Illustration by Britt Spencer
Not just anyone can be a sage. To paraphrase Socrates, senseless people don’t know that they need wisdom, and philosophers seek it, but only gods and sages have it. To earn that title, I passed a series of grueling trials: I predicted several future events with accuracy far surpassing that of local meteorologists. I gave dozens of people opaque, vaguely Eastern-sounding advice, and they all became markedly happier (often because they increased the frequency of their visits to Ted Drewes). And I signed a pledge to never rely on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, with regard to the appellation of this particular sandwich, the Internet encyclopedia advances the most widely repeated theory.
For those senseless few not in the know, the St. Paul was fusion cuisine before there was such a thing. A fried egg foo yong patty is Americanized with tomato, onion, pickle, mayo, and two slices of white bread. Served at hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants, the sandwiches are huge, cheap, and much more delicious than one would expect. A plain St. Paul has veggies in the egg patty, but for a few cents more, you can add a meat of your choice. The special St. Paul at Kim Van in South City, which is this sage’s personal favorite, includes pork, ham, beef, chicken, and shrimp, all for the bargain price of $4.35.
This unique delicacy is a St. Louis original that’s not served in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, so what’s up with the name? The oft-cited Wikipedia entry on the subject says, “According to local legend, the St. Paul sandwich was invented by Steven Yuen at Park Chop Suey in Lafayette Square… Yuen named the sandwich after his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.” When reached by phone, the current owner of Park Chop Suey was loath to discuss the folklore, possibly because it isn’t true. The timeframe provided on Wikipedia, “the early 1940s,” is several decades before Park Chop Suey opened.
Even if the details are off, perhaps early Chinese restaurants did invent the sandwich as a way to appeal to Midwestern palates. Another theory comes from iconic chef James Beard, who knew the St. Paul by a different geographic moniker, the Denver. In American Cookery, he argues, the recipe “must have originated with the many Chinese chefs who cooked for logging camps and railroad gangs in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” Of course, this does not explain how it became known as the St. Paul in St. Louis. On that account, I must have the wisdom to admit that I don’t know (and I suspect that Wikipedia doesn’t, either).
