January 2015 Feast Magazine

stl at nyc’s beard house

kc’s culinary innovators

midwest craft beer

JOSH GALLIANO

CHEF ROUNDTABLE

THE NEW BREWS

Inspired Local Food Culture | Midwest

feastmagazine.com | January 2015

[ [ 2015 TASTE MAKER S

Here’s to firsts: First dates. First loves. First homes. No matter the occasion, Missouri Wines is sure to have a wine to perfectly complement each milestone. So, pour a glass and celebrate the little things and the big moments with Missouri Wines. We’ve created a milestone in Missouri as well.

Find out what makes our wines so memorable by exploring over 125 Missouri wineries.

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Your journey begins at missouriwine.org.

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FRESH LOCAL ARTISANAL SUSTAINABLE FUN AFFORDABLE ...OUR FOOD

Inspired Local Food Culture | Midwest

JANUARY 2015 froM the staff |7|

Meet OUr CONtrIBUtOrS

|8|

frOM the PUBLISher

The value of culinary entrepreneurship.

|9|

dIgItaL CONteNt

What’s online this month.

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O

T AT Y L N

F RU

FLE

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| 35 | 9202 Clayton Rd. St louiS, MiSSouRi 63124 E: info@todayattRufflES.CoM MoN - SAT 10AM-7PM / SUN 11AM-4PM T: 314.567.7258

F: 314.567.9105

@butChERyStl www.todayattruffles.com

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Farmer Crystal Stevens shares a guide to grow fresh sprouts in your home kitchen.

| 46 | MyStery ShOPPer Buy it and try it: opo squash.

| 48 | MeNU OPtIONS Taste the flavors of provence with fragrant and complex bouillabaisse.

DINe

| 50 | Sweet IdeaS

DrINK This month we’re sipping café au laits in Kansas City, sake in St. Louis and Earl Gray-infused hot toddies in Springfield, Missouri. We also investigate a must-try drink from the new winter cocktail menu at Elaia and Olio in St. Louis’ Botanical Heights neighborhood.

S

| 44 | Seed tO taBLe

A peek at the January episode.

This month we’re dining at a new Mexican restaurant in St. Louis, a Kansas City eatery plating modern German fare and a farm-to-table roadhouse in Effingham, Illinois. In our monthly travel piece, Road Trip, writer Amy Lynch travels to Cincinnati, Ohio, and shares where to dine, drink and stay in the historic beer city. We also highlight two must-try dishes – a local cheese course with elderberry compote and dandelion root crackers at Niche in Clayton, Missouri, and Drunken Noodles at a new Thai restaurant in Westwood, Kansas.

The return of your neighborhood butcher!

cooK

feaSt tv

SEVEN DAYS A WEEK | 13 |

| 43 |

shoP This month we visit two regional shops – one a new artisan butcher shop in St. Louis, and the other a time-honored and family-owned cutlery store in Kansas City. Also, find out what inspired the interior design at Farmers Gastropub, an authentic British pub filled with history and family heritage in Springfield, Missouri.

pastry chef Christy Augustin’s rich, savory cheese quiche warms up winter mornings.

COVER DESIGN By Alexandrea Doyle WITH pHOTOGRApHy By Jonathan

Gayman, Gregg Goldman, Landon Vonderschmidt AND Adrian Walker.

TABLE OF CONTENTS pHOTO OF pINT OF BEER (p. 62) By Jonathan Gayman.

Bibamus et Invenio!

FEATURES open house

54 62 68

In a first-person essay, Josh Galliano, chef-owner of The Libertine in St. Louis, shares his experience cooking dinner at the James Beard House in New York City – including what inspired his regional menu.

the producers Writer Pete Dulin explores the change brewing in the regional craft beer movement across the state of Missouri and in eastern Kansas.

strange magic Learn how entrepreneurs Corey Smale and Jason Bockman built St. Louis’ Strange Donuts from an initial idea to a multilocation power brand in less than a year.

tastemakers roundtable

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DOUBLE FEATURE: Join Feast publisher Catherine Neville at a roundtable in Kansas City featuring seven of the city’s most acclaimed chefs and listen in as they discuss the state of the local restaurant scene.

Let us drink and discover!

9202 Clayton Rd. St louiS, MiSSouRi 63124 E: info@todayattRufflES.CoM TUESDAY - SATURDAY T: 314.567.7258

F: 314.567.9105

@tRufflESStl www.todayattruffles.com

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Taste the Italian influence that began at the Crossing and continues at Acero

Magazine Volume 6

| Issue 1 | January 2015

Publisher Catherine Neville, publisher@feastmagazine.com Director of Sales Angie Henshaw ahenshaw@feastmagazine.com, 314.475.1298 EDITORIAL Senior Editor Liz Miller, editor@feastmagazine.com Director of Digital Content Sarah Fenske, sfenske@feastmagazine.com Assistant Editor Bethany Christo, bchristo@feastmagazine.com Assistant Digital Editor Heather Riske, web@feastmagazine.com

The CroSSing 7823 Forsyth Blvd, Clayton, Mo 314-721-7375 M-F : 11:30-1:30 and 5- close Sat: 5 - close

ACERO

7266 Manchester Rd., Maplewood, MO 314-644-1790 M-Th 5-9pm • Fri/Sat 5-10pm

Fialafood.com

St. Louis' Premier Winter Destination

Kansas City Contributing Editor Jenny Vergara Editorial Assistant Matt Duchesne Proofreader Christine Wilmes Contributing Writers Christy Augustin, Ettie Berneking, Gabrielle DeMichele, Pete Dulin, Josh Galliano, Caitlyn Gallip, Kyle Harsha, Valeria Turturro Klamm, Amy Lynch, Ryan Sciara, Matt Seiter, Matt Sorrell, Crystal Stevens, Michael Sweeney, Shannon Weber ART Art Director Lisa Allen, art@feastmagazine.com Assistant Art Director Alexandrea Doyle, adoyle@feastmagazine.com

Experience the Tradition!

Food,

Hot Co Beer, Wcinoea, & Bonfire

27,600 sq. ft. of FRozeN FuN! Openve, Xmas aEy, NYE Xmas D Years & Neway D

Open All Day, Everyday!

Sunday - Thursday 10a.m. - 9p.m.

Friday & Saturday 10a.m. - Midnight extended Holiday Hours Dec. 19th - Jan. 3rd • 10am- Midnight

It's Magical!

314-367-RINK 314-361-0613 www.steinbergskatingrink.com

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Contributing Photographers Brad Austin, illustrations by Adam Bertels/Lamb Grenade, Neil Burger, Travis Duncan, Jonathan Gayman, Gregg Goldman, Aaron Lindberg, Emily Suzanne McDonald, Aaron Ottis, Jennifer Silverberg, Jessica Spencer, Alistair Tutton, Landon Vonderschmidt, Adrian Walker, Cheryl Waller FEAST TV

producer: Catherine Neville production partner: Forever An Astronaut

Judd Demaline, Cameron Hill, Alessio Summerfield COnTACT US Feast Media, 900 N. Tucker Blvd., 4th Floor, St. Louis, MO 63101 314.475.1244, feastmagazine.com DISTRIbUTIOn To distribute Feast Magazine at your place of business, please contact Bill Morlock at bmorlock@stldist.com.

Feast Magazine does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or artwork. Submissions will not be returned.

All contents are copyright © 2010-2015 by Feast Magazine™.

All rights reserved.

Reproduction or use in whole or in part of the contents, without the prior written permission of the publisher, is strictly prohibited.

Produced by the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis, LLC

ContrIbutors

01.15 adrian walker

Ring in the New Year with . . .

St. Louis and Colorado Springs, Colorado, Photographer Adrian Walker grew up in St. Louis. He is now based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, curating at VSCO. After earning Bachelor of Arts degrees in sociology and photography from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, He traveled across the U. S. as a photographer specializing in music and lifestyle subjects. Using film and digital formats, he creates new experiences through his photography by connecting his audience to the beauty of everyday life that they may overlook. Urban settings inspire him, and he uses them to create imagery that encourages viewers to address the culture of their surroundings.

shannon weber St. Louis, Writer Shannon Weber is the creator, author and photographer behind the award-winning blog, A Periodic Table (aperiodictableblog.com), and her work has been featured on websites such as Bon Appétit, Serious Eats and America’s Test Kitchen. She is a self-taught baker and cook who believes that the words “I can’t” should never apply to food preparation and that curiosity can lead to wonderful things in both the kitchen and in life. With a lifelong love of food and a bachelor’s degree in English literature, it was only a matter of time before she ventured into recipe development and writing. She has been known to read through cookbooks like memoirs, plan trips around restaurants and to spend far too much time thinking about food. Outside of the kitchen, you can find her wandering through the local library, taking in an independent film (solo, no talking) or hanging out at the playground with her daughter.

River City Granite and Stoneworks 314.371.0300

618.875.9250

www.rivercitygranitestl.com

gregg goldman St. Louis, Photographer I have been fortunate to have my work be my passion. My father inspired my career in photography with the gift of a camera in my teens. I’m not sure he realized what an important gift that was, as up until his final days, he was baffled by the idea of photography as a career. Being able to meet and experience amazing people through my work is a privilege – especially hearing their stories firsthand and having the chance to capture their passion through images. Great photography is more than simply taking pictures; it’s an opportunity to collaborate on an idea and turn it into an arresting visual statement. Whether on the floor of a casino capturing gamers’ luck or in the kitchen at the James Beard House photographing Josh Galliano, having the chance to become part of each of my subject’s worlds is a special invitation.

jenny vergara Kansas City, Contributing Editor As a food writer, restaurant marketer and culinary event planner, Jenny Vergara knows what’s good and what’s going on in the food scene in Kansas City. In addition to her new role as contributing editor for Feast and writer for the magazine’s news blog, The Feed, Jenny also writes a food blog, The Making of a Foodie. She is perhaps most well known as the founder of Kansas City’s first underground supper club, The Test Kitchen, which has now expanded to include chapters in Missouri and Oklahoma. Her tribe of faithful followers is more than 5,000 strong.

Hand Crafted Coffees Importing Fine Coffees from 20 Countries • QUALITY • EXPERIENCE • SERVICE Full Service Coffeehouse & Restaurant Supplier Fourth Generation Family Owned Coffee Roasters Since 1930

WWW.CHAUVINCOFFEE.COM

314-772-0700

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FeAst eVeNts

publisher’s letter KC

our robust food-and-drink industry has a huge impact on the quality of life in the midwest.

When restaurants, bars, breweries, wineries and artisan shops thrive, the tax base is supported, jobs are created, tourism increases and we attract and retain talented folks who are seeking vibrant cities and towns in which to live and raise their families.

Success in the industry is evasive and failure rates are high, so in this, our Feast TV producer and host Catherine Neville shares how to prepare rich, annual Tastemakers issue, rouille-thickened bouillabaisse in the January episode. we talk to some of our region’s most innovative entrepreneurs and learn what has contributed to their success.

St. Louis’ Strange Donuts has gone from idea to multilocation power brand in a year. In Strange Magic (p. 68), senior editor Liz Miller explores how audience development and collaboration have contributed to its success.

Kansas City restaurant Week Fri., Jan. 16 through Sun., Jan. 25; Greater Kansas City; kcrestaurantweek.com

Get a taste of Kansas City during the annual exhibition of the city’s finest culinary talents.

Restaurant Week offers tons of mouth-watering foods from the area’s top chefs.

MO

6th Annual silver Cup Chefs Challenge Sat., Jan. 17; Sat., Jan. 31; Sat., Feb. 7; Sat., Feb. 28; finals on Sat., Mar. 14; Seven Springs Winery; sevenspringswinery.com

Witness a culinary battle as chefs from Lake of the Ozarks-area restaurants compete for “Best Chef at the Lake” to benefit the Tri-County YMCA. stl

the st. louis Food & Wine experience Fri., Jan. 23 to Sun., Jan. 25; The Chase Park Plaza, pricing varies; foodandwinestl.org

Excite your taste buds and discover new flavors with friends at the largest international food and wine festival in the Midwest, which benefits The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

KC

party Arty: KC beautiful Sat., Jan. 24; 8pm to midnight; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; pricing varies; nelson-atkins.org

Sample tasty foods and cocktails from some of Kansas City’s best restaurants and immerse yourself in the neon lights and roaring sounds of the 18th and Vine jazz district.

KC

Feast Kansas City tastemakers panel Mon., Jan. 26; 6 to 8pm; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, kemperart.org

Inspired by the Tastemakers roundtable discussion with some of Kansas City’s most influential chefs (p. 76), Feast will host a panel discussion with chefs at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Visit feastmagazine.com for pricing and ticket info. stl

Josh Galliano’s James beard Dinner Mon., Jan. 26; 6 to 8pm; The Libertine; libertinestl.com

Meanwhile, the Midwest’s craft beer scene has evolved from a few startups about 25 years ago to the huge industry it is today. The way we consume beer is forever changed thanks to the pioneers who had the courage to launch what was then considered a somewhat foolhardy venture and the newcomers who are pushing craft beer forward. In The Producers (p. 62), writer Pete Dulin digs into the history of craft brewing in the region and takes a look at where the industry is headed.

For our annual Tastemakers roundtable, we gathered seven of Kansas City’s most innovative chefs for a discussion on the state of the city’s restaurant scene and what they believe are the keys to continued success (p. 76).

And finally, Josh Galliano, chef-owner of The Libertine in St. Louis, takes us along for the journey as he plans and cooks a once-in-a-career dinner at the James Beard House in New York City (p. 54). His Mississippi Riverfocused menu opened the eyes and palates of the Beard Foundation to what our Midwestern cuisine is and what it can be. Creating new audiences for our region’s food-and-drink scene is necessary to advance the industry, and it’s opportunities like Josh’s that help spread the word about what the Heartland has to offer.

Until next time,

Join Feast and chef Josh Galliano for a seasonally inspired recreation of the five-course dinner and drink pairings he served at the James Beard House in New York City in October (p. 54 ). Visit feastmagazine.com for pricing and ticket info. stl

schnucks Cooks seafood-studded bouillabaisse Wed., Jan. 28, 6 to 9pm; Schnucks Cooks Cooking School; $40; schnuckscooks.com or 314.909.1704

Join us in the kitchen and learn how to make bouillabaisse with crusty bread and citrus salad.

In this class you’ll make pâte à choux with cheese to make gougères, and delicate, thin crêpes for crêpes Suzette. stl

Maplewood sweet tooth tour Sat., Jan. 31, noon to 5pm; Downtown Maplewood; $15, cityofmaplewood.com

Tantalize your tastebuds and cure your winter blues at this tour of treats from Maplewood’s fine food purveyors. Sample chocolates, pies, donuts, teas, cakes, coffees, breads and specialty drinks. stl

science on tap Sat., Jan. 31, 7 to 11pm; Saint Louis Science Center; $50 in advance; $60 at the door; slsc.org/science-on-tap

Discover the chemistry and science behind the beer brewing and bottling during a 21+ beertasting event for your brain, featuring tastings of more than 50 different beers. stl

Cat’s picks Wednesdays, 8:35am; The BIG 550 KTRS

Tune in as Feast publisher Catherine Neville chats with host McGraw Milhaven and gives her weekly picks for the best places to eat and drink in the St. Louis area.

