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After a 15-hour flight from Tokyo, Shigetoshi Nakamura pulled a strange gadget out of his pocket and plunged it into his glass of water at Mai Lee. “St. Louis water is just as good as Tokyo water,” he said.
The year was 2017. Sitting across the table was Qui Tran, Mai Lee’s co-owner, who had his eyes set on a new culinary venture: ramen. But rather than burying his head in cookbooks, Tran convinced Nakamura—one of Japan’s four “Ramen Gods”—to help him develop the recipes for what would eventually become Nudo House.
That strange gadget, Tran later found out, was a pH meter, a device that uses electrodes to measure the acidity or alkalinity of water. Nakamura explained that ramen is only as good as the water it’s made with. Cooking with hard, mineral-dense water gives ramen broth a grayish-brown hue instead of a more desirable milky-white.
Courtesy Nudo House
Likewise, ramen noodles require water with precisely calibrated alkaline levels. If you’ve ever had a bowl of Tran’s Classic Nudo or O’Miso Spicy ramen at Nudo House, you know about the signature sticky, springy quality of the noodles—the byproduct of pure, pH-balanced tap water.
“I took St. Louis’ water quality for granted since I was a kid working in my mom’s restaurant,” Tran says. “I would have never realized how lucky we were until Chef Nakamura explained everything.”
Seemingly against all odds, our humble Midwestern river city boasts some of the best ramen—and a myriad of other dishes—in the country. Food & Wine ranked St. Louis the fifth best place to eat in America; on Yelp, we clock in at No. 2. Could our acclaim really be attributed to something as rudimentary as tap water?
Before answering that question, let’s take a field trip to St. Louis’ water treatment facility.
Nestled at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the Chain of Rocks Water Purification Plant has been clarifying river water for more than 125 years. At the facility, murky river water is tested for more than 150 contaminants, filtered, softened, and clarified for up to a week before making its way to a tap. This rigorous process, overseen by St. Louis Public Utilities director Curtis Skouby, yields some of the most delectable drinking water on the planet. In 2001, the Chain of Rocks and Howard Bend water treatment plants earned the Director's Award for treatment optimization from the Partnership for Safe Water. Six years later, St. Louis took home the crown for Best Tasting City Water in America in a blind taste test.
The water in St. Louis County, supplied by Missouri American Water Company (MAWC), is also worth bragging about. All four of MAWC’s treatment plants have earned 15-year Director’s Awards from the Partnership for Safe Water, an honor achieved by less than one percent of water utilities across the country.
This gold standard for safety and taste makes St. Louis water perfectly suitable to sip straight from the tap—or lay the foundation for a Bosnian delicacy in America’s heartland.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
If you peer into the windows of Balkan Treat Box, you might catch a glimpse of co-owner Loryn Nalic kneading the dough to make somun, an airy, lightly charred Bosnian flatbread that's typically stuffed with generous helpings of cevapi sausage, kajmak (unaged cheese), and fresh vegetables.
Nalic, who earned a James Beard nomination for Best Chef–Midwest in February, bakes bread with surgical precision. The wood-fired oven in Balkan Treat Box’s kitchen imparts the dough with flavors and texture that simply can’t be mimicked at home (much like her recipes, which were inspired by a trip to Sarajevo with her husband and business partner, Edo).
But none of that matters without water.
“The taste and texture of bread can easily get thrown off if you’re cooking with hard water,” says Nalic. “I’ve made my recipes in California, and they don’t turn out the same.”
To most people, water is just water—end of discussion. But when your livelihood and reputation hinge on the quality of your bread, you realize that water is a different ingredient depending where you are in the world.
“Given our day-to-day process always starts with flour and water, we’re very grateful to call St. Louis home.”
For restaurant folks who land in St. Louis from other cities, the upgrade in water quality is often the first thing that catches their attention. Just ask Wil Brawley, the general manager and beverage director at Billie-Jean, which is currently closed but slated to reopen this winter.
“I started my career out in Springfield, and the water there was very acidic—it had a sharp, gnarly taste,” says Brawley. “When I moved to St. Louis, the first thing I noticed was that the water was much more palatable.”
In a restaurant like Billie-Jean that wins on details, superior water elevates drinks and dishes to a new level. It puts pure, crystal-clear ice cubes in your Bushido Spritz. It accentuates the flavors in chef Ny Vongsaly’s dumpling soup and scallion chile corncakes. And it makes a clean shot of espresso to wash it all down.
“There’s not a single thing on the menu that isn’t impacted by high-caliber water,” says Brawley. “It’s not a glamorous ingredient. But in the restaurant business, you’re only as strong as your weakest link.”
The same goes for the brewing business.
Urban Chestnut brewmaster Florian Kuplent figured that out during his apprenticeship in Germany, where water is sourced from the Alps. Munich, one of the most venerable beer cities on the planet, boasts that its tap water is tastier than bottled water. Considering beer is about 90 percent water, it’s no coincidence that breweries tend to pop up near the best water sources, whether that’s in Munich or 4,700 miles away in St. Louis.
“If our tap water was impure or too mineral-dense, we would have to put it through a separate treatment process before brewing beer with it,” explains Kuplent. “Fortunately, that’s not the case in St. Louis.”
Water is the tasteless, colorless, odorless, unsung hero that can (and should) give diners a newfound appreciation for St. Louis gastronomy. Next time you sit down for dinner, your server will ask what you’d like to start with, to which you may respond, “Water is fine.”
But here, it’s not fine—it’s world-class.
Editor's note: This article has been updated from its original version.
