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Kevin A. Roberts
The Legend Club, LeGrand's #1 seller: Salsalito turkey, pastrami, pepperoni, bacon, hot pepper cheese, Havarti, roasted red pepper sauce, and garlic cream cheese.
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Kevin A. Roberts
The butcher counter at LeGrand's
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Kevin A. Roberts
Old-school display cases
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Kevin A. Roberts
Fresh ground beef, hand-cut ribeyes
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No shortage of beer
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And home-made cakes.
A summer Saturday, ticking toward noon. Sunny, not hot, though. Just warm enough that the picnic tables out in front already have people parked at them, holding places or already at the task of enjoying lunch in a cottony breeze.
Kevin A. Roberts
It’s South St. Louis. Ask a local and they’ll tell you it’s in the old Tom Boy, on Donovan. Not all that far at all from Ted Drewes. (Then again, this is St. Louis. And so for many, Columbia, Missouri is “not that far from Ted Drewes.”)
LeGrand’s Market & Catering is one of those increasingly rare places, places that were once institutions on nearly every street corner in cities like ours. It’s a modest, well-packed, market, one with its own butchers, combined with a deli.
The market, on one side, is stocked with foods, a culinary reflection of what this area of St. Louis may have once tasted like. Polish kluski noodles. Squares of dried German dumplings. Pasta sauces. Beer. Lots of beer.
The butcher’s case is loaded with rosy chops, baby back ribs, roasts, steaks. On the wall behind the meat counter hangs an array of what is either an impressive collection of meat cleavers or the armory of Attila’s battalions.
The grandparents of some of the people coming into LeGrand’s on this Saturday morning would have added those noodles to fried cabbage for Polish haluski, those dumplings to oniony German kniflas chicken soup. The pasta sauces? Well, none of the Italian nanas from the nearby Hill would have used those. At least they wouldn’t have admitted to it. But they’d have recognized the linguini and rotelle on the shelves here. And all of them would have known what the beer was for, even if it wasn’t the fancy microbrews and ales and such that crowd the shelves now.
Today, though, these are South St. Louisans, few if any who could speak the languages of their grandparents and who have replaced the stew-thick accents of those European immigrants with the flat nasal vowels of South City where “o” comes out as “a”.
They’re more affluent, too, than their working class grandparents. They’re in LeGrand's on this Saturday with their kids who are sporting soccer jerseys from local parishes and shin pads, flush-faced from morning matches. They’re in line, waiting, some of them studying a menu, others talking with each other, marking themselves as regulars who know already what it is they want.
For a newcomer, the deli line moves at a sedate pace. That’s not a bad thing. There’s a lot to look at. There are fifty sandwiches. Fifty. Just wading through the verbiage on the menu here is a task. They all have cutesy names, most with local connections. “That’s A Winner” is loaded with roast beef, ham, turkey, salami, Cheddar, and Swiss. Gruyere, Havarti, and Provel go into “LaRussa’s Triple Cheese Play.” You get the idea. And since you’re reading this on the Interweb, you are certainly capable of getting on LeGrand’s website and reading the menu for yourself, saving us from having to repeat it here.
Kevin A. Roberts
There are sides, including perhaps the most diverse selection of chips you’re likely to find. A deli’s selection of potato salad says much about its seriousness and St. Louis presents particular challenges. There are St. Louisans with Teutonic palates who will accept nothing but the German version. And the descendants of Southern émigrés, for whom, if potato salad doesn’t have mustard in it, it ain’t potato salad. LeGrand’s covers things nicely: both kinds are on hand and a red-skinned variety is thrown in for good measure.
Kevin A. Roberts
Same goes for slaw: they take a “Can’t we all just get along” approach here, with a vinegary sweet and sour and a creamy version as well. They’ll scoop up cold pasta salads, with tortellini, with rotini corkscrews, with macaroni, to have with lunch or to take home.
LeGrand’s makes cakes, mostly for their catering business but available for sale as well. A caramel apple cake. German chocolate. Also, this being St. Louis, not only a gooey butter cake but gooey butter cookies. And brownies: cheesecake swirl, raspberry-pecan, and double chocolate. You won’t leave hungry, though if you do, see that note about Ted Drewes above.
We do our time in line, studying the menu, and finally order, and sit, waiting for our sandwiches, at a table in the big open space between the deli and the grocery, and study the customers.
LeGrand’s is one of those St. Louis locales where the distinction between business and social merge. There were, we’ve been told, once neighborhood bars all over the area where kids were welcome, where they played while their parents sat and talked over their beers. LeGrand’s manages to be a modern version of this. It’s a gathering spot as much as it’s a market and deli. There are people in here who have known one another a long time. A baby gets passed over the counter to be dandled by one of the butchers. A mother saws off a piece of sandwich to feed a kid who belongs to one of her friends.
There are a dozen different conversations going on, none of them about the Kardashians. They are about family and friends and school and work, the things real people talk about on Saturday mornings in the waning moments of summer. Even if you are not in on any of these, even if you are clearly a visitor here instead of a regular, there is the delicious and happy sensation that there probably isn’t going to be a more enjoyable lunch anywhere.
LeGrand's Market & Catering
4414 Donovan
314-353-6128
Mon - Fri: 9 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Sat: 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sun: 9 a.m.- 3 p.m.
Kevin A. Roberts