Catherine Neville publisher@feastmagazine.com

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@cat_neville

@cat_neville

DIGITAL CONTENT

hungry for more?

feastmagazine.com

connect with us daily:

FACEbook. Check out behind-the-scenes photos

from our recent Feast TV shoots (like at Free State Brewing Co.) at facebook.com/feastmag.

TWITTER. Follow @feastmag to see where we’re

drinking across the region, including a recent stop at The Belfry in Kansas City.

PHOTOGRAPHy By Jennifer Silverberg

onLInE EXTRA

PHOTOGRAPHy By Gregg Goldman

PHOTOGRAPHy By Candis Stiebel

In this month’s Open House feature (p. 54), St. Louis chef Josh Galliano describes his night cooking at the James Beard House in New York City. Find recipes for some of the dishes he prepared, including hay-roasted coppa with pickled collards, field beans and sprouted wheat berries, at feastmagazine.com.

PInTEREST. Find savory winter recipes (like winter root vegetable soufflé) on our Menu Options board at pinterest.com/feastmag.

InSTAGRAm. Hashtag your local food and drink photos with #feastgram for a chance to see them in the next issue of Feast. Details on p. 90.

onLInE EXTRA: In this month’s The Producers feature (p. 62), writer Pete Dulin explores the evolution of the Midwest craft beer movement. Find online-exclusive profiles of Mother’s Brewing Co. and Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. at feastmagazine.com.

Watch our videos and Feast TV. SPECIAL GIVEAWAY: Win a pair of tickets to Science on Tap at the Saint Louis Science Center on Sat., Jan 31. Just head to the

youtube.com/FeastMagazine

Promotions section of feastmagazine.com for all the details.

Inspired Local Food Culture

JANUARY 2015

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FEAST TV

TV

Look for the Feast TV splat throughout the magazine. It tells you which articles are part of this month’s episode!

watch this month’s episode to:

In the January episode of Feast tV, producer Catherine Neville demos how to make fresh fish stock and rouille for seafoodstudded bouillabaisse.

Turn to p. 48 to find the recipe.

Segment 1. Join producer Catherine Neville for a roundtable in Kansas City featuring seven of the city’s most acclaimed chefs, and listen in as they discuss the state of the local restaurant scene and the economic and cultural importance of a robust Midwest culinary community.

Segment 2. Venture to Lawrence, Kansas, to meet

PHOTOGRAPHy by Jennifer Silverberg

the innovators behind 25-year-old Free State brewing Co., the first legal brewery to launch in Kansas since the state banned alcohol in 1881.

Segment 3. Learn how Corey Smale and Jason

bockman took Strange Donuts from a concept to a multilocation power brand in less than a year.

feast tv is brought to you by the generous support of our sponsors:

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JANUARY 2015

Missouri Wines

Whole Foods Market

In January, reach for a bottle of Montelle Winery’s 2013 Seyval blanc. Feast TV producer Catherine Neville pairs it with a bouillabaisse recipe by Schnucks Cooks Cooking School’s Gabrielle DeMichele.

Get cooking at home! Pick up the recipes and ingredients from Catherine Neville’s January Feast TV demo at the brentwood and Town and Country locations of Whole Foods Market in St. Louis.

Don’t miss a

WATCH FEAST ON THESE NETWORKS

sIngLe servIng! Subscribe to Feast’s weekly enewsletter for delicious content covering KC, STL and mid-MO dining.

Visit

feastmagazine.com to subscribe and you’ll get fresh content delivered to your inbox every Tuesday!

In St. Louis, tune into the Nine Network (Channel 9) to see Feast TV on Sat. Jan. 3 at 2pm; Sun., Jan. 4 at 11am; and Mon., Jan. 5 at 1pm. Feast TV will also air throughout the month on nineCREATE.

In Kansas City, watch Feast TV on KCPT (Channel 19) on Sat., Jan. 17 at 2:30pm.

You can watch Feast TV throughout midMissouri on KMOS (Channel 6) on Thu., Jan. 22 at 8:30pm and on Sun., Jan. 25 at 6:30pm.

Feast TV will air in the southern Illinois region on WSIU (Channel 8) on Sat., Jan. 10 at 10am.

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at the

SAINT LOUIS SCIENCE CENTER Saturday, January 31 st • 7– 11pm • Featuring 50+ Beer Tastings • Science Demonstrations • Small Plates using Local Beers • Live Music Join Starlite Events at the Saint Louis Science Center on January 31 for a beer-tasting event for your brain. Learn about the chemistry and science behind the entire beer brewing and bottling process. This total sensory experience will let you: • Be hands-on with beer brewing’s most popular ingredients

• Learn how different colored glass affects the taste of beer

• Discover how buoyancy beer

• Compete in beer-goggles challenges

Tickets on sale now!

$50 pre-sale or $60 at the door Ticket includes entertainment, food samples, beer tastings, parking and more! slsc.org • 314.289.4400

where we’re dining

dig into modern german fare on p. 16

whErE wE’rE diNiNg kansas city

must-try dish clayton, mo.

camembert with elderberry compote and dandelion root crackers written by

matt duchesne

photography by Emily suzanne mcdonald

tutton

Niche, 7734 Forsyth Blvd., Clayton, Missouri, 314.773.7755, nichestlouis.com

photography by Alistair

Niche introduced a “killer” cheese course to its menu in november, according to executive chef nate hereford. he says the combination of the bitter coffee and chicory flavors of the dandelion root crackers are complemented by the sweetness of elderberry compote and the creamy Camembert cheese, which is made in-house and ideal for winter snacking.

local pig - westport

written by

Jenny Vergara

alex pope, co-owner and director of the Local pig in Kansas City, and his business partners made a bold move at the end of 2013 when they decided to take over the lease of the former beer emporium bridger’s bottle Shop, where they had been serving food under the name preservation Market. in 2014, pope made significant changes to the space and reopened it under a new name, Local Pig – Westport. head bartender erik Mariscal has developed the bar program, including a beer list with more than 250 options, while lunch and dinner menus offer expanded selections of charcuterie, burgers and sandwiches. entrées are prepared in Local pig’s shareable style by executive chef Mark Dandurand in dishes like lamb pot pie, a braised short-rib “burger” and half of a smoked pig’s head.

Local Pig – Westport, 510 Westport Road, Westport, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.200.1639, thelocalpig.com

ONE ON ONE

columbia, mo.

john gilbreth

owner, pizza tree

When Pizza Tree opened in January 2013, it wasn’t long before the shop outgrew its small kitchen space at the music venue Mojo’s in Downtown Columbia, Missouri. In February 2014, the shop closed for a brief hiatus. Owner John Gilbreth launched a Kickstarter campaign in September 2014 to give people a sense of ownership in the shop’s reopening; within 11 days, he raised more than $12,000, exceeding his goal of $11,111. A month later, Pizza Tree reopened its doors at its new location at 909 Cherry St., offering traditional and specialty creations, pizza by the slice and delivery.

photography by Aaron

Ottis

What was your inspiration while creating the new space? I wanted it to have this modernist tree house vibe. We chose some very bright pops of colors. I’ve been collecting pizza-themed art for the shop. As part of the Kickstarter project, I also commissioned portraits of two of the pledgers by artist Joel Sager, which are our cornerstone pieces.

Tell me about your background in food. I bussed tables and worked at sandwich shops growing up and really liked it. I came to Columbia to go to college, dropped out two weeks into it and got

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JANUARY 2015

WRITTEN BY

Valeria Turturro Klamm

a job at Shakespeare’s Pizza. I worked there for seven years and then cooked around in different kitchens. I then worked at Broadway Brewery and met Jay [Westcott, now pizza chef at Pizza Tree].

He inspired me to really learn how to use my knife and create dishes. He stuck me on the pizza station there, and coming back to making pizzas was like riding a bike for me. Eventually I decided to go do my own thing. Before opening Pizza Tree, you went on a self-described “pizza odyssey.”

What did you learn? I ate at 32 pizzerias in 31 days, from New Haven, Connecticut, to New York City and throughout the Northeast. I also visited a bunch of bakeries and dairies. I did it to figure out what I wanted to do and figure out what the greats do. I learned that I wanted to have a place that had slices available all day long – the kind of quintessential pizza-eating experience. I wanted to do the classics really well – margherita, pepperoni and Italian sausage – and have some off-the-wall flavors. Tell me about the ingredients you use at Pizza Tree. We use sourdough crust, make our own sauce and stretch our own fresh whole milk mozzarella. We use Ezzo pepperoni [from

Columbus, Ohio] – it’s by far the best one; it’s spicy and crisps up just perfect. We make our own Italian sausage and cure our own Canadian bacon from local Patchwork Family Farms pork and use their pork belly on our famous Banh Mi pizza.

Other than the Banh Mi, what’s another must-try pie? Our Canadian bacon; people haven’t had anything like it before.

I’m also really excited about our margherita pizza. There hasn’t been an authentic pizza margherita in Columbia before, as far as I know.

Pizza Tree, 909 Cherry St., Columbia, Missouri, 573.874.9925, facebook.com/ pizzatree

EXCITE YOUR TASTE BUDS AND DISCOVER NEW FLAVORS WITH FRIENDS AT THE LARGEST INTERNATIONAL FOOD AND WINE SHOW IN THE MIDWEST!

Join Us For A Delicious Weekend

MEDIA SPONSOR

WITH MAJOR SUPPORT SUPPOR BY

13TH ANNUAL ST. LOUIS FOOD & WINE EXPERIENCE Saturday, January 24, 2015 Noon - 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, January 25, 2015 Noon - 5:00 p.m.

One-Day General Admission icket Options Available & VIP Reserve Room Ticket A The Chase Park Plaza Hotel Khorassan & Lindell Ballrooms

PREMIER TASTING: ASTING: A Cellar-Maker’ss Dream January 23, 2015 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.

The Chase Park Plaza Hotel The Starlight Ballroom

PURCHASE TICKETS TODAY!

Online at www.foodandwinestl.org, at The Rep Box Office [314] 968-4925 or at area Schnucks locations.

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ONE ON ONE

st. louis

simon lusky

owner, athlete eats

Jonathan Gayman

As Simon and Angelica Lusky know all too well, you don’t need to be a big-league athlete to eat like one. The husband-and-wife team is behind Athlete Eats, the St. Louis-based prepared meals service popular with high-profile clients including players for the St. Louis Cardinals, Blues and Rams. After three years of making health-conscious, gluten-free meals out of their home kitchen, Simon, a nutritionist for the Cardinals, and Angelica purchased the flagship Athlete Eats on Cherokee Street in October 2013. In addition to offering the prepared meals for pickup that earned them a reputation among athletes, the duo quickly realized the need for a dine-in option. In March, Athlete Eats expanded, adding a café with fast-casual breakfast and lunch options like the bibimbap bowl, filled with “caulirice” (cauliflower blended down to resemble rice), shaved pork tenderloin, bell peppers, shiitake mushrooms, pickled carrots and a farm-fresh egg, as well as housemade juices and smoothies. And that was just the beginning. In late October, the Luskys announced plans for a second location of Athlete Eats, a food truck and a fine-dining concept, all to open in St. Louis within the year.

pHotoGrApHy by

How will the second location of Athlete Eats differ from the original? It’s definitely going to have its own identity as far as menu and feel goes. We’re really excited because Brentwood is such a great, centrally located place. We feel we’re going to get more of a morning crowd,

whErE wE’rE DiNiNG

WRITTEN BY

Heather Riske

and possibly a later crowd as well because there’s more nighttime traffic. It’s going to be roughly 1,200 square feet with an open kitchen projecting out. There’s going to be a lot more seating than the Cherokee Street café and an expanded menu. We’re hoping to serve breakfast all day and possibly stay open a little bit later. Right now, we’re pretty limited on Cherokee because there’s so much we have going on, with the kitchen making the prepared food in the back as well as preparing for the café. By taking out the equation of having to worry about cooking prepared food and also cooking for the actual restaurant, we’re going to be able to offer some things we couldn’t do on Cherokee. What sparked interest for a food truck in addition to the brick-andmortar locations? We just feel that a food truck is a great way to get your brand out there.

We’ll have it at events that typically have a need for some healthy eating, whether that’s marathons or Tough Mudders, things like that.

Anything that’s sport or health-oriented, we’ll definitely have a presence at. We’re planning to fabricate a custom truck that’s going to have a merchandising cooler facing out. It’s kind of the same concept that we have in the café – people can quickly grab something [already] prepared or sit down for a freshly prepared meal. You’re always going to have that option no matter which Athlete Eats you go to, and I think that’s what really sets our model apart. What will the fine-dining concept look like? It’s a place

where you can go and get good food that’s somewhat fine-dining, but it’s comfortable for everybody in every occasion.

You don’t have to think about, “Wow, is this loaded with butter and cream and cheese?” You know it’s going to have that rich flavor, but it’s still going to be good for you – we’re calling it healthy indulgences. We have some good ideas to do a concept that St. Louis hasn’t seen before, and that would work really well in an area like Clayton. We’re excited to do something with a bar program, too. I tended bar throughout college and received many wine certifications when I was at Johnson & Wales [University]. I feel like I know Napa like the back of my hand, so it will be exciting to get back to that. I’ll be rekindling that flame but also doing something along the lines of conscious cocktails, as well – sourcing all of our wines organically, making sure they come from sustainable vineyards and only using local or organic beers. What kickstarted these big changes for the company? We’re a year in now, and we’ve been assessing all the feedback we’ve been getting from our customers. I started this business with the idea and the model to grow and expand it. I never wanted it

to just be one thing.

I just want to help as many people as possible and fill a gap in as many places as possible. The whole idea is to give food that tastes good and is good for you. You’re young once, and you only have the energy one time in your life to do it. I hate the idea of sitting five years from now and thinking, “Man, I wish I would have done that move a few years ago.”

I feel like you’ve got to go for it when the time is right. What are you most looking forward to with these new changes? It’s been a really great relationship having this business with my wife and seeing her grow every day, too. And it’s not only her, but [also] our whole staff. Most of them have been here since the beginning, and they continue to grow. It’s exciting to see others around you get better and believe in what you’re doing and want to do more just as much as you do. Internally, that’s what I’m most excited about. I think externally, it’s a way for us to continue to help people and give them something that tastes good, is healthy and helps them live better lives.

Athlete Eats, 2837 Cherokee St., Cherokee Business District, St. Louis, Missouri, 314.932.5566, athleteeats.com

kansas city

pHotoGrApHy by

Landon Vonderschmidt

affäre

written by

Pete Dulin

Chef-owner Martin Heuser’s modern German cuisine at Affäre demonstrates his impressive talent. His refined dishes not only look sexy for the camera, they also wow the senses. At dinner, he elevates kaiserschmarrn – fluffy pancakes with caramelized apples, rum raisins and almonds found on the brunch menu – with the savory richness of seared foie gras. A poached walleye filet – available only if the Great Lakes aren’t frozen this winter – is served with potatoes, seasonal vegetables and a smoked court bouillon, which arrives at your table in a lidded ceramic pot. Lift the lid and a light, smoky fragrance wafts upward. A spoonful of mustard hollandaise dipped in the

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delicate broth is silky and luxurious. Another standout is quail ballotine, which offers quail stuffed with foie gras-black truffle and wrapped in savoy cabbage with cassis jus and celeriac purée. traditional jägerschnitzel, sauerbraten and other dishes are mainstays on the menu, and Heuser’s wife, Katrin, expertly pairs wine with each dish. weingut Friedrich becker, a pinot noir from pfalz, Germany, is complex and rewards patience as its flavors bloom.

