Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Brian Hardesty
After working in several of St. Louis’ finest kitchens, Brian Hardesty and Joel Crespo rolled out Guerrilla Street Food, a Filipino food truck that’s won a passel of local and national awards, so it’s no wonder that the founders of the state’s first food truck park wanted Hardesty’s blessing. He helped design and name 9 Mile Garden, which opened in early July.
When was your first clue that you wanted to become a chef? What sealed the deal? When I was 5, my grandmother made me a chef hat and apron, and after that, I pretty much began making dinner for my family. I cut the tip of my finger off when I was 8, but that day, I had decided to use a cleaver because it looked cool. My dad wrapped it with some tape and said, ‘go lay down.’ No hospital, no ER. It was one of the many rites of passage of being a cook.
When did you really know you wanted to make a career out of cooking? I grew up working fast food, which sucked and I hated it. I got my GED and basically had no direction, but I did get hired at a little bar and grill in St. Charles called Rumple’s Pub. I was hired to assist in the kitchen but after a month, I was doing everything on my own, and the owners made me the kitchen manager. That was my first real job of authority and responsibility.
When did you transition into fine dining? In 2004, my best friend Mike Petres had taken a position at Balaban’s. They made him wear a chef’s outfit and he had to buy his own knives, which I thought sounded cool, and they hired me. Balaban’s is where I learned that cooks were either super competitive or complete screw-ups, pretty much one or the other, and I was the latter—coming in late, out of uniform, with dull knives, no prep list, no plan. But something clicked, I changed, and I started seeking out chefs I wanted to learn from.
How about a takeaway from a few of the places you’ve worked.
Monarch: Aaron Teitlebaum and Jeff Orbin owned it. Very busy place. It was there where I learned what busy was. Brian Hale was the chef. Josh Galliano came on after him.
Harvest: Steve Gontram was one of the chefs you wanted to work for if you were serious about the business. Kitchen guys came on hours early and worked for free, before their scheduled shift, to make sure they were properly prepared. I didn’t have the skills necessary to be a player, but was hired anyway by Andy White, the lead chef at the time. I credit him and Nick Miller, sous chef at the time, with teaching me the skills a hard core, fine dining line cook needs to know. Steve was everybody’s mentor. He spoke hospitality and it was from him that I learned what that was.
Winslow’s Home: I took over for Ben Poremba, the chef who actually opened the place, which looked like a mini Bread Company, combined with a modern-day general store, with tables dotted throughout. The owner was looking for the right fit, and I was a young, cigarette-smoking kid who was not as respectful of the concept as I needed to be.
Terrene: I didn’t refer to myself a chef until I took the exec chef job there. It’s where I came into my own and made a name for myself. [Owners] John and Sunny McElwain gave me complete control, gave me free rein with my creativity, and I told them I was going to do this thing until I just couldn’t do it anymore. I was there four years, and I’m still at it…I left a few months before they closed to open Guerrilla [Street Food].
Guerrilla Street Food: Joel [Crespo] and I had been talking about doing a Filipino street food truck for two years and we finally did it. St. Louisans embraced it, but unfortunately, we weren’t making any money. I had to take on other jobs to survive, one of them being Root, a restaurant inside Starr’s wine shop.
Root: Starr’s had a kitchen that was big enough for a commissary, which we needed, but Bud [Starr] also wanted someone to run a restaurant there—which was at the time was a place called Nosh. I changed the name to Root, but it didn’t take off like a rocketship as Bud had hoped, and he shut it down after less than a month.
Element: In 2012, what started out as my first major consulting job turned into an executive chef job where I led four other qualified chefs who all collaborated on every menu item. I thought Element was doing well, but not as well as the owners wanted. When the decision was made to get rid of the collaborative aspect, a key component in my opinion, I stepped away.
How did you meet Joel? We had mutual friends in high school, but I never knew him. When he moved back to St. Louis, in 2001, to help take care of family, we met at a party and became friends. His background was in film and TV—he had been working on The Drew Carey Show when duty called— but when I met him, he was working at a funeral home, designing headstones, no less. He quit that job to open Guerrilla Street Food with me.
How did you learn the cuisine? Filipino family picnics! There, you experience 25 different dishes and people willing to share recipes and tips. Then I read. We experimented for a year and a half with recipes. We were almost two years into it before we launched the food truck.
