It’s calm before the evening dinner rush at Frasher’s Smokehouse as owner George Frasher recalls his childhood in St. Louis. “I grew up in South City, so I could hear the whistles of the barges on the Mississippi and smell the Anheuser-Busch brewery from my house,” he says. “I actually worked at the Arch and did my internships on the riverboat dinner cruises.”
Blues memorabilia decorates the walls of the Phoenix restaurant, and the 314 menu behind the counter displays every day St. Louis items with a note that Saturday’s special is pork steak. Between the conversation and surroundings, it’s as STL as it gets—except the freeway next to us is the 51, not I-55, and this is the heart of Phoenix, where no one has heard of a pork steak or why you would toast a ravioli.
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Frasher graduated from Mizzou and worked at Sam’s Steakhouse, where owner and retired Anheuser-Busch president Denny Long took him under his wing. “He taught me all of the business acumen that he had learned at the brewery,” says Frasher. “Denny really primed me for owning my own restaurant, which has always been my goal.” Long put Frasher in touch with the Bommaritos, and Anthony Bommarito spent time teaching a young Frasher about the wine business. “There were two guys who lived behind Sam’s who started selling meat out of the trunk of their cars in the ’40s. I learned how to cut steaks, the ins and outs of purchasing meat and understanding quality. I had a seventh-generation produce guy whose family started the company in 1901 in St. Louis, and he taught me everything about produce.”
In 1995, Frasher moved with another company to the Valley of the Sun. By 1999, he opened his first restaurant, Frasher’s Steakhouse & Lounge. Phoenix’s dearth of St. Louis cuisine encouraged him to introduce those unfamiliar with the regional food among his offerings of quality steaks and barbecue. Originally, that included such dishes as gooey butter cake with butterscotch sauce and Mayfair salad. “I even had the niece of the inventor of Mayfair salad come into the restaurant,” says Frasher, “and she thought our version was great.”
Frasher runs into all kinds of former St. Louisans in Phoenix, one of the reasons that he endeavors to keep the spirit of the city alive in his three restaurants, Frasher’s Smokehouse, Frasher’s Tavern, and Mrs. Chicken. “Smokehouse was voted the second-best blues bar in the country outside of St. Louis,” he says with pride. He holds an STL Day at Frasher’s Tavern and gathers a large group to tailgate when St. Louis sports teams come to town, making his own sausage to grill with recipes from The Hill. At Smokehouse, the crew slings St. Louis–style pies with Provel and cracker-thin crusts topped with such twists as barbecue burnt ends and jalapeño slices, a nod to Frasher’s new Southwestern home. This coming summer, he plans to finally introduce Ted Drewes–style frozen custard to beat the unbearable Arizona heat.
Frasher tries to keep up on the pulse of the city as he continues to incorporate it in his adopted home across the country. Says Frasher, “I want to be authentic in everything I do.”