Affäre, 1911 Main St., Crossroads Arts District, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.298.6182, affarekc.com

Inspired Local Food Culture

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whErE wE’rE Dining clayton, mo.

written by

Liz Miller

in late november, Cantina Laredo opened in Clayton, Missouri. the restaurant is one of many locations across the country, with outposts in Las Vegas, Dallas, nashville and branson, but this marks the small chain’s first in the St. Louis area. Located on a bustling stretch of Forsyth boulevard, the restaurant’s contemporary dining room mixes understated clean lines and neutral colors accented with dramatic wall art and geometric light fixtures. the restaurant describes the food-and-drink focus as, “combining the traditional with modern flair,” with flavors inspired by the cuisine of Mexico City. Signature dishes include enchiladas de mole, with tortillas stuffed with chicken and topped with a sweet and spicy mole sauce made with an assortment of dried Mexican peppers, as well as the carnitas, which plate tender braised pork shanks topped with housemade chipotle-wine sauce.

A selection of tacos, fajitas and grilled seafood dishes round out the lunch, brunch and dinner menus, while a lengthy selection of Margaritas dominate behind the bar. be sure to begin the meal with an order of tableside guacamole and ask about the fresh fish of the day.

Cantina Laredo, 7710 Forsyth Blvd., Clayton, Missouri, 314.725.2447, cantinalaredo.com PHOtOGrAPHy by Emily Suzanne McDonald

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Inspired Local Food Culture

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roAd trip cincinnati, oh.

ohIo

destination: cincinnati, ohio Amy Lynch born of German ingenuity and ohio river commerce, Cincinnati is one of America’s most quintessential beer towns. bavarian immigrant Christian Moerlein got the ball rolling back in the mid-1800s, but the thriving local brewing industry took a hard hit during Prohibition years. Thankfully, contemporary colleagues like rhinegeist brewery, rivertown brewing Co. and the soon-to-launch Taft’s Ale house are ushering in a new era of Queen City beer with brews that run the gamut from traditional to downright unusual. The annual blues & brews bash at Memorial hall in the buzzy overthe-rhine district on Fri., Jan. 30, presents a prime opportunity to sample the suds.

wrITTEN bY wv

kENTUCkY vA

NC

sleep

eat

21c Museum Hotel

Graeter’s Ice Cream

The second location to follow the Louisvillebased flagship, this hybrid facility blurs the lines between art and accommodations with a 156-room boutique hotel lavishly embellished with original art and installations throughout.

The quirky resident yellow penguins pop up everywhere – in guest rooms, common spaces, even in the elevators, and the chic Metropole restaurant, a rooftop lounge and a full-service spa make for pampered stays.

No visit to Cincinnati is complete without a cone or cup of the city’s hometown ice cream. From its humble beginnings in 1868, Graeter’s has stayed true to a traditional French pot process that turns out just two gallons at a time. The shockingly purple black raspberry Chocolate Chip studded with swirls of chocolate is love at first lick.

609 Walnut St., 513. 578.6600, 21cmuseumhotels.com/cincinnati PHOTO COURTESY OF 21c Museum Hotel/CincinnatiUSA.com

Various locations, graeters.com

The Eagle Food & Beer Hall Get your fried chicken on at this year-old over-The-rhine hotspot, which definitely knows what it’s doing when it comes to soulful southern eats – think ridiculously rich mac ‘n’ cheese and indulgent sides of candied bacon, fried hominy and even sweet pickles served in an adorable little jelly jar. A hundred or so ales, lagers, stouts and porters offer plenty of ways to wash it all down. Expect to wait for a table, as seating is limited in the space that was previously a post office.

1342 Vine St., 513.802.5007, theeagleotr.com PHOTO COURTESY OF dan Ledbetter photography

Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza

35 W. Fifth St., 513. 421.9100, hilton.com

Renaissance Cincinnati Downtown Hotel A luxurious new addition to the Marriott family, the revitalized Downtown renaissance opened in July 2014 inside a historic former bank building designed by famed architect Daniel burnham. Nearly 300 rooms and 40 suites sprawl across 19 floors, giving guests plenty of space to spread out amid Art Deco accents that, thanks to a recent multimillion dollar renovation, have received a welcome 21st-century upgrade.

36 E. Fourth St., 513. 333.0000, marriott.com

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Findlay Market

Cincinnati-Style Chili Loyalties usually belong to either skyline Chili or Gold star Chili restaurants, but you’ll find this distinctively regional dish at casual diners all over town. The secret ingredient of the uniquely meaty, mildly sweet recipe: cinnamon.

Make like the locals and order it on a chili dog, or as a “three-way” ladled over spaghetti and buried under a mountain of shredded cheese with oyster crackers on the side.

A Cincinnati fixture since 1931 (and a National historic Landmark), this hotel within the Carew Tower brims with painstakingly restored Art Deco eye candy such as rare brazilian rosewood paneling, original German sconces and two-story ceiling murals. The on-site orchids at Palm Court restaurant consistently earns accolades for its outstanding cuisine, but the intricate architectural details are so stunning, you may not even notice what’s on your plate.

JANUARY 2015

local gems

Enquirer/Glenn Hartong

TENNEssEE

PhoTo CoUrTEsY oF The

INDIANA

Various locations

PHOTO COURTESY OF teri Studios

Moerlein Lager House

The oldest continuously operating public market in ohio offers tasty opportunities to browse and sample artisan meats, cheeses, pastries, produce and treats from a colorful roster of vendors, including Dojo Gelato, velvet smoke bbQ & Catering and the new bean-to-bar Maverick Chocolate Co. open Tuesday through sunday year-round.

1801 Race St., 513.665.4839, findlaymarket.org PHOTO COURTESY OF Liz dufour

Queen City Underground Tours

These walking excursions give curious visitors an opportunity to check out the mysterious subterranean tunnels that run beneath over-therhine, which played a vital role in Cincinnati’s brewing history decades ago. A stop at the Christian Moerlein taproom ends the journey on an up note.

Tours start from 1332 Vine St., americanlegacytours.com PHOTO COURTESY OF Courtesy of CincinnatiUSA.com

The namesake eatery of Cincinnati’s founding father of beer, this gastropub sits pretty on the ohio river across the street from the Cincinnati reds’ Great American ball Park. hearty dishes like tender hops-smoked pork belly, a vegetarian squash wellington and spicy mussels pair perfectly with housemade brews like the seven hefeweizen Ale, Northern Liberties IPA and the original Golden helles.

115 Joe Nuxhall Way, 513.421.2337, moerleinlagerhouse.com PHOTO COURTESY OF Moerlein Lager House

Nada Chef Jeremy Lieb’s modern interpretations elevate traditional Mexican fare into sublime salsas, an ethereal ceviche mixto, tacos filled with barbacoa or crispy baja-style shrimp, and made-to-order churros served piping hot dusted with cinnamon and sugar. To drink, a scan of the menu reveals delights such as agave nectar Mojitos and pink grapefruit Margaritas.

600 Walnut St., 513.721.6232, eatdrinknada.com PHOTO COURTESY OF Boca restaurant Group

New Riff Distillery

bourbon production has crept north into metro Cincinnati, bringing handcrafted rye, gin, rum and single-malt whiskey along for the ride. New riff opened in spring 2014, and although the bourbon will need to age for a few more years before it’s ready to release, visitors can come by now for tours to see how kentucky’s native spirit takes shape, and to taste, tour and purchase the distillery’s other products.

24 Distillery Way, Newport, Kentucky, 859.261.7433, newriffdistilling.com

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Join Us For Valentine’s Day. Chi Mangia Bene Vive Bene!

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5442 Old Hwy 21• Imperial • 636.942.2405 • trattoria-giuseppe.com Inspired Local Food Culture

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21

whErE wE’rE Dining richmond heights, mo.

executive chef, café sebastienne at the kemper museum of contemporary art written by

Pete Dulin this month, executive chef Jennifer Maloney is rolling out her winter menu and gearing up for Kansas City restaurant week – which runs from Jan. 16 to 25 – at Café Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. this past november, Maloney prepared a magnificent spread for fellow chefs at Feast’s tastemakers roundtable conversation, which was held at the museum.

What dishes did you serve at the Tastemakers roundtable? i served local sorghum-brined heritage pork loin with a pear, golden raisin, whole grain mustard and ginger compote. i grilled [the pork] so it was still a bit pink but nice and crispy on the outside. we also had Turn to p. shaved Crum’s [Heirlooms’] brussels to see chef Maloney’s sprout salad with kale, onions, cranberries dishes served at and almonds with a light sherry vinaigrette the Tastemakers and poblano-roasted turnips, potatoes and butternut roundtable. squash featuring Crum’s vegetables. roasted spaghetti squash came with spicy greens, blistered cherry tomatoes and chile flakes. we had spiced toll House cookies to finish. Why did you choose these dishes to serve to your peers? i wanted to highlight our local foods and also how i can layer different flavors and cooking styles. i like to build different flavor profiles from sweet, salty, spicy and acidic. the menu reflected my style of cooking. How long have you been the executive chef at Café Sebastienne? nineteen years! i know people might think i’m crazy, but i’m proud of what i have created along with my awesome staff, who continue to inspire me. we all work toward a beautiful, tasteful experience every time we have a service. What inspires your menu each season after nearly two decades? My farmers and cooks keep me inspired. we have a collaborative kitchen, and we all take part in how we decide what goes on the menu. Our sous chef, Janet ross, has been with me for 10 years and is responsible for our outstanding brunch. Our guests also inspire me. we have favorite dishes they expect to see seasonally. i might come up with the menu, but i ask for everyone’s input to achieve the final result. we cook with as much as we can locally. What cooking techniques are featured on your winter menu? My favorite cooking techniques are braising, frying and roasting meats, vegetables and greens. braised pork shank with root beer and ginger, braised mustard greens and local stone-ground Cheddar grits. Delicious. What menu changes do you have planned this season? On my winter menu i will have braised meat dishes and heavier pastas. i like to do a lot of variations of fish and beans. Sounds funny but tastes great – root vegetable tagine with maybe a grilled piece of Gulf grouper, or grilled swordfish with local grits and urgers’ [Smokehouse] bacon. What is your burgers’ favorite comfort food for winter?

My favorite food to eat during the holidays is caramel and Cheddar popcorn. i love it, and i buy a big opsy’s Popcorn every can from topsy’s year. Seriously. i also love braised meats and puréed rutabagas. photography by Alistair

Tutton

76

Café Sebastienne at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd., North Plaza, Kansas City, 816.561.7740, kemperart.org/cafe

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photography by Emily

jennifer maloney

Suzanne McDonald

OnE On OnE kansas city

riverbend restaurant & bar written by

Bethany Christo

Loyal fans of St. Louis’ riverbend restaurant & bar followed their beloved Cajun and Creole hangout from its established location in Soulard to its new home in richmond heights, which opened in october.

Despite the change of address, classic dishes make the relocation feel more than familiar. along with on-site parking and more space to spread your elbows, an expanded menu features fresh seafood, pasta dishes and red beans and rice on a daily basis, plus a kids menu and vegetarian options. new items on offer include fried seafood plates, po’boy sandwiches and the brown Cajun Jambalaya, a dark roux with spicy chicken and sausage mixed with tender rice. plenty of smaller bites have also been added, including the crabmeat au gratin with creamy, cheesy crab, as well as the cochon and black-eyed-peas gumbo, which brings the rich texture of pork and beans with every bite. Menu mainstays like the world-famous seafood gumbo (only served on Fridays) and the Doc Sewall oysters, baked in breadcrumbs with cheese, were thankfully not lost in the move. a small selection of wine, draft beer and cocktails complement the spicy fare, while its signature desserts like the housemade Creole bread pudding provide a sweet last bite. on your way out the door, make sure to say hello to owner Sam Kogos, on the off chance he hasn’t already introduced himself to your table. riverbend restaurant & bar, 1059 S. big bend blvd., richmond Heights, Missouri, 314.664.8443, riverbendbar.com

MuST-Try DiSh

westwood, ks.

drunken noodles

written by

Jenny Vergara

Malisa Monyakula, owner of Lulu’s thai noodle Shop in Kansas City, has taken her favorite noodle bowl dishes from the flagship location in the Crossroads arts District across state lines with the opening of Lulu’s Asian bistro in westwood, Kansas. try the Drunken noodles, made with vegetables, thai basil, peanuts, lemongrass and egg, all wok-tossed with wide rice noodles.

Lulu’s Asian bistro, 2701 w w. 47th St., westwood, Kansas, 913.677.5858, lulusasianbistro.com photography by Aaron Lindberg

where we’re dInIng effingham, il.

WE

BS

TER

HOU

SE

ZÓCALO

firefly grill

written by

Liz Miller

Just off the Avenue of Mid-America exit of interstate 70 in effingham, illinois, beyond the hustle and bustle of roadside pit stops and fast-food joints, rural Midwestern character comes to life at Firefly Grill. Owners Kristie and niall Campbell opened Firefly in 2006 as a place to grow local food and community through the restaurant. in the past year, the gardens that surround the rustic-meetsmodern roadhouse expanded with the purchase of four more acres of land. what the Campbells can’t grow on-site, they carefully source from a handful of small-batch foragers, fishermen and farmers. Guests dining at Firefly have a front row seat to the natural beauty surrounding the restaurant – including a large lake filled with colorful fish – in the glass-lined dining room and four-season patio. On the seasonally informed lunch, brunch and dinner menus, executive chef niall balances the flavors of fresh produce with hearty proteins in shareable plates such as steamed buns with braised berkshire pork belly, Hoisin-barbecue sauce, sweet chile sauce and carrot-coriander salad and in entrées like brown butter-sage roasted Alaskan halibut with porcini-truffle ravioli, cauliflower foam, trumpet mushrooms, nasturtiums, fennel and chive oil. Flatbreads come straight from the restaurant’s wood-burning oven with piping hot crunchy crusts topped with freshly grown tomatoes, basil, oregano and more, each ingredient a direct connection to the illinois countryside.

More than 130 of the region’s top restaurants have come together for Kansas City’s premier dining event. Enjoy 10 days of multi-course menus at an extraordinary value. Visit KCRestaurantWeek.com for menus, reservations and a free app for your phone.

