For years, Brandon Holzhueter and Brad Merten have been tossing around the idea for a nacho-centric restaurant. Now, the longtime friends and business partners are realizing that dream with their fast-casual eatery, Loaded Elevated Nachos, which opens Wednesday, February 10, in the Streets of St. Charles development.
As Holzhueter explains, the idea for Loaded originated not long after he and Merten opened their first location of Narwhal’s Crafted in Midtown in 2016. Though the two were focused on bringing frozen drinks to the St. Louis area, they knew guests would want some sort of food option. Though they thought about doing it themselves, they quickly realized that they had neither the setup nor the bandwidth to handle a full-scale culinary operation and instead settled on allowing patrons to bring in their own food. Still, when they talked about what a food program would look like if they were ever to take it on themselves, they coalesced around nachos.
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“When we were talking about different options for food, Brad came up with the idea of doing a lot of different awesome nachos,” Holzhueter says. “They’re great when you go out drinking—they are sharable and social. We thought it would be really cool, but we also realized it would be too complicated for what we were able to do and that we wouldn’t be able to pull it off at the level we wanted. Here, we were doing really good, high-quality frozen cocktails, and we didn’t want to do food that wasn’t of that same quality. Still, even though we decided not to do it at the time, the idea never died.”
The longtime friends and business partners, who also own two Pickleman’s Gourmet Café locations, decided to bring to life their nacho idea not long after opening a second Narwhal’s location in St. Charles in 2019. There, they watched as the adjacent storefront remained vacant and figured that it would be the perfect spot to try their plan. They brought on their friend Ryan Buettner as a chef consultant to help them drill down on their ideas and got to work creating a concept that would be similar to what they did for frozen drinks at Narwhal’s.
“We took a page out of Narwhal’s in that we didn’t create the frozen drink, but we tried to elevate it and do it in a more crafted manner,” Merten says. “It’s the same premise for nachos. Everybody knows nachos, but maybe they can be more than what people currently think. People think of Mexican nachos or standard ballpark nachos—they love them, and they are tried and true, but maybe there is an opportunity to elevate them, to take dishes and cuisines that aren’t in nacho form and make them that way. It’s a fun, light, interesting concept where the dishes themselves speak volumes, are eye-opening, and have a wow factor.”
The wow factor starts the moment that you walk into Loaded. The fast-casual eatery is outfitted in a loosely Southwestern aesthetic. Light blue, orange-red, and yellow paint adorn the walls, and the order counter area is surrounded by the outline of a vintage Airstream camper. Though adjacent, Loaded is completely separate from Narwhal’s, save for an order window between the two restaurants that allows patrons at one place to order from the other.
Daniel Sammons, formerly of Polite Society, is Loaded’s executive chef, and he has drawn upon his experience in upscale dining to create a menu of thoughtful ways to create nachos in an entirely different way. He could have taken the easy route and used the same chip on every offering, but that would fly in the face of the “elevated” concept. The Cajun nachos, for instance, feature a bed of tortilla chips covered in andouille sausage, crawfish, gumbo cheese sauce, and green onions, while plantain chips serve as the base for jerk nachos, which are layered with chicken, jack cheddar cheese, compressed pineapple salsa black beans, cilantro lime rice, and jerk crema. Other options include crab Rangoon nachos on wonton chips (pictured at right), or a buffalo chicken version served with potato chips. Guests can also choose to have their creations atop a salad or on a bed of farro grains, and many of the offerings are vegetarian.
In addition to the food, Holzhueter and Merten are proud of the beverage program. In addition to cocktails and draft beer, the partners have developed a robust selection of non-alcoholic drinks for those who may not want to imbibe but still want a thoughtful drink. It’s one of the many ways that the partners, along with Sammons, are trying to create an exciting, unexpected dining experience.
“We knew from a very early point that we wanted not just the dishes themselves to be a little out there or unexpected, but we also wanted the quality to be there,” Holzhueter says. “We want people to be surprised that we turned a Reuben sandwich into nachos, but we also want them to be surprised that our corned beef is this good. We really want to surprise people and change their opinions of what nachos can be, but also what kind of food they can get in a fast-casual format.”
