charles, and Hart has a cherished photo of himself with Obama, hanging in the Sweet Meat Kitchen. Hart says that if you look closely, you can see his eyes are not exactly dry in the photo.
Knowing a little about Steve and Melanie, you can understand the unapologetic glut of Obama signage in the front window of the kebob kitchen.
"A couple times I've heard from people who've said I might sell more if I took the Obama signs down," said Hart, "but I need to be out there, to get the word out, in my way. If people don't like it, so be it."
Hart (below) will probably continue on good terms with the Creekstone Farms people, but should a disagreement arise, may we recommend an alternate meat purveyor? The Obama Meat Market seems like a pretty good fit.
Sweet Meat Stix
3576 Adie Rd.
counter open, selling hot and cold foods 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays
314-298-STIX