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Firefly Grill, 1810 Avenue of Mid-America, Effingham, Illinois, 217.342.2002, ffgrill.com

Inspired Local Food Culture

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23

Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale. An intriguingly delicious brew thatÂ’s always a welcome sight.

boulevard.com

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J a n ua ry 2 0 1 5

where we’re drinking

sip on a selection of sake on p. 30

where we’re drinking kansas city

andré’s confiserie suisse wRiTTen by Jenny Vergara

PHOTOGRAPHy by Landon Vonderschmidt

For almost 60 years, spanning three generations of family owners, André’s Confiserie Suisse has been the place where Kansas Citians shop for delectable european desserts and Swiss chocolates. During lunch service Tuesday through Saturday, a line still forms for André’s Tea Room, located in the back of the building’s retail space, which serves old-world entrées. but René bollier, the president of the company and André’s grandson, spent the better part of 2014 remodeling and reimagining the iconic Main Street location, adding a wraparound bar to create a new space he calls The Café that opened mid-October. The plans for this new coffee shop and wine bar were developed more than a decade ago but were shelved when the recession hit. now, the future looks bright – bollier anticipates the remodeled café will serve longtime customers as well as new diners from 51 Main, the luxury apartment complex opening next door in February. The bright and modern space now has a full-time barista pulling shots of espresso made with beans from local favorite The Roasterie and preparing cappuccinos, lattes, café au laits and mochas (made with the shop’s housemade chocolate) to enjoy at the café or to go. The friendly servers are happy to show you the beer and wine lists, filled with reasonably priced european and American selections available by the glass or by the bottle. if you are in the mood for dessert, swing by the café’s famous case for a pastry and a glass of something sparkling to pair it with.

The hours of operation have changed, too: the café is open Monday through Thursday from 7am to 7pm and Friday and Saturday from 7am to 9pm.

André’s Confiserie Suisse, 5018 Main St., South Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.561.3440, andreschocolates.com

must-try drink

st. louis

harvard club pick-me-up

wRiTTen by

Liz miller

After poring over cocktail books printed in the late 19th century and early 20th century, John Fausz, bar manager at Elaia and Olio in St. Louis’ botanical Heights, drafted his winter bar menu. The focus is reviver cocktails, also known as morning-after drinks, which are usually very strong and complement the season’s frigid temperatures. in one of the books, Fausz came across a drink called the Harvard Club Pick-Me-Up. named for a private club founded in new york City in 1865 that catered to Harvard University alumni and professors, the drink was a popular reviver served at the club. Fausz put his own spin on the original recipe, which calls for equal parts rye whiskey, sweet vermouth, absinthe and lemon phosphate, by preparing it in the style of the Ligurian Sea, another cocktail that calls for absinthe. The Ligurian Sea is made by floating absinthe on top of other ingredients to change the drink from the first to last sip, which Fausz says added complexity to the Harvard Club Pick-Me-Up: “The flavors work much better [in this style] – you get to the anise and then gradually into the sweeter vermouth and rye whiskey notes. Phosphate was mostly used in soda fountains in that time period. Just as salt is used in a dish, acid is used in drinks to bring out the primary flavors. [The lemon phosphate] makes each of the ingredients pop on their own and together, and then with the absinthe floating on top, it changes, evolves, as you drink the cocktail.”

Elaia and Olio, 1634 Tower Grove Ave., Botanical Heights, St. Louis, Missouri, 314.932.1088, elaiastl.com PHOTOGRAPHy by Cheryl waller

Puerto Vallarta and Riviera Nayarit on Mexico’s Pacific coast are among the country’s most beautiful and scenic resorts, where the beauty of the mountains frames the magnificent coastline. Culture and history are rich and alive in the towns and markets. Stroll along the charming seaside Malecón in downtown Puerto Vallarta. You’ll be tempted by a variety of fabulous eateries, and local vendors offering authentic Mexican snacks such as esquites (creamy corn cups with various toppings).

Across the country on the Yucatan peninsula, home of the Mayans, travelers will enjoy a style of food all of its own. The dining options in Cancun, Riviera Maya and Cozumel are endless. The culinary delights of a typical Yucatecan kitchen come from a mouth-watering mixture of European and Mexican flavors, in addition to char-grilled meats and a variety of sauces.

Ceviche is a tropical Mexican specialty featuring fish or seafood such as shrimp, octopus or shellfish, with finely chopped onion, cilantro and tomato. All the ingredients are bathed in fresh lemon juice, resulting in an incomparable explosion of flavors.

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Inspired Local Food Culture

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27

the mix

fox river

Story and recipe by Matt Seiter photography by Jonathan Gayman

i’ve been chasing the Fox river for years. i first found the recipe for the classic cocktail in the 1927 reprint of Barflies and Cocktails while doing research for the cocktail club menu at Sanctuaria in St. Louis. i searched a few more vintage books and found the same recipe, with the only difference being the whiskeys used – bourbon versus canadian whiskey. two years ago, i wrote about the Fox river in this very column, and this month i’m revisiting it after learning new information about its origins.

for capone. the Fox river and U.S. highway 14 were used for transportation and allowed for connections to the city, which made the location appealing. being a distributor of liquor gave cernocky access to various products, most likely including canadian whiskey, peach bitters and crème de cacao. cernocky’s mob connections would have made his establishments popular among anyone visiting the chicago area, and if there were a common cocktail – say the Fox river – word of the drink might have spread across state lines.

before i speculated the cocktail originated in a small town west of chicago called Valley View, illinois, which is situated on the Fox river. a nearby restaurant called al capone’s hideaway & Steakhouse unfortunately closed its doors in 2012. before it donned Mr. capone’s name, the space was home to a bar and restaurant “getaway” or “hideaway” for crime kingpins from the neighboring big city. in the early 20th century, co-owner gladys reitmayer stated that she used to make her own beer behind a chicken coop out back and siphon it into the bar via copper pipes. because the bar was frequented by criminals and gangsters and was located on the banks of the river bearing the cocktail’s name, it made sense to start my search for the drink’s origin here. in the past year, however, a new narrative has emerged.

there are two last pieces of information that can potentially uncover the origins of the libation. First, the preparation method: it’s a very simple drink to prepare – so simple, it seems realistic that it was created in a speakeasy environment. the second piece of information lies in the earliest two recipes i’ve found for the cocktail. these recipes were found in books that were published three years apart in europe, written about two specific european bars that americans flocked to during prohibition. in the 1927 parisian Barflies and Cocktails, the recipe calls for bourbon. this cocktail book was a collection of recipes from the bar’s patrons and the esteemed international bar Fly members – people who sat at bars in paris and told stories of recipes from afar, that the staff then wrote down. So, let’s say a traveler from chicago went to paris and sat at harry’s new york bar. he or she tells the story of a drink he or she liked at a bar back home, a drink called the Fox river. then, the bar staff writes it down, and it makes its way into the book.

roughly 20 miles north of Valley View sits a town called Fox river grove, also situated on the Fox river. this town has a richer, betterdocumented history, one that makes more sense as the birthplace of the Fox river cocktail. More documented gangster activity actually occurred in Fox river grove by way of speakeasies and distribution points. research eventually led me to an individual named Louis cernocky, a czech immigrant who moved his family to Fox river grove in 1919. three years later, he built a restaurant and later opened a luxurious establishment called the crystal ballroom. cernocky, like many other entertainment venue owners, did not obey the laws of prohibition. he quickly became acquainted with the “social influencers” of chicago and is said to have become a liquor distributor

in the 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book, the recipe calls for canadian whiskey. the Savoy book mentions canadian whiskey often because they could legally purchase it in London at the time. they might have gotten a few bootleg bottles of bourbon from the States, but not much. the same is true for U.S. citizens – canadian whiskey was more readily available via bootlegging during prohibition because bourbon couldn’t be legally made. the same chap who visited harry’s earlier and told the bar staff about the Fox river recipe is now at the Savoy’s bar in London. the story of the cocktail is repeated, but the bartender uses canadian whiskey instead of bourbon.

Matt Seiter is co-founder of the United States Bartenders’ Guild’s St. Louis chapter, a member of the national board for the USBG’s MA program, author of The Dive Bar of Cocktails Bars, bartender at BC’s Kitchen and a bar and restaurant consultant.

Fox River The sugar cube will dissolve as you sip the drink. It is strong at first, but once the ice and sugar melts, it weakens and additional flavors are exposed.

Serves | 1 | 1 sugar cube 5 dashes peach bitters ice 2 tsp crème de cacao 2 oz whiskey 1 lemon peel

| Preparation | Saturate sugar cube in peach bitters by placing the cube into a rocks glass and pouring enough peach bitters over cube to saturate. place 1 large ice cube (or a few smaller ice cubes) in the glass. pour crème de cacao into the glass, then add whiskey. Squeeze a lemon peel over the top and stir slightly (3 to 4 swirls of the wrist – no bar utensils needed). Serve.

Crème de Cacao 101 either white (clear) or dark (brown), crème de cacao is one of the original chocolate liqueurs. the term crème does not refer to any inclusion of dairy products; instead, it refers to the silky texture of the liquid. according to The Ultimate Guide to Spirits and Cocktails, brown (or dark) crème de cacao is commonly used as an apéritif or digestif, while the white version is used primarily in cocktail mixing. if you look at a variety of classic cocktails, this reigns true with a few exceptions. however, when you start looking at more recently developed cocktails and shooters, you’ll see dark cacao in more recipes. brown crème de cacao has more of a bitter, dark chocolate flavor to it, with hints of citrus peel and vanilla, while white crème de cacao is softer in chocolate flavor, with more of a milk chocolate tone and hints of vanilla. it is sweet, and depending on the brand, can be overly cloying. i highly recommend Marie brizard or bols for their less syrupy notes.

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Inspired Local Food Culture

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wHere we’re drinKinG st. louis

on tHe sHelf

longmont, co.

BEER

Oskar Blues Brewery’s G’kniGht written by Michael sweeney

Style: imperial red iPA (8.7% abv) PairingS: rotisserie chicken ∙ Sharp Cheddar

Printed on the outside of each can of Oskar Blues Brewery’s G’Knight is a description of the beer proclaiming that it’s big, red and sticky – and that’s no lie. this beer is seriously decadent and dangerously drinkable, even at 8.7 percent AbV. this is a viscous red iPA with a seriously hearty maltiness that coats your mouth with delicious hoppy goodness. the balanced bitterness and carbonation help to keep the beer from being syrupy.

Oskar Blues Brewery, 303.776.1914, oskarblues.com

PHOtOGrAPHy by Jonathan Gayman

The creator of stlhops.com and founder of St. Louis Craft Beer Week, Michael Sweeney is also the craft beer manager at Lohr Distributing.

one on one

kansas city

doug frost

american master of wine/master sommelier written By Pete Dulin

sake at baiku sushi lounge written by Kyle Harsha

is it possible for a hotel restaurant and bar to be a comfortable, swanky and even sexy place to get a drink? that is just one of the questions brad beracha has successfully answered in the affirmative with the opening of his BaiKu Sushi Lounge in the lobby of the Hotel ignacio in Midtown. baiKu is a place where you can get a glass of handcrafted sake, a local beer or an excellent glass of wine in an environment that is aptly described by the aforementioned adjectives. in other words, it is far from the sushi joints serving all-youcan-eat rolls and sake bombs to coeds in other parts of town. the first thing fans of boutique sake will notice is the quality of the selection. beracha and business partner Steve Smith (of triumph Grill and Dooley’s beef n brew House fame) enlisted the help of Monica Samuels, the first graduate of the Master of Sake program in the U.S., to offer a sake list way beyond the options of “chilled” or “warmed” found in so many sushi restaurants. with names like wandering Poet, tears of Dawn and bride of the Fox, the list is accessible to those who seek great sake with personality.

BaiKu Sushi Lounge, 3407 Olive St., Midtown, St. Louis, Missouri, 314.896.2500, baikustl.com

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What current projects are you working on? i’m writing for LePan, a new magazine based in Hong Kong, Shanghai, that will also publish in London and new york starting June 2015. it tells you something about the state of the world economy that my most important writing assignments are coming from China. What’s your assessment of the wine industry in the Midwest? ? Continued growth and continued improvement. the Midwest winemaking community is getting smarter about which grapes they should grow, where and how they should grow them, and how to properly handle them in the winery.

What regional wines do you recommend for winter, and for year-round?

Many of my favorite grapes – Vignoles, Vidal Blanc, Valvin Muscat and traminette – are ideal for warm weather, at least when it comes to their crisper iterations. each can produce lovely

sweet wines as well. those are always fun at the end of a meal, regardless of the time of year. Chambourcin works year-round as far as i’m concerned. And norton is almost the quintessential American wine for a cold night.

Where do you see the regional wine industry three to five years from now? regional wineries are challenged to create their own communities and to provide themselves with a customer base by interacting with those customers and giving them a sense of connection. the California wine industry is being told the same thing. Smaller, regional wineries have an opportunity to connect in ways that bigger wineries cannot. Are there specific grape varietals or wines that you foresee making a big splash among consumers in 2015? Valvin Muscat and traminette ought to be able to compete with the Moscato flood that’s out there. it’s only the lack of imagination among restaurateurs and retailers that prevent those two grapes from doing so. Thoughts on new craft distilleries in the region? it seems obvious that the craft spirits industry will act as the craft beer business did a few years ago – it will be overbuilt and a shakeout will have to occur. there seems to be no letup in sight. As with everything, some of these are good and others not so good. Gin is really hard to make well.

Most new distilleries trying to make it aren’t doing a good job. everyone is rushing to join the whiskey boom by aging their spirits in small barrels (for quicker development). that generally creates a bitter, out-of-balance spirit.

So there’s a lot of improvement that is needed. those who have dug in for the long haul are going to be just fine, though.

Visit feastmagazine.com to read Pete Dulin’s extended interview with Doug Frost.

PHOtOGrAPHy by Aaron lindberg

the beer list is a good mix of micro and macrobrews, with local favorites from Urban Chestnut brewing Co. and Civil Life brewing Co., and includes a rarity in Kirin ichiban available on draft. the wine list shows the same selective care as the sake, with a majority of the choices being domestic, but with just enough foreign options to add some spice. Speaking of spice, the talented kitchen makes sushi, noodles and Pacific rim-inspired delicacies that are just as comfortable, swanky, and even sexy, as what’s served behind the bar.

Doug Frost, the Kansas City-based wine consultant, lecturer and author of three books on wine, is one of four people in the world to simultaneously hold the Master of wine and Master Sommelier titles. He writes about wine and spirits for numerous publications and is co-founder of Beverage Alcohol resource, the preeminent education and examining body for the spirits and cocktail industry.

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on the Shelf kansas city

SPIRIT

J. RiegeR & Co.’s Kansas City WhisKey written by Matt Sorrell

Provenance: Kansas City, Missouri (46% abv) try it: in any classic whiskey cocktail that requires a big, bold base

American whiskeys are booming, and the folks at J. Rieger & Co. are looking to differentiate themselves from the crowd by resurrecting this venerable brand, which originally bowed in 1887. the whiskey itself is a blend of corn and rye whiskeys – each with a bit of malt – aged at least seven years, along with some 15-year-old Oloroso sherry from the famed williams & Humbert winery in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Sherry was a common addition to whiskeys in the days before Prohibition – most often used to help mask rougher spirits – but the new incarnation of rieger uses sherry to create an entirely new category: Kansas City whiskey.