How did it go? It was my first time owning anything, few people here knew what Filipino food was, and nobody knew what the hell food trucks were. We were the third truck in St. Louis, after Pi and Cha Cha Chow, launching at the exact same time as Seoul Taco. I thought we should do Filipino food, because there was only one place serving it here. Joel thought we might want to do burgers or pizza, but I saw the opportunity and he had the skills and background to do that style food better. I was eager to challenge myself and learn something new, so off we went, hoping to corner the market on Filipino food.
Did St. Louisans embrace it, or was it a tough sell? They embraced it once they knew what it was. “What’s chicken abodo?” they’d ask. We’d tell them it was chicken adobo, the national dish of the Philippines, and it was really good and familiar—chicken, rice, and delicious sauce. Guerrilla’s success can be attributed to several factors: deciding to do Filipino food, which was approachable; doing it well; and doing it from a food truck, which was a novel idea at the time. People felt that eating food from a vehicle was somehow cooler, and that was fine with us.
Then, suddenly, your truck began receiving national recognition. When he came to visit, Guy Fieri said, “You all better go and open four more of these before this segment airs, because you’re going to be crazy busy.” We won Best Food Truck in St. Louis; we were in Forbes, USA Today, listed among the Top 100 Food Trucks in the nation; and Andrew Zimmern gave us a shout as Best Food Truck in the country. We were firing on all cylinders.
So you expanded. Especially after the food truck got so popular, we felt we couldn’t lose. Long before I left Element, Joel and I were already contemplating our first brick and mortar but didn’t want to borrow money, so saving up took us a while. We ended up subdividing a great location at the corner of Grand and Arsenal with everything we wanted—a small dining room, patio, parking lot—and we built it out for less than the cost of most food trucks. Our plan the whole time was to operate a fleet of food trucks, several hard locations, then franchise and become a national chain, which there’s still a need for.
Your plans then changed a bit. In 2018, we went into full expansion mode, opening up in the Loop, the Grove, a little place in Maryland Heights, and partnered with Second Shift at their brewery and Two Plumbers at theirs. At one point in 2019, we had six restaurants and a food truck and eventually realized we needed more training, more oversight, and better quality control. We were running the machine poorly and needed to scale back or we knew we’d lose it all.
What location most disappointed you? The clientele at Tropical Liqueurs in the Grove, who we’d partnered with, was there for the alcoholic slushies. They had no interest whatsoever in Filipino food. We miscalculated there, big time. That location was a super flop.
But Webster was a super success. Being more versatile helps. It only seats eight, but there’s a 20-seat patio. There’s also an 80-seat private event room with a wine garden behind it that we share with Big Sky [Café].
So where does Guerrilla stand today? We closed all but the Delmar and Webster locations, we’re waiting for Second Shift [Brewery, in which Guerrilla operates] to reopen, and we bought a new food truck. It’s smaller and more bare-bones, basically a large Sprinter van, which is exactly what we need. Keep in mind that there’s no à la minute anything at Guerrilla; Filipino food is mainly cook-and-hold stews and braises, which is one of the reasons I love it. It’s built for fast casual.
What did Guerrilla do to survive when restaurants were forced to shut down? We offered different fun products that no one else was doing, like a traditional kamayan feast that gets spread across a table on banana leaves and is eaten with the hands; four entrees, four appetizers, and two sides cost $40. It was a ridiculously good deal and was 95 percent of our sales. We still sell them, along with barkada boxes, a $25 alternative involving less food. We partnered with Sysco to provide CSA-style bags of groceries, for free.
What advice do you have for a single store or single food truck operator who wants to expand? Be slow, methodical, don’t get greedy, and remember you can never be in two places at once. Let expansion happen organically, with the right people, and realize that it might not need to happen at all. You might not double your income, but I guarantee you will double your headaches.
During the stay-at-home mandate, why didn’t you and Joel cruise the streets in the food truck, selling Flying Pigs and Guerrilla Rice Bowls? You had a built-in market. When we first started the truck, that’s what we wanted to do…cruise the streets like the ice cream man. It turns out that frozen or prepackaged food was all that was allowed, so that was that. At the time, it was my understanding that food trucks could not park in one neighborhood and then move onto another, like they do now. That aspect has opened up a whole new market, especially now that preordering food is possible. Is it a good time to have a good truck? It is, especially when you consider all the neighborhoods in St. Louis, the increasing number of food truck meet-ups, and venues like 9 Mile Garden. It feels like a second boom to me.
