The Red Shack, a taco and burrito joint at the corner of Tamm and West Park Avenues, closed last Friday, as announced on Facebook. The restaurant was owned by Larry and Angie Lampert, a father-daughter team who over the years owned and operated several local restaurants.
Larry died of pancreatic cancer earlier this month and it was his passing that triggered the closure, according to the Facebook post: "Sadly we lost our leader Larry Lampert on May 8th to cancer. With him gone we are closing the door to The Red Shack on Friday May 26th."
The Red Shack was the latest in a long line of Lampert-family owned restaurants that began with several Papa Nate’s Pizza parlors in the 80s. Later that decade, Larry Lampert opened nearly a dozen Fatman’s Subs shops. Fatman's veered into barbecue, so much so that Fatman’s Subs became Fatman’s Barbeque.
In 2002, as reported by Byron Kerman in this publication, Lampert's "next move was a food truck, long before it became trendy." He bought "a former TWA airport shuttle bus, installed a smoker in the vehicle, cooked pulled pork and smoked sausages, and sold lunch in the parking lots of Wal-Marts throughout the state."
In 2005, the truck begat Larry Lampert's Plush Pig, a BBQ joint on Forsyth Ave. smack in the middle of downtown Clayton. He and Angie moved the Plush Pig to Rock Hill in 2009, on a corner that eventually became a CVS Pharmacy.
In 2012, it was back to the sandwich business when the Lamperts opened Mister Lunch in Maryland Heights. (Primarily operated by Angie, we found it amusing that Mister Lunch was, in fact, a she.) And of course, the customers started asking for barbecue, which prompted a change to Lampert's BBQ and an eventual move into the city. (The Maryland Heights space, at 11658 Dorsett, became Big Baby Q and Smokehouse.)
In 2014, the Lamperts opened the Q Shack serving a mix of BBQ and Tex-Mex in a humble red trailer and a few tables on a random parking lot in the Ellendale neighborhood. As more Tex-Mex items were added, they chanced the name to The Red Shack. And when that property was sold, they relocated to the corner in Dogtown where it opened almost exactly a year ago, offering a variety of inexpensive Tex-Mex burritos, tamales, and some respectable fish tacos.
The point of this compendium? While the Facebook post said "we are closing the door to The Red Shack," hidden within was a comment from Angie, a thought lifted straight from her father's book: "Doesn't necessarily mean we won't try something else..."