J. Rieger & Co., 2700 Guinette Ave., East Bottoms, Kansas City, Missouri, jriegerco.com When he’s not writing, Matt Sorrell can be found slinging drinks at Planter’s House in St. Louis’ Lafayette Square or bartending at events around town with his wife, Beth, for their company, Cocktails Are Go.

where we’re drinking springfield, mo.

on the Shelf makanda, il.

WINE

Blue sKy VineyaRd CaBeRnet FRanC 2011 written by ryan Sciara

Provenance: Makanda, illinois Pairings: Pan-roasted veal chops with red wine and mushrooms

the Shawnee Hills wine trail, located just south of Carbondale, illinois, is one of the Midwest’s best-kept secrets. you’ll find popular regional varietals such as Chardonel, Chambourcin, norton and traminette, but also keep an eye out for the less common Cabernet Franc – especially at Blue Sky Vineyard in Makanda, illinois. touting black plum, black cherry and peppery spice, this mediumbodied bottling features everything i love about Cabernet Franc – luscious fruit, heartwarming spiciness, judicious use of oak, bright acidity and savory herb notes on the finish.

Blue Sky Vineyard, 3150 S. Rocky Comfort Road, Makanda, Illinois, 618.995.9463, blueskyvineyard.com Ryan Sciara has been in the wine business for more than half his life and has spent the past nine years dedicated to selling wine, spirits and craft beer in the retail market. His latest venture, Underdog Wine Co., is the culmination of 23 years of knowledge and experience all crammed into a 600-squarefoot retail shop in Kansas City.

the j.o.b. public house written by ettie Berneking

Amid the buzzing chaos of college kids clambering through the bar-lined streets of Downtown Springfield, Missouri, one small old-fashioned bar offers a quiet refuge. Located on the calmer end of walnut Street, The J.O.B. Public House has garnered a reputation for two things: serving up a delicious range of sliders affectionately dubbed “cubicles” (no doubt a nod to the bar’s name) and an impressive whiskey selection. Some 300 varieties of whiskey line the gleaming wooden back bar. On the bottom shelf, regulars dip into buffalo trace, which served as the bar’s house whiskey for many years and is still an affordable go-to pour with plenty of smooth caramel flavor. Or, if you’re feeling celebratory, splurge on a shot of Pappy Van winkle, which can cost $100-plus per pour for the 23-year Family reserve.

PHOtOGrAPHy by Jessica Spencer

Since opening J.O.b. four years ago and revamping the tiny brick building, owner Danny Schlink has added a few personal touches to the décor, like the massive buck that’s mounted on the side wall. On weekends, the small wooden tables fill quickly and plates of messy cubicles and unlimited french fries seasoned with brown sugar and sea salt crowd tabletops. Cubicles range from classic melt-y cheeseburgers to more creative twists involving pork tenderloin or thick slices of turkey drowned in mashed potatoes and gravy.

Selections on the cocktail menu change seasonally, but this winter, a few new creations include the bar’s hot toddy, boasting an earl Gray infusion; the Headless Horseman, infused with horchata; as well as the bar’s ever-popular J.O.b. Cocktail, which blends Scotch, organic apple cider and fresh lemon juice with a splash of Crème de Violette and mineral water.

The J.O.B. Public House, 319 E. Walnut St., Downtown, Springfield, Missouri, 417.831.1158

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Using this understanding of resonant frequencies, Dr. Deloney can determine precisely what the body needs to bring it into its optimal fat burning zone and keep it there. This is done by measuring the baseline of each factor being measured (hormone, neurotransmitter, heavy metal, bacteria, virus, organ, etc.), and then the doctor can determine what supplement or formula is needed by observing what the effect of that item is on the baseline (whether it makes it more coherent or less coherent).

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January Workshops: January 17 January 31

Inspired Local Food Culture

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ALSO COMING TO KANSAS CITY. DATES TBA. 34

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$123 $83 $53

level best

dip into this artistic dish on p. 40

columbia, mo.

SHop HErE

boone olive oil co.

artiSan prodUctS

wanted to create the atmosphere of an olive mill in the showroom while maintaining the building’s original character. the sage green walls are lined with shelves made from wood salvaged from a barn in boone county, Missouri. Artwork displayed on shop walls was purchased from local artists. As with wine, Mohammad says that choosing olive oil is a personal process. Different oils have distinct flavors that are influenced by the region where the olives are grown, as well as by the individual aging process. the shop rotates the selection of oils sold based on freshness: Olives must be crushed within four hours after picking, according to Mohammad, and a bottle of fresh olive oil should be consumed within

kansas city

uncommon stock Stock

written by Jenny

Vergara

PHOtOGrAPHy cOurtesy Of Uncommon

Get on the Uncommon Stock email list, and co-owners Todd Schulte and Bill Haw will send you a list of tantalizing madefrom-scratch soups in flavors like Senegalese peanut with shredded cabbage, creamy curried cauliflower and dahl with cilantro and almond, available each week in Kansas City.

Pre-order soups by calling the shop and then simply swing by to pick them up on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 4pm, or Sundays from 10am to 2pm.

Uncommon Stock, 1000 W. 25th St., Greater Downtown, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.510.7790, uncommon-stock.com

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caitlyn Gallip one year of the crush date. the shop showcases oils from italy, spain, Portugal and california in the northern Hemisphere, and chile, Argentina, Australia and Peru in the southern Hemisphere. in addition to a variety of organic olive oils, boone Olive Oil co. also sells infused and fused olive oils (fused are made when a fruit or vegetable is crushed directly with the olives), balsamic vinegars and spices. to complement its retail offerings, the shop also offers olive oil education courses and hands-on cooking demonstrations.

Boone Olive Oil Co., 20 S. Ninth St., Columbia, Missouri, 573.234.6829, booneoliveoil.com

PHOtOGrAPHy by aaron ottis

the mission behind Boone Olive Oil Co. in columbia, Missouri, is simple: the fresher the olives, the fresher the olive oil. Located Downtown, the locally owned business specializes in natural premium oils from across the globe. After traveling to mills in california and researching olive oil production in 2013 and 2014, co-owner Murad Mohammad decided to open the business with three of his brothers. “i wanted to capture what i think columbia is about,” Mohammad says. “columbia is about exploration. it is about sustainability, and it is about using the natural resources around us.” the shop is located inside of a registered historic building, with few changes made to the space. Mohammad

written by

“EvEry projEct can takE unExpEctEd turns and should bE EmbracEd.”

on trend kansas city

five questions with john anderson of utilitarian workshop written by

Matt Duchesne

When John Anderson and Nicole Williams began dating in 2010, they quickly realized their personal and creative compatibility, which ultimately led to the formation of the Kansas City-based design studio Utilitarian Workshop. Since then, the business has worked with corporate and retail clients across the city to create highly customized, handmade, modern furniture and creatively designed spaces for restaurants, bars, bakeries and more. We caught up with Anderson to hear more on the studio’s background, what projects they’re currently working on and what’s in store for 2015.

1

What was Utilitarian Workshop’s initial vision, and how has it evolved over time? Originally, Utilitarian workshop was my personal creative outlet. it has evolved into a larger vision that utilizes many different mediums to create overall experiences. the first project nicole and i did together was Port Fonda [restaurant in Kansas City]. i think that project was and is a great example of the culmination of our two worlds as creatives, she as a graphic designer and myself as a designer and fabricator.

2

In 2012, you used Kickstarter to fund a locally driven consignment shop in Kansas City. How did that relate to your brand, and what was the goal? the retail shop, for us, was always intended as an idea that would exist in a limited duration, like a pop-up event. it operated from July 2013 to July 2014 in westside. we set out to curate a venue that was an extension of our brand while providing a platform for other designers to explore their own work. it was a fantastic way for us to communicate with the creative scene and the public.

How do you collaborate with clients? Generally, we begin our design process with casual consultations in order to get a feel for the client. in most cases, clients are familiar with our work and have a starting point for reference. we encourage an interactive inspiration process, like a mutual Pinterest board. A project can take an aesthetic shift when collaborating on a mood board. Directions can also shift when collaborating with other trade professionals and artisans. every project can take unexpected turns and should be embraced.

PHOtOGrAPHy by Charlie Burt for Sprudge.com

PHOtOGrAPHy by Kaley Cornett

In what ways is Utilitarian Workshop promoting sustainability, one of your core values, through design?

Sustainability is a broad ideal and has somewhat limitless applications. we focus on reclaimed materials whenever possible when creating spaces. this can pertain to reclaimed wood, repurposed furniture or décor elements. we place a good deal of emphasis on context and love to play with the meaning of “expensive” whenever possible. we are big fans of garage sales, junk shops and thrift stores.

What is next for Utilitarian Workshop? Having recently completed projects for thou Mayest Coffee roasters and Second best Coffee [in Kansas City], we are excited about our current project, Heirloom bakery & Hearth. it will be located in brookside, at the corner of 63rd Street and Oak Street, in a former dilapidated gas station. they will be opening their shop very soon, in early 2015.

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SHOP HERE

gEt tHiS gAdgEt

kansas city

springfield , mo.

PHOtOGrAPHy by Brad Austin

calaisio flatware holder “This piece can be used as a wine bottle holder or as a flatware divider. The woven material adds a natural touch to any buffet or table setting without overwhelming the overall effect.” –Alice Habel, manager, Provence Bridal

ambrosi brothers cutlery co.

Provence Bridal, 2659 E. Normandy #104, Springfield, Missouri, 417.887.1930, provencebridal.com

written by Jenny Vergara

the Ambrosi brothers of Ambrosi Brothers Cutlery Co. have been sharpening the knives of restaurant chefs and home cooks for more than 50 years in Kansas City. expertise is what you can expect from this family-owned-and-operated business, which opened in 1959. back then, the brothers would pull up to your place of business in a truck and sharpen your knives and blades on the spot. As of 2015, the commercial side of the sharpening business is still done very much the same way. you can spot the Ambrosi truck parked in front of many locally owned restaurants long before their doors open for business.

PHOtOGrAPHy COurteSy OF Calaisio

For home cooks, you’ll want to bring your knives, scissors, mower blades, slicer blades, letter openers and more to the shop for the same sharpening service, Monday through thursday from 8am to 5pm. the shop can sharpen a batch of kitchen knives within the same day you drop them off with a twohour minimum wait, and the cost is $4 a knife (prices will vary for other items sharpened). if you need them back in a hurry, simply pay an additional $1 per knife and they’ll be ready in less than two hours. in addition to its sharpening services, the shop also stocks a wide selection of brand name, highquality culinary knives. Pick up an Ambrosi knife bag for easy transport, or shop its wide selection of culinary tools for the home chef, including oyster knives, lime juicers, fish tweezers, cheese graters and much more.

Ambrosi Brothers Cutlery Co., 3023 Main St., Midtown, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.756.3030, abcutlery.net

SHOP HERE maplewood, mo.

bolyard’s meat & provisions written by Bethany Christo

Halfway through his time as a chef at St. Louis’ Sidney Street Cafe, Chris bolyard realized the city was in need of a butcher shop – one that sells humanely raised meat and provides customers with knowledge about how to cook it at home. Combine that with his 15 years as a chef and a passion for butchery and sausage-making, and Bolyard’s Meat & Provisions was born. the shop opened in Maplewood, Missouri, in november, selling fresh cuts of pasture-raised beef, pork and chicken sourced from Missouri farms that raise animals in stress-free environments. bolyard even visits each farm’s processing plant to make sure animals are safe and comfortable before slaughter. “Animals give their lives to feed us,” he says. “we should respect that by giving them the best quality of life possible.”

Waller

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Make sure to try the made-from-scratch sausages and hot dogs – bolyard considers these a favorite. the shop also sells housemade brines, steak sauce, preserved lemons and more, which complement its large retail selection of locally made products such as smoker wood chips from Chigger Creek wood Products in Columbia, Missouri, wooden spoons and cutting boards by yellow tree Farm’s Justin Leszcz, and soap and balms made by Maplewood’s Maven boutique using bolyard’s beef tallow and pork lard. the layout of the 1,600-square-foot shop – once home to the black Cat theatre – is also meat-centric: walk past the retail area in front and watch meat being butchered in the cutting room before it’s set behind the counter, ready to be purchased.

PHOtOGrAPHy by Cheryl

Bolyard’s Meat & Provisions, 2810 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood, Missouri, 314.647.2567, www.bolyardsmeat.com

| 1 | the housemade andouille sausage is a recipe bolyard perfected while at Sidney Street Cafe. its chef-owner Kevin nashan now serves it in seafood boils at Peacemaker Lobster and Crab Co. 38

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JANUARY 2015

| 2 | “i’m pretty proud of my Worcestershire sauce,” bolyard says. the sauce, along with a dozen or so housemade accoutrements, are meant to enhance and elevate the meat purchased at bolyard’s.

| 3 | bolyard’s sends its rendered beef tallow and pork lard to neighborhood boutique Maven, where the fats are combined with essential oils to create custom soaps, lip balms and hand creams.

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Penne Ala Salute 1 28 oz. can peeled Italian style pear tomatoes 3 cloves garlic 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon black pepper

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup grated Asiago cheese or Romano cheese ¼ cup fresh basil 4 cups cooked penne pasta cooked 2 cups broccoli florets al dente (1/2 lb. uncooked pasta) ½ cup sliced sun-dried tomatoes 1 cup sliced mushrooms

In a food processor, mince garlic, olive oil and salt & pepper together for one minute. Cut Italian style tomatoes into small pieces (about 1" cubes), reserve some liquid. In a bowl combine garlic & olive oil mixture with cut tomatoes, add chopped fresh basil. Set aside.

Place pasta, broccoli, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes in a one-gallon pot of rapidly boiling salt water. When water boils again, drain. Toss pasta together with sauce mixture in a large bowl. Serve immediately. Sprinkle pasta with grated Asiago cheese, fresh basil and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Makes 4 servings.

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Inspired Local Food Culture

J A N UA RY 2 0 1 5

39

cuLinary Libr ary

artisan Products

kansas city

KC Ale TrAil

by Pete Dulin kcaletrail.com written by Liz Miller

written by Liz

In Stockton, Missouri, the Hammons family has been harvesting and processing black walnuts – Missouri’s state nut – for almost 70 years. The company sells a range of black walnut products, including sweets like black walnut fudge, trail mixes and candies. Hammons Products Co.’s most recent innovation is Black Walnut Oil, which won a Good Food Award in 2014. Bolder, slightly nuttier and more assertive than olive oil, its earthy flavor not only enhances rich cuts of pork or beef, but can also be used raw with some balsamic vinegar for a vinaigrette dressing with kick.

