Note: In the April 24 edition of The Daily newsletter, we mistakenly linked to the wrong story. Here is the correct link to the story about the Heartland Wins PAC we intended to share. We apologize for the error!
When Steven Fitzpatrick Smith first opened The Royale Food & Spirits 20 years ago, he owned a boxing gym in North City. The 32-year-old Saint Louis University graduate had plenty of other gigs before that—he sold underwriting for KDHX, did events for the Riverfront Times, drove a truck. But he had a specific vision for a bar, and when he acquired what was then The Reale Bar along the southern edge of Tower Grove Park, he got to work manifesting it.
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Smith admired the great family-owned bars in South City—Famous Bar, The Way Out Club, Iowa Buffet. But he was also inspired by bars he’d visited in Milwaukee and Chicago, places that fostered community. “It was a place where you can hang out with your friends, and also a place where you could take a date, and they would think, ‘Oh, this is nice. I like this.’ And it wasn’t too divy, but it was accessible. So like the kid that I was at the time with $8 in his pocket could go into a place and enjoy himself.”
In 2005, South City was changing. St. Louis of the early aughts was “funky,” Smith recalls. He’d lived in Shaw a few years before that, and he recalls, “Every street had tons of boardups on it when I was living over there. And now it’s like, Webster Groves or something.” In the early aughts you could feel things shift. Young people were moving in, buying what could be tear-downs, and instead fixing them up. And the bar scene was changing, too—in ways that would soon hit warp-speed when, in 2008, a Belgian company bought Anheuser-Busch.
“We weren’t just a straight-up Budweiser town anymore,” he recalls of The Royale’s early years. “People wanted different things, and I wanted to be able to offer them a craft cocktail. I don’t think that was even being used as a term yet, but I really wanted to get into it, because I knew there was so much more that we could offer.”
And so he did. There were good cocktails and good food, both at what remains a surprisingly reasonable pricepoint. He never really meant the food to be a big part of it, but patrons had other ideas.
“In my head, I’m a bar owner,” Smith says. Of the food side of the business, he says, “I actually very much enjoy it, but I will say it’s hella, hella more work than a bar.”
The hospitality business has never been easy, and The Royale has weathered some tough years, including, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, when some people in the restaurant industry took a hard look in the mirror and decided the job wasn’t worth it. Smith says he’s never been tempted. He remembers during the pandemic, how people needed a place to talk to each other even when COVID-19 was ravaging the nation.
“People were coming to my place eating outside while it was snowing,” he recalls. “It was snowing outside, and people were excited. I’m like, ‘OK, humanity is going to win in all this.”
These days, The Royale isn’t open as late as it used to be, but Smith chalks that up more to changes in his life, and in the lives of the bar’s most loyal regulars, who are now a good two decades’ older than when he began. “My crowd has aged up a little bit,” he says—though he stresses that he continues to draw young people, and to actively court them with DJs and younger help. He sees the post-pandemic shift to people being homebodies as cyclical and feels certain nightlife will come roaring back. “People want to go out,” he says. “They want to sit next to each other.”
He thinks about Election Night 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president—“Back when I thought we were going to get out of wars and start investing in people,” he says. “And everybody was there, and everybody could feel it like, ‘Oh my God, somebody finally understands us.’”
He adds, “To see everybody coming together was such a great feeling. I just wish we could have truly actualized it.”
The Royale, however, has been actualized, and this week, Smith celebrates two decades. Smith has planned a series of events, including DJs spinning every night, a variety show, live music, and screenings of a Food Network profile from the bar’s first year.
“They did a whole episode on the boxing gym owner opening a bar and restaurant,” Smith recalls, adding, “I haven’t watched it since then, because it’s kind of grating to watch yourself on TV.” Now he’ll watch it with hundreds of the bar’s closest friends.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred incorrectly to the timing of Steven Fitzpatrick Smith’s residence in Shaw. He was there in the 1990s. Also, his boxing gym was sanctioned in 2003. We regret the errors.
