You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to notice all the mom-and-pop restaurants around town that are re-purposed fast-food and chain/franchise spaces. The former Tandoori Hut on Hampton Avenue was, cutely enough, a former Pizza Hut. El Comal has outgrown the cheesy architecture of the former Taco Bell it called home in Overland, and will be re-opening in a new location in St. John as of today. And every time we look at the A-frame roof above Nobu’s sushi palace we think of lingonberries.
There are two new restaurants in these parts that are not only former fast-food restaurants, they have welcomed small businessmen who elected to keep the drive-thru to vend gyros, kebobs and fried puffy tacos to the harried and hurried.
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They’re also case studies in “menu opposites”: St. Louis Taco & Pita Grill has more than 100 items on the menu. Fort Taco has but two.
St. Louis Taco & Pita Grill, which opened in December, is a former KFC manned by a family of relatives and long-time employees of head honcho Nawshad Kabir.
Kabir is familiar from the series of restaurants he managed and owned at West County Center’s food court. In fact, the menu at his new place is basically a product of combining the menus from three of his old places at the mall: St. Louis Taco & Grill, Pitas & More and St. Louis Burgers & More.
The consolidated operation in Ballwin offers many choices for diners by way of Greek, Indian, Mexican and American dishes.
Mexican food includes quesadillas, fajitas, tacos, burritos, enchiladas, tostadas and chimichangas. The steak-and-chicken nachos, pictured above, are served in a big honkin’ pile for groups of two to eight (or one growing high-school hockey player, as the case may be). A gyro features a hidden lake of tziziki sauce enfolded by gyro meat and grilled pita. A gyro chef salad is topped with a veritable Cahokia Mound of gyro meat, along with a clever garnish of a single, fat little dolma of grape leaves wrapped around rice and meat. The house-made salad dressing is super-tangy. “Chicken 65” is chunks of chicken rested in a sugary marinade and then grilled into a crunchy, caramelized, deep-orange treat. Indian-style chicken kebobs benefit from a bath of hand-crushed spices, including curry, ginger and cayenne.
The huge menu also features hot wings, subs, burgers, hot dogs, fish & chips, fried shrimp, falafel, hummus, chili cheese fries, onion rings… The selection is reminiscent of the corner hot dog-and-gyro joints of Chicago, but SLT&PG manages to avoid the typical greasiness of that standard.
The eatery bakes its own pitas and makes its own rich tziziki sauce, among other house-made ingredients.
Massive triangles of baklava are made by a Turkish pastry expert, said Kabir, and macarons, cake slices and other dessert choices come by way of La Bonne Bouchee.
About that drive-thru: don’t expect your dinner to fly out the window at the speed of processed food. As at Fort Taco (below) or To Go Sushi, the food is freshly prepared, so the drive-thru does involve a slightly longer wait than we’ve grown used to. “We’re not McDonald’s,” said Kabir, putting a fine point on it.
With the food served on disposable plates in the dining room, the candles, clocks and tchotchkes for sale by the counter, the “former fast-food” vibe, and the many employees scurrying about in the kitchen, this is just a cute spot that you wanna root for.
When Kabir left his West County Mall restaurants behind, he said, he knew he could not leave the industry for long.
“I love restaurants,” he said. “That’s all I’ve ever done. I’ve never done a corporate 9 to 5. I started when I was 17.”
Indeed, when we asked him to grab his wife, who also owns and manages SLT&PG, for a photo (see above), he insisted we include every worker in the place.
“Many of my employees have been with me for years at the mall,” he said.
“Everyone is part of the family.”
It’s fair to say that St. Louis has not had much in the way of Mexican food in the Fort Madison, Iowa style. That’s where Fort Taco co-owner/chef Gabe Patino grew up, enjoying “puffy tacos.” When he decided to hang his own shingle at a former Rally’s drive-thru in Brentwood, he made the puffy taco the centerpiece – and just about the only piece – on the Fort Taco menu.
There are but two items on this restaurant’s menu, and damn if it doesn’t seem like a smart move. There are filling tacos, delicious enchiladas, two kinds of salsa and that’s it. The customer has very little to do in the way of decision-making. If you like the food, you know exactly what you’re going to order next time. And with such a simple menu, the drive-thru line has to move along a bit faster than it otherwise might, too.
Everything is house-made daily, from the taco shells made of masa from a family recipe, to the ground taco beef, tortillas and salsas. Puffy tacos are constructed by folding soft dough shells around the beef and flash-frying them, then adding lettuce, tomatoes and cheese. The tacos turn out large and very chewy.
Enchiladas are vegetarian. The dense, creamy filling is a blend of mashed potatoes, cheese and peas, and the rolled tortillas are topped with sauce and shredded cheese.
Salsas – made with tomato, onion, cilantro and spices – include a mild, which has a bit of jalapeno heat, and a hot made from habanero. The former is a tickle; the latter, an occasion for nose-blowing.
Everything sticks to your ribs; it’s easy to fill up fast.
“It’s designed to be filling – that’s why it’s more expensive than Taco Bell,” joked Patino.
Fort Taco does occupy a middle ground, he explained, between fast food and casual.
“This isn’t sit-down-and-fill-up-on-chips-and-salsa-at-a-table Mexican, and it’s not Taco Bell, because the food is freshly made on-site and traditional,” he said. “We call it ‘fast fresh Mexican.’”
And how is it that Fort Madison, Iowa, has a thriving Mexican-American food scene?
“There are a lot of Mexicans there because it’s a hub along the northern migration route, from the Santa Fe Railroad,” Patino explained.
The restaurant opened just before Thanksgiving, and has already changed its recipes a bit after gauging customer feedback, said the owner.
By the end of January, he said, the menu will double: look for traditional chicken tacos and tamales served through that drive-thru window.
St. Louis Taco & Pita Grill
15493 Manchester
Ballwin
314-332-0486
yelp.com/biz/st-louis-taco-and-pita-grill-ballwin
Mon – Thurs: 10:30 a.m. – 10 p.m.
Fri – Sat: 10:30 a.m. – 1 a.m.
Sun: 9 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Fort Taco
8106 Manchester
Brentwood
314-647-2391
Mon-Sat: 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Sun: 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