Hammons Products Co., 105 Hammons Drive, Stockton, Missouri, 1.888.429.6887, black-walnuts.com

Dulin says he was partially inspired to research and write the book in honor of two Midwest brewery milestones – in 2014, both boulevard brewing Co. in Kansas City and Free State brewing Co. in Lawrence, Kansas, celebrated their 25th anniversaries. in addition to profiling the arcs of these two prolific production breweries, Dulin sought out brewers from eastern Kansas (like tallgrass brewing Co.) to Springfield, Missouri (where Mother’s brewing Co. and Springfield brewing Co. are thriving). thoroughly researched profiles of each brewery are accompanied by past and present photos, as well as tasting notes for each brewery’s signature beers. in addition to behind-the-scenes looks at more than 20 breweries, Dulin interviews a handful of Kansas City chefs and business owners, including Celina tio of Collection and the belfry and Julian, and Josh eans of Happy Gillis Café & Hangout. Just as brewers share the inspiration behind their beers, the chefs share how they work with beer in their cooking and how they approach beer pairings. At the end of the book, a map outlines the titular ale trail, giving readers the opportunity to sit in the driver’s seat and go on a trip of their very own.

get tHis gadget

ladue, mo.

cloud dipping dish “Our ever-popular cloud dipping dish was designed by St. Louis-based sculptor Mary Judge, who is quite well-known internationally for her work. She has a home in Italy, and designed this dish after the terraced olive groves in the Umbria region. As you dip crudités or bread, the gradations change based on the depth of oil in the dish.” – Marianne Prey, owner, Extra Virgin, An Olive Ovation Extra Virgin, An Olive Ovation, 8829 Ladue Road, Ladue, Missouri, 314.727.6464, extravirginoo.com

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Miller

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Products co.

in 2012, his first book, Last Bite: 100 Simple Recipes from Kansas City’s Best Chefs and Cooks, shared a collection of 40 recipes developed by some of the city’s most notable and influential chefs.

Last month, Dulin released his second book, this one an exploration of craft beer in and around the Kansas City area called KC Ale Trail.

black walnut oil PHOtOGrAPHy COurteSy OF Hammons

Kansas City-based writer Pete Dulin has eaten and sipped his way through many a restaurant, usually in pursuit of a story (turn to p. 16, 30 and 62 for just a few examples in this issue).

stockton, mo.

dIne on desIGn springfield, mo.

photography by

Christina Fugitt-Griffiths

farmers gastropub

written by Bethany Christo

it’s been just over a year since chef-owner bill griffiths and his wife and co-owner, Christina Fugittgriffiths, opened the new location of Farmers Gastropub in Springfield, Missouri, but you would think the authentic british pub dates back much further – which was exactly their intention when designing the space with interior designer Jeanne waters-hill. while the six-person kitchen creates made-fromscratch, farm-to-table british staples, the pub’s cozy dining room features warm reclaimed wood accents, low lighting and a working fireplace. the experience is meant to transport you to another part of the world – the one where griffiths grew up, in Lancashire, england, before moving to his wife’s hometown of Springfield in 2004. griffiths’ british upbringing and welsh heritage can be seen lining the walls, with squares of tartan, coats of arms and photos of english landmarks and folklore. “people can really sense the story and history when they walk in here,” he says. snug. “i love to tell those sitting in the custombuilt snug its history – no british pub is without one. the landed gentry in the U.K. would stay at inns while everyone else had to walk, which led to people warming themselves at the neighboring public house with british mead, ale and cider. the gentry only had French wine and brandy at their inns, so they wanted to taste the pub offerings without having to deal with the ‘riff-raff.’ the enclosed booth was somewhere ‘snug’ they could drink in private. Later in history, ladies would dine in the snug to avoid tobacco smoke.” –Bill Griffiths

welsh history. “Family history is important. people get caught up in buying commercial products when decorating, but it’s so much more fun if your décor has a story to tell – maybe you reupholstered grandma’s favorite chair or just simply incorporate heirlooms and photos. it’s fantastic when a restaurant has such a strong history to pull from. the cozy warmth and bill’s story were my inspirations when designing the new location.” –Jeanne Waters-Hill, interior designer, Touche Design Group

reclaimed wood. “the casement around the doors and wainscoting all use reclaimed wood – there’s even a recycled barn door that sections off part of the dining room. all the wood came from an abandoned textile mill in China grove, north Carolina, built in 1875, and it feels like it when you walk in. reclaimed wood is a perfect way to give a [restaurant or] home history, warmth, charm and character.”

–Jason Hill, partner, Cross Creek Architectural Artifacts

MARYVILLE INVESTS IN YOUR SUCCESS. Reaching new heights in higher education.

Maryville University continues to set new standards of excellence.

Recognized by U.S. News & World Report as the nation’s No. 1 Overperfoming University two years in a row, Maryville is clearly a leader in higher education.

As part of Maryville’s success, we consistently strive to build an entrepreneurial culture throughout our undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Our students and graduates know firsthand the rewards of our No. 1 mission to help them become successful in the classroom and in their chosen careers.

Maryville’s excellence is nationally recognized.

• 67 percent enrollment growth in five years—above all other

colleges in the state Missouri Department of Higher Education • One of three nationally ranked universities in St. Louis

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Educate to Career For more information Call: 314-529-9300 Visit: Maryville.edu

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Farmers Gastropub, 2620 S. Glenstone Ave., Springfield, Missouri, 417.864.6994, farmersgastropub.com Inspired Local Food Culture

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mystery shopper

brighten up winter with opo squash fritters on p. 46

seed to table

Sprouting 101

written by Crystal Stevens PhotograPhy by Jennifer Silverberg

Midwest winters can be downright brutal. between snowstorms and temperatures resting in the single digits for days on end, fresh homegrown produce is hard to come by and even harder to grow. one solution is to plant fresh sprouts that can grow year-round from the comfort of home. Sprouts are said to be almost 10 times more nutritious than some of the healthiest vegetables. Sprouting is also incredibly easy – it can be done in Mason jars and typically just takes a few days from seed to harvest. Sprouts are rich in phytonutrients, vitamins and minerals, and they are also an excellent source of protein.

and earthy flavor, and are an excellent source of protein, calcium, iron and vitamins a and C.

Sprouting 101

there are many ways to go about sprouting; i have found Mason jar sprouting to be both easy and successful. i like to sprout a few different varieties at once for diversity of flavor, color, texture and nutrients. bulk sprouting seeds can be purchased online through Johnny’s Selected Seeds or found in the bulk-bin section of most health food stores.

Yields | 1 jar sprouts |

this winter, my sprouting lineup includes garbanzo beans, lentils, fenugreek, adzuki beans and mung beans. each of these seeds and beans have their own distinctive flavors, nutritional profiles and mineral compositions. i like to experiment and then stick to the ones i enjoy the most, which include fenugreek and lentils. Fenugreek sprouts have superb nutritional healing qualities, not to mention they have a tangy and slightly bitter root-like flavor. Lentils have more of a nutty, sweet

Sprouting is also a fun and easy edible science experiment for kids of all ages. Children get excited about food they have a hand in growing, and our whole family enjoys snacking on raw sprouts. they can be tossed in various spices, such as smoked paprika and garlic, and eaten as snacks, incorporated into meals or used to garnish soups and salads. add slices of your favorite vegetables with a little vinaigrette, salt and freshly ground black pepper for a nutritious homegrown winter salad.

Crystal Stevens is a farmer at La Vista CSA Farm on the bluffs of the Mississippi River in Godfrey, Illinois, where she farms with her husband, Eric.

They have two children. Crystal is an advocate of integrating creativity into sustainability through writing, art, photojournalism and seed-to-table cooking. Find more of her work at growingcreatinginspiring.blogspot.com, which she created to launch her forthcoming book, grow Create inspire.

Use one Mason jar for each variety of sprouts.

1 quart-size Mason jar ½ cup beans or 3 tbsp seeds purified water (amount varies depending on size of jar) fine cheesecloth (enough to cover Mason jar lid) 1 rubber band

| Preparation | in a widemouthed, quartsize mason jar, add beans or seeds. Fill jar about ¾ full with water. Cover jar with a square of fine cheesecloth fastened with a rubber band. Soak overnight. in the morning, turn jar upside down to drain water through cheesecloth. rinse and drain twice after initial soaking.

Store jar in a sunny window. rinse and drain seeds once or twice a day until they begin to sprout, typically within a few days. once sprouted, they are ready to eat. always rinse sprouts well before eating. the bean and seed sprouts will continue to grow for a few days. they will stay fresh for a few days on the counter, but i like to rinse and dry them on day 3 of sprouting and store them in the refrigerator. it is best to consume sprouts within 4 to 5 days.

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JAnuArY 2015

Black Is The New Black

Portfolio 10th Anniversary Black Sale In celebration of our anniversary. . . a gift for you!

Any Portfolio cabinetry in our signature color receives 20% off on orders placed by January 31, 2015

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www.portfolio -home.com Portfolio Kitchen & Home™ / Geri Higgins™ / Portfolio Kitchen & Home © 2015

Inspired Local Food Culture

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mystery shopper

Meet: OpO SqUASh If the cold weather has you longing for a bit of summer flavor, you may be in luck: Opo squash, or calabash squash, is an ideal fruit to perk up blustery winter days.

What Is It?

Opo squash is a baseball-bat shaped member of an ancient gourd family hailing from Asia and parts of Africa. The mature dried squash develops a woody exterior, making it a useful container for water storage and transport, which was its original – and exceedingly practical – purpose. Still seen in its dried state adorning stoops as a decorative gourd, the young fruit is tender, sweet and vibrantly

STORy And ReCIPe by Shannon Weber PhOTOgRAPhy by Jennifer Silverberg

green, almost identical to zucchini in both texture and water content.

What Do I Do WIth It?

The short answer: anything. Traditionally used throughout Asia in soup, stir-fry, sushi, chutney and curry, the opo takes on the flavors of whatever surrounds it, although it can stand on its own; in Central America, the seeds are toasted to add flavor to horchata drinks.

If you’re missing the flexibility of zucchini in your baked goods, rejoice; you’ll never again have to wait for summer to get some.

Simply grab some opo at your nearest Asian or international market and throw it into your favorite zucchini recipes.

Shannon Weber is the creator, author and photographer behind the award-winning blog aperiodictableblog.com, and her work has appeared on websites such as bon Appétit, Serious eats and America’s Test Kitchen. She is a self-taught baker and cook who believes the words “I can’t” should never apply to food preparation and that curiosity can lead to wonderful things, in both the kitchen and in life.

Opo Squash Fritters with Smoked Salmon and Watercress-Herb Salad Yields | 10 3-inch fritters | FrItters

1 1 ¾ ½ 2 3 2/3 1/3 ¼

2

medium opo squash, ends trimmed tsp kosher salt cup all-purpose flour tsp baking powder lightly beaten large eggs thinly sliced scallions (the white and green parts) cup finely shredded ParmigianoReggiano cheese cup fresh parsley leaves cup lightly packed fresh dill sea salt and freshly ground black pepper Tbsp olive oil

salaD

2 3 2 3 2 1 ½ 3

cups watercress leaves Tbsp finely diced red onion Tbsp capers, drained Tbsp chopped fresh parsley leaves Tbsp chopped fresh dill Tbsp red wine vinegar tsp granulated sugar Tbsp olive oil sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 4 oz thinly sliced smoked salmon 2 tsp chopped fresh dill (for garnish)

| Preparation – Fritters | Preheat oven to 200ºF and set a sheet pan inside it.

In a food processor fitted with the shredding blade, grate squash into thick strands.

Transfer to a large bowl, add salt and stir to combine. Set aside for 10 to 15 minutes.

Squeeze out excess water by pressing against the sides of a strainer.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder and set aside. Transfer drained squash to a large, dry bowl. Add eggs, scallions, cheese and herbs, and toss to coat. Stir flour mixture into squash batter and season with salt and pepper.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat, heat oil until simmering.

Using an ice cream scoop, portion batter and drop into hot skillet, pressing down with a spatula to flatten to ½-inch thickness, 3 at a time. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes on 1 side, until browned; flip and continue to cook for 2 to 3 minutes until crisp. Transfer to baking sheet in preheated oven and repeat with remaining batter.

Keep warm in oven until ready to serve.

| Preparation – Salad | In a medium bowl,

add watercress, red onion, capers, parsley and dill, and toss to incorporate.

In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar and sugar. Slowly stream in oil, whisking constantly, until emulsified. Add to watercress mixture, toss to coat and season with salt and pepper.

| To Serve | Remove fritters from oven and divide onto plates. Top with salad and salmon, and garnish with fresh dill. Serve. %PG

feastmagazine.com

JANUARY 2015

DAILY LUNCH | SUNDAY BRUNCH

Our Sunday brunch was voted in the

Top 100

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325 S Main St, Saint CharleS, MO 63301 www.bellavinOwinebarStl.COM (636) 724-3434 Inspired Local Food Culture

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menu options

BouillaBaisse

SToRy AND ReCIPe By Gabrielle DeMichele

TV

PhoTogRAPhy By Jennifer silverberg

Living in the Midwest, we do not enjoy the same access to fresh seafood as those in Marseille, France, but we can still prepare a fragrant and complex fish stew with a wide variety of seafood. What sets this stew apart from others are Provençal herbs and saffron, which give the bouillabaisse its distinctive flavor. Traditionally, each

component of the stew is served separately, with the clear broth served in a flat soup bowl, the fish presented on a platter and the rouille served on the side. This Americanized version combines all of the ingredients into one dish, with a toasted baguette on the side, and calls for mixing the rouille into the soup just before serving.

chef’s tip

rouille preparation

Right Fish. Not just any variety of fish will work well in this recipe.

To prepare rouille, combine 6 slices dense white bread, 3 minced cloves garlic, 2 peeled fire-roasted bell peppers, 2 egg yolks, 1 tsp saffron threads (soaked in warm water for 10 minutes), ½ tsp cayenne pepper and salt in the bowl of a food processor and purée until smooth.

Transfer mixture to a bowl and work in 1½ cups extra virgin olive oil until a thick paste forms. Set aside until bouillabaisse is ready to serve.

When making bouillabaisse, I recommend non-oily white fish such as grouper, snapper, flounder, skate, cod or sole for the assorted white fish. Fish is finished cooking when opaque, not translucent.

Make the Meal • Bouillabaisse with crusty Bread • Gougères • Citrus Salad • Crêpes Suzette

LeaRn MoRe. In January’s class you will learn how to make pâte à

choux with cheese to make gougères, and delicate thin crêpes for crêpes Suzette. We’ll also learn how to make citrus vinaigrette to complete the menu.

get hands-on: Join Feast Magazine and schnucks Cooks Cooking school on Wed., Jan. 28, at 6pm at the des Peres, Missouri, location to make the dishes in this month’s menu. tickets are just $40 for a night of cooking, dining and wine. RsVP at schnuckscooks.com or call 314.909.1704.

Bouillabaisse Serves | 10 to 12 | Fish stock

½ cup extra virgin olive oil, divided 5 quartered shallots 3 leeks, dark green leaves cut off, cut lengthwise and rinsed thoroughly 6 cloves garlic, smashed 3 lbs assorted inexpensive white fish 1 cup dry white wine 5 ripe tomatoes (or canned tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped) 4 cups water ¼ bunch flat-leaf parsley 1 fresh bay leaf 5 sprigs fresh thyme ¼ cup Pernod ½ tsp saffron threads seaFood

6 lbs assorted white fish fish stock (recipe below) 2 lbs mussels salt and freshly ground black pepper

| Preparation – Rouille | See recipe at left under Rouille Preparation.

| Preparation – Fish Stock | In a heavy-

bottomed pot over medium heat, heat ¼ cup oil and add shallots, leeks and garlic.

