Local restaurant impresario Kevin Nashan, who helms the kitchen at the iconic Sidney Street Café, has announced the opening of a new eatery, the Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co.
As Nashan recently told the Riverfront Times: "Someone said, 'It's not farm-to-table local!' I'm like, do you realize what you just said? This is a lobster crab shack -- where's the closest ocean here?" he says. "It's obviously not locally sustainable. I'm not doing this to say we're doing local/organic/this/that. We source it from really good people and I've spent a lot of time doing it. You just want the best products."
“You just want the best products?” said Filton Bushwild, whose North St. Louis, four-seat Fleur de Herisson is currently accepting reservations for autumn of 2017. “Wow. That really makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“It’s sort of weird when I realize I never considered this approach to food and dining,” echoed Tillit Pealing, chef-owner of Dogtown Mexican-Southern eatery Tequila Mockingbird. “I mean, when Nashan asked rhetorically where the closest ocean was here, it put things in a whole different perspective.”
Chef Agnes Smurch, seafood pastry chef at Jefferson County’s venerable trattoria, the Suckling Monkey, agreed. “For years, we’ve struggled with trying to establish a good, working relationship with Midwestern squid farmers. To say we’ve been unhappy with the results is, to put it mildly, an understatement. And finding fair-trade Missouri halibut? Forget about it.”
Chef Pealing commiserated. “People don’t realize how difficult it is for us to get a steady supply of locally sourced peaches in, say, February. It’s like all the peach growers around here just take off from September through June. I guess they really like long vacays or something.”
The idea that providing diners with “the best products” regardless of where they come from has been greeted by both diners and restrauteurs with initial enthusiasm, but they know, that with many trends, it could be an uphill climb to convince the majority of the area’s dining public.
“The idea that you could go into a restaurant in St. Louis—in Missouri—and just order a steak from a cow raised in Montana. Or strawberries from Florida. That’s pretty radical,” says Chef Smurch. “That could take some time to adjust to. A typical diner will say, ‘This asparagus looks kind of funny.’ And we have to explain that it’s actually harvested in Alabama. But give it a try and we think you’ll like it. And you know what? Often they do.”
It isn’t just restaurants who might be embracing the edgy innovative food philosophy. Providing customers with “the best products” seems to be a movement that could catch on in a big way.
“We’re contemplating a kickstarter program, says Rain Clover-Love, whose downtown artisanal paleo-ovo-lactic farinacarian café, Quinoa Place, has long been a must-try for the bearded, batik-ed, and biodegradable crowd, “for a radical new way of getting people and food together.” Clover-Love explains: “What we’re proposing is a co-op where we bring in products from all over the country—all over the world, if you can imagine it. And customers can come in and get what they want.”
She’s excited about the potential. “Potatoes from Idaho. Bananas from Ecuador. Sure, it’s a whole new way of looking at food.” But she thinks St. Louis just might be ready for this unconventional approach to food that’s already being seen in the more progressive climes of Paris, Tokyo, and New York.
“This place I go for yoga—“ Clover-Love explains—“it’s also a coffee shop—Om Brewed—I’m in class and I’m like thinking about stuff, you know, and suddenly, I had this, like insight: Instead of just thinking ‘locally sustainable,’ maybe we could think ‘world-wide sustainability.”
“You know, like ‘Think globally, act locally. Why can’t we also do it the other way? Like, if some farmer wants to grow corn in Iowa, or oranges in California, whatev. We could have people buy it and ship it here and sell it.”
It’s too soon to know if this is just a passing fad. Remember “cell phones?” Still, we’re thinking the concept of providing the best product to customers could be just crazy enough to catch on.
(But seriously: Kevin Nashan’s a locally sourced, entirely organic and—we hope—sustainable treasure in St. Louis and we will be bellying up to the first open table at his new eatery, lobster bib tied on and ready to eat.)
