No doubt about it. St. Louis is a bread town. We love our loaves. So why the big buzz about Union Loafers Cafe and Bread Bakery? The sweet triad of head baker Ted Wilson at the ovens, chef Brian Lagerstrom in the kitchens and front man Sean Netzer in the house and soon-to-be at the bar has wowed guests and restaurant industry folks alike since opening in early October.
Let’s start with the baker and his breads. “I can geek out about bread all day long,” Wilson (right) says. Most breads at Union Loafers are naturally fermented, which adds tang, zest, and wild patterns of pockets and holes to the loaves. No bread, pretzel, roll or yeasty thing baked there escapes his informed scrutiny. Every detail counts. Union Loafers even makes its own butter—in-house, fresh, creamy, and delicious.
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Wilson chooses specific flours for each style of bread, like the unbleached, un-enriched roller-milled, hard red wheat flour he brings in from Kansas for his light and mild bread. The millers grind this flour with specially dressed stones then run it over a fine mesh sieve. The sieve keeps out the coarsest flakes, but allows the finer, flavorful bran and germ to remain in the flour.
His rarified methodology brings many converts to the bread table, including Evan Benn, former Hip Hops columnist, food writer, and critic at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. We asked Benn, now the food editor for the Miami Herald, if he recalled a transcendent moment with Wilson’s breads.
“My ‘ah-ha’ moment with Teddy’s bread came back in the day at the old Good Pie location in midtown,” Benn says. “He was baking loaves in the pizza oven, and they had it as an appetizer option for a while. And I thought that was just ridiculous notion — bread at a pizza place! — until I ordered it. And it was hot and crusty and yeasty and doughy and tangy and drizzled with heavenly pesto. I ate the whole half-loaf, finished off a pizza, and thought: Bread at a pizza place— what a brilliant idea.”
Head front man Sean Netzer (right) says pizza will one day be on the menu boards at Union Loafers, once they grow into their space and settle into the rhythm of the cafe and the bakery. “We’ll do a Roman-style pizza,” he says, “the kind you cut with a scissors, baked at 500 to 600 degrees in our bread ovens.”
Netzer, whose vitae includes a long stint at 33 Wine Shop & Bar, will oversee the bar once the liquor license is secured. “The bar menu revolves around beauty and simplicity,” he says. “We’ll offer eight to ten beers, a variety of wines by the glass, and select whiskeys. Beer and whiskey — both use grains, as does bread.”
At Union Loafers, however, no one loafs. “I want a teamwork model where everyone knows every job. We want to be able to utilize people’s talents here,” Netzer says.
The talent talk isn’t just blowing smoke for Netzer and Wilson. The two used their skills to build the wooden bar, tables, and finishes in the restaurant. “We built the banquettes and brought in wood from an AMF bowling alley in Nameoki City that closed years ago,” Netzer says. “One of our friends saw the Nameoki 16-foot bowling lanes for sale on Craigslist and we were on it.”
Union Loafers affords Joanna Bayer the opportunity to use her graphic design skills in addition to her restaurant skills. “The logo uses a custom typeface,” Bayer says. “I work to closely match the typeface for our menus, which change often, and on the chalkboards as well.”
For Emily Alberts, cross-training will improve her bartending skills, something she’s looking forward to. “We will be able to move between jobs – serve, tend bar, expedite orders, handle retail sales – we’ll do it all.”
One job that likely won’t involve cross-training is in the kitchen. Chef Brian Lagerstorm works in a kitchen the size of a closet turning out terrific sandwiches, soups, and salads. The linchpin that holds everything together, however, is the bread.
Liz Randolph has known Ted since he first arrived in St. Louis to work at The Good Pie with her husband, chef Mike Randolph. “Something like bread is so simple, yet when it’s insanely good bread, like Ted’s, the simple becomes amazing. I’m excited by the menu. The salad was my favorite. Mike and I are happy and prideful for Ted; for Union Loafers,” she says. “Opening day, I think industry people made up 85-percent of the lunch crowd, along with Ted’s parents and grandparents. People have been looking forward to this,” Randolph says.
Judging from the lunch crowds the days we visited, restaurant industry folks still populate Union Loafers. In addition to the pizzas, the plan is to add morning toast to the menu as they settle in to the space.
“Their bread is incredible, I had the rye the other day and it was awesome . . . Ted is hugely talented at baking,” says Megan Knaus, an industry friend of all three. “He’s uncompromising when it comes to quality, and I think that his partnering with Brian in the kitchen will result in some incredible food. Sean has a wealth of knowledge in the front of the house and is wildly passionate about their product as well.”
Don’t forget to bring home a loaf. Or two. With the house-made butter.
Union Loafers Cafe and Bread Bakery
1629 Tower Grove
314-833-6111
Lunch, Tue – Sun: 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Fresh bread, Tue – Sun: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Facebook: Union Loafers Cafe and Bread Bakery https://www.facebook.com/LoafersSTL/timeline
Twitter: @loafersSTL
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