Stir 4 to 6 minutes, add fish, turn heat up to medium high and stir constantly to ensure nothing sticks to the pot. Cook for 20 minutes, until a caramelized layer forms on the bottom of the pot and fish falls apart.

Deglaze pot with white wine and reduce by ¾, add tomatoes and water. Secure fresh herbs with a string and add to pot with remaining ¼ cup oil. Boil stock for 15 minutes, then add Pernod. Strain stock through sieve, yielding about 2 quarts liquid. Strain stock again through a fine-mesh sieve. Add saffron while the stock is still hot. Set aside. | Preparation – Seafood | Cut fish fillets into manageable, 1-inch pieces. Be sure to cut the fish so that each guest gets a piece of each variety. Lightly season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a pot large enough to hold the fish pieces in a single layer, add all fish stock except 2 cups and heat to a simmer, then add fish.

Cook fish pieces for about 9 minutes per inch of thickness, taking care not to overcook.

Transfer fish to serving bowls and set aside.

Scrub mussels, remove beards and discard opened ones. In a large pot over high heat, add mussels and 2 cups fish stock and cover.

Cook until mussels open, about 5 minutes.

Transfer cooked mussels to serving bowls.

| To Serve | Add half the rouille to a large mixing bowl and whisk in a couple of ladles of warm stock. Set aside.

Add remaining rouille to the pot of reserved stock, heat gently and whisk to combine. Do not let rouille and stock reach a boil.

Pour rouille-stock mixture over prepared bowls of fish and mussels and serve with crusty toasted bread and reserved rouille.

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JaNua RY 2015

WineExperts!

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West One lucky winner will spend a day at the brewery and go behind-the-scenes to experience why Boulevard Brewing is a true “Tastemaker”.

The winner will also enjoy: •Time with the head brew master • Boulevard gift shop gift certificate • Opportunity to invite three guests • Inclusion in a behind-the-scenes photo essay and digital story appearing on feastmagazine.com

South

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Other Illinois Pekin Peoria

For our most-up-to-date list, visit schnucks.com

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Inspired Local Food Culture

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sweet ideas

CheeSe QuiChe in FlakY BuTTer CruST After the holiday season subsides, during the deep cold of winter, I find my baking inspiration waning. And still, we all continue to long for something baked fresh and made by hand. After much practice during the height of holiday pie-making, it’s time for something savory, yet just as rich. That’s where quiche comes in – I feel it makes an even better dinner than it often does a breakfast dish, served with bitter winter salad greens tossed with lemon vinaigrette.

Filling and flavor combinations are endless, too; try crispy bacon with chives, sautéed kale with caramelized onions or even last night’s leftover roast chicken with mushrooms. This recipe is based

sTORy AnD RecIPe By Christy Augustin PhOTOgRAPhy By Cheryl Waller

on two classic French techniques: pâte brisée, a basic flaky pie dough, and the quiche batter is the simplest of baked custards. The quality of your ingredients is paramount for a great quiche, so plan to use real butter and heavy cream. chef’s tiP: Why go through all the trouble of making pie crust from

scratch and not make extra? This recipe creates enough dough to make two pie crusts. If you’re only making one quiche, simply wrap the extra crust tightly and freeze for future use (thaw frozen crust in the refrigerator for several hours before baking). Pie crust dough will keep in the freezer for up to one month.

Christy Augustin has had a lifelong love affair with all things sweet. After working as a pastry chef in New Orleans and St. Louis, she opened Pint Size Bakery & Coffee in St. Louis’ Lindenwood Park in 2012. She calls herself the baker of all things good and evil. Learn more at pintsizebakery.com.

Cheese Quiche in Flaky Butter Crust Serves | 6 to 8 | Pâte Brisée (Yields 2 crusts)

2 1 ½ 1½ ½ 1

cups unbleached, all-purpose flour tsp kosher salt tsp granulated sugar (optional) sticks cold unsalted butter, cubed into walnut-sized pieces cup ice water Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Quiche Batter (Yields 1 quiche)

3 2 ¼ ½ ½ 2 1 1 1½

whole eggs egg yolks cup heavy cream cup whole milk cup sour cream or crème fraîche tsp kosher salt (reduce if your cheeses are saltier) tsp freshly ground black pepper Tbsp fresh thyme (or herb of choice) to 2 cups crumbled cheese (try local goat cheese, Gorgonzola and Gruyère)

| Preparation – Pâte Brisée | In a large bowl, combine flour, salt and sugar. Add half of butter and begin working the fat into the flour by hand until a cornmeal texture is achieved. Add remaining cold butter and rub into flour mix until pieces are the size of hazelnuts. Using a fork, gently toss cold water and vinegar into the mix using to create rough, shaggy dough. It should still be dry and crumbly but comes together when squeezed.

Divide mixture in half.

On a lightly floured work surface, smear dough with the heel of your hand, ball it up and repeat 2 to 3 times until a cohesive dough forms. This trick makes the flakiest crust. Form each half into a round, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours or up to 2 days before rolling.

| Preparation – Quiche Batter | Thoroughly whisk all ingredients together, except for thyme and cheese. Refrigerate until ready to use, up to 3 days.

| Assembly | Preheat oven to 400ºF. Prepare either a 9½-inch-by-10-inch pie pan with pie weights and set aside.

Roll chilled dough on a lightly floured work surface into a circle between 1/8-inch and ¼-inch thick and 12 inches around. Transfer dough into pan, form a crimped edge and thoroughly dock the bottom with a fork.

Freeze quiche shell for 20 minutes.

Line frozen shell with a piece of parchment filled with dried beans or raw rice and transfer to oven to blind-bake for 15 minutes.

Remove pie weights and bake another 5 to 10 minutes until dark golden brown. Turn oven down to 350ºF. Fill shell with thyme and cheeses and pour custard batter over top as full as your pan will allow. Bake quiche on a sheet tray for 45 minutes until the top is toasty brown, the center is puffed and the quiche has a nice jiggle when shaken.

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| 54 |

open house

| 62 |

the producers

| 68 |

strange magic

| 76 |

tastemakers roundtable

Chef Josh Galliano’s night cooking at the James Beard House in New York City.

Change is brewing in the Midwest’s craft beer movement.

How Strange Donuts went from initial idea to multilocation power brand in less than a year.

Seven of Kansas City’s most acclaimed chefs discuss the local food-and-drink scene. pictured: Learn how breweries

across the Midwest have embraced canning on p. 62.

open house chef josh galliano cooks at the james beard house WRITTEN By Josh Galliano PhOTOGRAPhy By Gregg Goldman

the levee of the mississippi river doesn’t appear to be that large when driving down the great river road in new orleans. But, as a young boy riding my bike up the levee, I soon realized how imposing it is – how imposing it has to be. The levee must be powerful to contain the desires of the Mighty Mississippi to move its course. For the better part of two centuries, Americans have tried to control the river, through mounds or bridges, spillways and dredging. But when I was a kid, I didn’t care about the river’s history; I just wanted to know if it had flooded enough to go crawfishing.

The importance of the river to our country’s food heritage has been forgotten. Food travels on the river, and culinary treasures thrive all along its banks. The river transported people, and those folks brought their foods; the river attracted entrepreneurs, and their enterprises brought workers who needed to be fed. Communities developed representing a confluence of food cultures; remoulade in New Orleans seems connected to Comeback Sauce in Greenville, Mississippi; salsiccia in St. Louis is a close relative of salameats in Cairo, Illinois, and Italian sausage in the Arkansas Delta; the use of pickled ham gives way to tasso and then to country ham. All of these foods are connected, and these connections created the food culture of the Mississippi River.

This idea hit me one night on a drive from my home in Okawville, Illinois, to New Orleans with my family.

Somewhere on a desolate stretch of Interstate 55, as my wife, Audra, and our kids drifted off to sleep, it occurred to me that the roads and the rivers brought my worlds together. It was a meandering line between New Orleans and St. Louis, filled with great food, music and traditions.

As snow melts in Minnesota, the Mississippi River rises and swells. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the Bonnet Carré Spillway in Louisiana to relieve this added pressure on the river to protect New Orleans from flooding.

For my group of friends, the flooding brought crawfish. With a sawed-off .410 shotgun, an ice chest, nets and frozen beef melt (a frozen block of cow spleen), we would venture out, bleary-eyed, motivated by visions of a future crawfish boil.

We’d use a large clip to hold the melt in place, then set a trap in the water near trees and stomp on it

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PICTURED ABOVE: Chef Galliano’s five-course menu served at the James Beard House on Oct. 17.

Inspired Local Food Culture

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to send a whiff of meat into the water to attract crawfish. After a few hours wading in hip-deep muddy water, we would have enough crawfish for a small feast. I’ve tried to capture the experience of crawfishing in a dish – or better yet, into a single bite – and it is impossible. The scent of the river, the sound of crawfish wiggling in the ice chest and the flavor of the boil exist only in a moment in time.

This past October, I revisited that challenge at the James Beard House in New York City. A friend of a friend got in touch with me in March to ask if I would be interested in cooking and serving a dinner at the Beard House, and after much squealing and a trip to New York City in April, I agreed to prepare a multicourse meal there on Oct. 17. The event coordinators at the Beard House helped me to maneuver dates to find the best evening – one

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that would allow me to be a focal point, and not to be overshadowed by a popular national chef who might cook there the same week. This dinner was mine, to showcase my cooking, and it was also a long time coming. After cooking in cities around the world and working for many great people, finally, the time had come. I was in a position in my career as chef-owner of The Libertine in St. Louis to put together a dinner at the Beard House.

With the date of the dinner scheduled, I set to work developing the menu, intent on capturing the experience of crawfishing in Louisiana in at least one dish. Served as a hors d’oeuvre, the dish came together as a johnnycake with crawfish and watermelon relish, and set the story of the dinner in motion. To make the hors d’oeuvre, crawfish tails were marinated and then folded

This idea hit me one night on the drive from my home in Okawville, Illinois, to New Orleans... the roads and the rivers brought my worlds together. It was a meandering line between New Orleans and St. Louis, filled with great food, music and traditions.

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into a johnnycake batter made with stoneground cornmeal. As a contrast to the richness of the pancake, I served it with relish made with basil, compressed watermelon and preserved pickled watermelon rind on top. The johnnycake represented my love of cornmeal, the crawfish shared a piece of my childhood and, because we can and will pickle anything in the South, the watermelon rind finished the hors d’oeuvre.

Like the johnnycake hors d’oeuvre, each dish was developed to tell a story. Through the dinner, I hoped to share my ancestry and the ancestry of the region: Spanish, Italian, French, Native American, German and African. Mixed into this tale are ingredients that come from specific places – farms in Illinois; satsuma trees in LaPlace, Louisiana; cobia from the Gulf; and Chardonel wine from Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. All of these elements came together in my mind, but a cohesive story could have easily been lost with so many ingredients. The structure of a tasting menu with hors d’oeuvres gave me the power to present many thoughts throughout the dinner.

In the end, I developed five hors d’oeuvres to showcase intense flavors in two bites each (in addition to the johnnycake, hors d’oeuvres included “buffalo-style” crispy pigs’ tails and bonemarrow toasts with pickled oysters and beer jam).

The hors d’oeuvres would ensure that diners’ palates wouldn’t be exhausted, while the multicourse menu presented a progression of flavors from light to heavy. The task in front of me was difficult, as I only had one shot to cook dinner at the Beard House, and I wanted to bring so much history and so many flavors and ideas together.

Some courses told subtle stories, while others

were more obviously important and influential to my cooking. I could control the food and how it tasted, but to further elevate the narrative, I found beverage pairings that complemented each course as well as the overall storyline.

Like an opening shot across the bow, I thought two beer pairings would highlight the St. Louis beer scene while establishing a tone for the dinner. Five different Schlafly beers were paired with each of the hors d’oeuvres, as the bold flavors of the food could easily be overshadowed by wine. Additionally, beer is a part of the culture of the river, from cold brews at a crawfish boil to the craft beer scenes that have developed in cities like Memphis and St. Louis. The first course would be a salad with different vegetables cooked and presented in many ways – compressed zucchini, semidried tomatoes, salt-roasted beets, glazed carrots and shaved radishes brought together with green goddess dressing and guanciale powder.

The mélange of vegetables, coupled with the fact that beer simply pairs well with salad, led me to choose Perennial Artisan Ales’ Hommel Bier for the course. For dessert, I chose to pair coffee from Kaldi’s Coffee Roasting Co. with the dish: a satsuma curd with persimmon-sticky toffee pudding topped with sorghum crumble and root beer sorbet.

My story of the Mississippi River is one among thousands, yet very little documentation of a specific cuisine of the river exists. Various cookbooks represent smaller communities, but a case must be made for how they’re connected.

I delved into menus that I had written at other restaurants, read through old cookbooks and

PICTURED TOP lEfT: Chef Galliano (center) begins dinner prep in the kitchen of the James

Beard House. PICTURED bOTTOm lEfT: Crab-stuffed zucchini flowers for the first course.

PICTURED abOvE: Galliano’s notes outline the hors d’oeuvres served at the dinner.

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PICTURED BELOW: Fresh garbanzo beans arrive less than two hours before dinner begins, forcing the entire kitchen to help shuck them. PICTURED BOTTOM RIGHT: The Libertine executive sous chef Josh Poletti places meat over a hot flame. PICTURED RIGHT PAGE: Galliano picks up last-minute ingredients at a bakery in New York City.

A roasted-pork dish would say Missouri, and this idea would allow me to layer my Italian and Southern heritage onto the canvas.

asked for guidance from a personal hero, John T. Edge, the director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. I wanted to showcase a variety of cooking techniques that enhance the ingredients, with some of those techniques grounded in history and others firmly rooted in new technology. Edge suggested that I read Twain’s Feast by Andrew Beahrs and America Eats! by Pat Willard.

The first book chronicled the author’s attempt to recreate Mark Twain’s list of foods that he missed while living in Europe. Since Twain was raised in Missouri, his list spanned many foods and ingredients that represented my Beard dinner’s theme. Some foods, like sheepshead, are fish that I grew up enjoying, while others, like prairie hens, I could never include in a special menu because they are so scarce – also because it’s

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illegal. But Twain’s Feast made me consider the whole breadth of the Mississippi River and how it supports a constantly evolving food culture.

The other book reproduced some forgotten manuscripts from the Works Progress Administration, which employed writers and journalists to chronicle the foodways of America in a program called America Eats. Writers gained firsthand experience with a regional food gathering or festival, and then documented the foods and the people in an article. The program lost funding before the essays were published – or were even finished being edited. Some of the essays (particularly from the South) were referenced in scholarly publications, but for the most part, the essays and the program have been lost to history.

Around 1943, Willard searched the Library of

Congress to find the essays, almost 60 years after the program ended. The articles were published in 2008 as a compilation curated by Willard, and tell the story of American food at the crossroads of modernization and tradition. The essays talk about community gatherings in times of desperation, of people coming together to continue traditions.

These essays and their titles were used as inspiration for the main menu at my Beard dinner.