How did 9 Mile come about? Who approached whom? Larry Chapman [Seneca Commercial Real Estate and Chapman Ventures] is the brains behind it. He improved the former Affton Plaza and added more land to the development. They could have built another strip mall but decided to do something different. They talked to me about doing a food truck park—which, ironically, I’d been planning for the last five years—and asked me to consult on the project.
How did the name 9 Mile Garden come about? I wanted the name to encompass the area, so I began doing research. Reading about the city of Affton, I learned that Johann Aff was the first postmaster in the area that became known as Aff’s Town and later Affton. I also learned that farmers’ markets used to be called truck gardens and that Aff operated one, as well as the general store at the 10 Mile House. Then it hit me: We were planning a truck garden of sorts at the 9-mile mark, so 9 Mile Garden it was. We developed a logo and pitched the idea, and two years later, here we are.
Talk about the infrastructure. It’s the first park of its kind in the state. The open area is covered in Astroturf and will drain like an athletic turf field does, so spilled drinks will simply disappear. Insects will not be attracted to it, because there’s no organic material. Porters will clean the complex twice a day. The truck area gets power-washed daily. The food trucks will line one street; ancillary non-food trucks will line another. We provide the trucks with fresh water and electric power, so there’s no noise pollution from generators. We hired consultants to make sure that noise and light is mitigated at the surrounding houses. Across the street, it should never sound louder than people having a conversation.
What are some of the bells and whistles? Facing the infield is a movie screen and a sound system installed in two stacked shipping containers. On the flip side is a mural of St. Louis from TopCoat Signs that welcomes guests. One of the asphalted streets will contain a mosaic mural. There are attractive shade sails above the food truck area and plenty of parking on all sides. There’s a grassy seating area, too, with speakers buried in the ground so you can hear the music or the audio from the movies. The lights will be off at 10 o’clock in the Garden and at midnight in The Canteen.
Where else do people sit after getting their food? On the infield—at umbrella-ed tables, on their own chairs, or on picnic blankets, park-style, which they can purchase from us—or on a terrace of limestone rocks and inside or outside The Canteen, which has operable garage doors. That’s where the beverages are, 40 taps total, with 100 percent local beers and two cocktails on draft, plus several higher-end wines and cold-brew coffee.
What’s the capacity of 9 Mile Garden? When things loosen up, I think 1,500 people at one time, 2,000–3,000 all day long. Big event days could draw 6,000–8,000 people. The area’s big enough to host a farmer’s market, as well.
How do the food trucks get scheduled? Thirty trucks are on the first-year roster, with a different lineup every day—five trucks at lunch, seven at dinner, and nine on weekend nights, all parked at 45-degree angles. Right now, we’re slated for six days a week until the end of November. After that, a smaller number of trucks will park a little closer and service The Canteen. We could easily have easily doubled the membership, but I wanted to make sure the 30 existing guys were happy and making money before we made any changes here. And if there’s proof of concept, we’ve already discussed opening two or three more of these. There are enough food trucks in metro St. Louis to support that.
What’s the event schedule? Live music all the time on the music stage, plus movies every Saturday, all for free. Last year before this happened, I had sketched a drive-in with no cars, and now, here it is. There will be some ticketed events and seasonal events, too, in the fall, like an adult prom, and maybe a Christmas tree maze or an outdoor version of Miracle STL, with themed cocktails, hot chocolates, Santas, whatever.
When a fellow restaurant owner lost his restaurant to a fire, you immediately stepped up and created a GoFundMe campaign for a guy you didn’t even know. It raised more than $13,000 for Taqueria Durango, but the crazy part is that I also organized a pop-up with an all-star cast of chefs. It was going to be huge, and then COVID happened. We all went on lockdown, and it never happened.
Having that mindset is a special gift. Can you teach that kind of empathy to others? Recently, two days before Juneteenth, Joel and I decided to close that day and give the staff a paid holiday, asking them and our customers to get out and support Black-owned businesses. I get so stressed about just staying in business sometimes that I tend to forget other things, like simply doing something nice for somebody. People just have to do things like that and not worry about the nickel they might have lost. Hopefully the staff sees that and goes, “OK, when I open my own place, I’m going to do that, too.”