Missouri is an amalgam of the Midwest, with some parts Southern, some parts Northern. It is definitely the country’s breadbasket, with the grains grown here and the hardy animal husbandry that produces so much of our nation’s food supply. Thinking about the agricultural prowess of the Midwest made me want to create a dish celebrating the small farm culture that

supplies my St. Louis restaurant, The Libertine.

Some of the best pork comes from our neck of the woods, with much of it being sold to restaurants across the country. A roasted-pork dish would say Missouri, and this idea would allow me to layer my Italian and Southern heritage onto the canvas. Pork neck roll doesn’t sound like an appealing cut of meat, but the Italians know it as coppa fresca. After marinating the coppa with fennel pollen and chile threads, the coppa was cooked with hay over a long period of time, which imbued it with an earthy flavor. After a quick grilling, the coppa was sliced and served with a ragu of fresh crowder and purple hull peas, pickled collard greens, sprouted wheat berries and my homemade elderflower vinegar, all raised or made in Missouri.

The Missouri ingredients tell a story of terroir, and also share the story of how Italian immigrants adapted to living in the South. The sprouted wheat berries were sourced from the Missouri Grain Project to mimic Italian farro, while the peas were the same ones my Paw Paw from Mississippi used to harvest. When I was growing up, we would oftentimes have a pickle or relish served with our greens; in this dish, the greens became the relish, to cut through the richness of the pork. The ragu was seasoned with the elderflower vinegar, which took me about six months to prepare – I would pull my car over on back roads to find flowering elderberry bushes.

There is one more story that has to be considered for the meal at the James Beard House: the constraints of cooking in a converted brownstone

in New York City. The Beard House is a place to showcase a chef’s work, and yet it limits you at the same time. The house is the very same one James Beard lived in: a small four-story brownstone in Greenwich Village. It has been reorganized since Beard’s time to provide offices for the James Beard Foundation on the third floor, as well as to host dinners. The kitchen is on a sunken first floor, and the space is claustrophobically small. Despite its small size, it’s still difficult to find tools and equipment or enough space to spread out mise en place while not encroaching on another cook’s work area.

During the dinner, food has to journey from the back of the kitchen, through an atrium and up a flight of stairs to the second floor dining room.

One of the walls in the dining room is lined with shelves that are completely filled with cookbooks.

Inspired Local Food Culture

JANUARY 2015

59

The house is a personification of culinary history; there was a palpable sense of how many chefs had come before me. Taking all of this into account, I designed a menu that I could mostly prep in St. Louis. This way, I could manage refrigeration space and cooking equipment, plus ensure that a small staff could execute the menu.

Planning the menu began in April and continued up until the night of the dinner. I cured bresaola from Rain Crow Ranch in Doniphan, Missouri. I ordered lamb from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and pickled white asparagus from Don Ross in Freeburg, Illinois. My kitchen cooked and stored as much as possible to take to the Beard House; we did not want to leave anything to chance.

On the Sunday before the dinner, we packed two

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ice chests full of mise en place into The Libertine executive sous chef Josh Poletti’s SUV and sent him on his way to New York City. On Wednesday, we sent off Nick and Audra Luedde, the proprietors of The Libertine, with lots of wine and another ice chest full of food. On Thursday, my wife and I loaded 27 pounds of marinated chicken wings into our checked luggage to take with us to New York.

I have checked my knives many times at airports and packed myriad cookbooks upon my return from living in London, but I have never before told a baggage clerk that I was going to use my cargo to fry chicken. The next day would be the dinner.

The pace of the James Beard House is brisk and very deliberate. Dinner is served at 7pm, and we arrived at 9am to begin prep for the day. Everyone stayed calm, and we all worked together, but

The unsung heroes of this story are the folks who just cook the food they grew up with. These people are the torchbearers of what I see as a cuisine and culture of the Mississippi River.

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the anxiety of the day hung thick in the air. We arranged ingredients and went to my friend’s restaurant to grab our refrigerated items. We tackled the mise en place of the day with the culinary externs who donated their time. By noon, our prep was brisk thanks to the externs and the aid of my friend Phil Marshall, who came all the way from St. Louis to be a part of the dinner.

We were without the use of a fryer, as the one at the Beard House was broken and had been out of commission for the past week, so we had to adapt our attack plan for the night. Other things began to fall through, too – the fresh garbanzo beans I needed to make hummus for the vadouvan-cured cobia course had not arrived. I ordered the beans two weeks before the dinner from a produce company in New York, and the shipment finally arrived at 5:10pm, causing the entire kitchen to drop what we were doing to shuck them. We were also shorthanded – perhaps most blatantly apparent when Poletti was furiously slicing coppa fresca as I directed externs about how to plate food. Some of the plates had too much broth, while on others, the wheat berries were placed in the wrong spot. On top of everything else, I forgot to pack the printed menus with our luggage.

I’m a harsh critic of myself and my food. I wanted the plating to be more refined and to have more care. This level of finesse is difficult to accomplish given the 60 guests crammed into the second floor and the breakneck pace for the coursing. After all of the frantic energy and stress, when the final course was coming to a close, everyone in the dining room wanted to hear me talk about the menu and ask questions about the food and drink.

I entered the dining room and introduced myself and the other cooks to the guests, and then shared my vision for the dinner. I explained my view of why the foods of the Mississippi River are important in understanding American food today. Even while explaining my thought process and menu, the Beard House reminded me of its presence as I maneuvered around tables to make sure guests seated in every nook and cranny could hear me speak. A diner asked about the titles for each course and their relevance, while another asked how I came up with the idea and execution of the crispy pigs’ tail hors d’oeuvre.

I talked about how even my kids have helped me to improve as a chef, whether by digging up sunchokes or picking persimmons with me.

˝Top Ten Most Booked Restaurants in St. Louis.˝ The unsung heroes of this story are the folks who just cook the food they grew up with.

These people are the torchbearers of what I see as a cuisine and culture of the Mississippi River. They don’t need me to put a label on it, and they don’t need me to put it on a menu in a big city. But, we all need them to keep cooking that food, to keep their traditions alive.

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JOIN US!

Join Feast and chef Josh Galliano for a seasonally inspired recreation of the five-course dinner he served at the James Beard House in New York City on Mon., Jan. 26 from 6 to 8pm at The Libertine in St. Louis.

Visit the Events section of feastmagazine. com for ticket information.

PICTURED LEFT PAGE TOP: Chef Galliano plating in the James Beard House kitchen. PICTURED LEFT PAGE BOTTOM: The johnnycake hors d’oeuvre with marinated crawfish and watermelon

pickles on top. PICTURED ABOVE: Galliano and crew commemorate the dinner.

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the ProduCerS WRITTEn By Pete Dulin

|

PHOTOgRAPHy By Jonathan Gayman

Change iS Brewing in the midweSt CraFt Beer movement

Craft brewing’s roots in the Midwest trace back to 19th century immigrants who brought their knowledge of beer-making from Europe to the U.S. In St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch, Lemp Brewing Co., Heim Brewery, Falstaff Brewing Co., Imperial Brewing Co. and others defined the Midwest’s original set of commercial brewers, but only Anheuser-Busch and Falstaff survived Prohibition. Their mass-market beers, alongside national brands like MillerCoors, dominated the U.S. domestic market for decades.

Roughly 25 years ago, the first wave of craft brewing in the Midwest began with a ripple.

Early regional craft breweries like Free State Brewing Co. in Lawrence, Kansas, Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City and The Saint Louis Brewery in St. Louis provided craft alternatives in their respective hometowns and steady sales demonstrated demand for something different.

These production breweries expanded volume and market reach over two decades as the craft beer industry developed in the region.

Between 2007 and 2011, a new wave of craft breweries emerged in the Midwest. The arrivals of Tallgrass Brewing Co. in Manhattan, Kansas, and 4 Hands Brewing Co. in St. Louis signaled a shift in craft brewing that set its sights beyond the footprint of its predecessors.

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Free State Brewing Co. LOcatiOn: Lawrence, Kansas FOunded: 1989 Signature StyLe: Eclectic and buoyant FirSt Beer Brewed: Ad Astra Ale VOLume: 12,000 barrels in 2014 what’S next: Another addition to its four-pack

Crossroads series of big beers and the launch of a random selection of one-off six-packs.

When Chuck Magerl opened Free State Brewing Co. in Lawrence in February 1989, it was the first legal brewery in Kansas since 1881 – in reaction to the temperance movement, the state outlawed alcohol well before Prohibition took effect in 1920. In fact, Magerl was instrumental in leading the effort to change state laws regarding the Kansas alcohol code in Topeka, the state capital. He researched legislation, met with politicians and drove opinion that affected pending regulation. Once the code was signed by the governor to allow commercial brewing, he built and opened Free State. When it launched, Free State was a brewpub, or a brewing facility that incorporates a restaurant selling its beer directly to the public at the brewery’s location.

“As the original craft brewer in the region, nobody in the great swath of the central U.S. was

doing what we were doing,” Magerl says. “There were a couple of breweries in Colorado and a couple in Chicago, but otherwise it was hugely uncertain to be attempting what we set out to do. Twenty-five years ago, it wasn’t uncommon to have people travel 100 miles to seek out unique brews. So, we welcomed everyone who was interested in seeing what new flavors might be emerging in the beer world.”

In 2009, as demand outstripped the original brewery’s capacity in its Downtown brewpub, Free State opened a production brewery in east Lawrence. The original brewing facility still produces flagship, seasonal and specialty beer for the brewpub. Expanded production has made Free State’s bottled beers available in the entire state of Kansas, as well as the state of Missouri and a few locations in nebraska and Iowa.

“We’re a curious hybrid,” Magerl says. “We have the feel of a young packaging brewery with 25 years of brewery experience. The growth into the larger market is truly an opportunity for our brewers to continue their adventures and hone their expertise.”

Over the years, accessibility to craft beer has changed where people buy and drink beer, causing brewpubs and bars to compete with increased

beer choices at grocery and retail stores compared to a mere decade ago. Brewpubs are not proliferating at the same rate as breweries.

From 2012 to 2013, the number of brewpubs in the U.S. rose by only 7.1 percent, compared to a 22.8 percent increase in microbreweries and 22.6 percent jump in regional craft breweries.

“The business model of ‘Brew it and they will come’ is certainly a thing of the past,” Magerl says. “A successful brewery today requires a cohesive team effort in the brewhouse, lab, logistics, packaging, marketing, warehouse, retail store and drinking establishment (and multiple taxing and enforcement agencies), all to satisfy the increasingly high expectations of the beer customer. It’s a continuous effort to coordinate all the pieces to keep good beer in front of our fans.”

To Magerl, “local” in terms of Free State’s distribution isn’t defined by hard-nosed numbers. “It seems everyone has a different definition of local,” he says. “For me, if I can drive out there this morning and be back home tonight if I wish, that’s local. Large portions of our four-state region fall within that circle.

That’s where we can still personally care for our beers and where we can participate in events, meet craft beer enthusiasts and share stories.

“In 2014 we produced roughly 12,000 barrels of beer. We haven’t been in any undue haste to expand our distribution. Our commitment to steady organic growth and continued quality beers are at the core of our work.”

Free State Brewing Co., 636 Massachusetts St., Lawrence, Kansas, 785.843.4555, freestatebrewing.com

go behind the scenes at Free State Brewing Co. and meet its founder in the January episode of Feast TV.

Boulevard Brewing Co.

drinking a lager-style beer who want to enjoy something with a bit more flavor.”

FOunded: 1989

Pale Ale and Unfiltered Wheat fueled Boulevard’s local sales growth and helped firmly establish its place as a Kansas City brewery.

LOCatiOn: Kansas City, Missouri Signature StyLe: American craft beers ranging

from English to Belgian-style.

FirSt Beer Brewed: Pale Ale VOLuMe: 184,692 barrels in 2013 what’S next: Cellar Five, due to be completed by mid-2015, will boost brewing capacity to more than 300,000 barrels. Ongoing distribution expansion should make Boulevard beers available in most states within the next two years.

When founder John McDonald launched Boulevard Brewing Co. in November 1989, he had aspirations to be Kansas City’s hometown brewery. The city had no other local commercial craft brewer at the time, and McDonald had no idea his brewery was at the edge of a new wave of brewing in America.

“It was too early to see the development of craft breweries in the U.S.,” McDonald says. “Those of us starting out during that time were told by many that starting breweries was a crazy idea.”

His initial aspirations were modest. “My original business plan had the lofty goal of selling 6,000 barrels by the mid-1990s,” McDonald says. “Last year, Boulevard sold almost 185,000 barrels. It is safe to say the brewery has exceeded those original goals.”

Boulevard’s first beer, a mildly hoppy pale ale, was a bold beer style to produce back in 1989. “Much like how the consumer perceives IPAs today,” McDonald says. “Sierra Nevada [Brewing Co.] made an exceptional pale ale back then, and I hoped to have a beer just as high in quality and flavorful as my friends on the West Coast.”

After the brewery introduced its Unfiltered Wheat, the beer became – and remains – its best seller.

“Unfiltered Wheat was the first of its kind,” McDonald says. “It was – and remains – a gateway beer into craft beers, meaning it is easy-drinking, not very hoppy and a good transition for individuals more used to

Boulevard’s distribution expanded slowly and steadily over its first decade. “There was a demand to bring craft beer to neighboring states in the early and mid-1990s,” McDonald says. “When I started the brewery, I was solely focused on distributing in Kansas City alone. The decision [to expand] was not originally there, but after seeing continued growth and positive feedback, it was the natural step to take.”

Cellar Five, Boulevard’s new $12 million expansion project, broke ground in November and will increase its beer fermentation capacity by 40 percent. Named for the fifth fermentation cellar on-site, Cellar Five will house six 1,000-barrel fermenters but has space for an additional six. Scheduled for completion by mid-2015, the expansion will boost fermentation capacity from 220,000 barrels to more than 300,000 barrels.

Next to Cellar Five, an 8,400-square-foot utility and process building will also be constructed by mid-2015. Boulevard will install a $2.5 million effluent equalization system to process waste water as well as a filtration centrifuge that separates yeast from beer, an upgrade to the existing system that will make the process faster and more efficient.

McDonald adds, “We also focused on developing relationships with distributors, which aided in our long-term expansion successes.”

Boulevard has seen growth every year it has been in business. Today, the brewery sells its products in 29 states, plus Washington, D.C. Boulevard anticipates being available in most U.S. states within the next two years.

Boulevard Brewing Co., 2501 Southwest Blvd., greater downtown, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.474.7095, boulevard.com

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The SainT LouiS Brewery/ SchLafLy Beer

LOcatiOn: St. Louis, Missouri FOunded: 1991 Signature StyLe: Traditional European-style beers FirSt Beer Brewed: English-style Pale Ale VOLume: 60,000 barrels in 2014; 70,000 projected for 2015 what’S next: Big projects on the horizon include the opening of a new production brewery and distribution in Chicago.

The Saint Louis Brewery’s modest start began in 1991 with draft and growler sales of its Schlafly Beer brand sold in The Schlafly Tap Room, its brewpub in Downtown St. Louis. Co-founded by Tom Schlafly, chairman of the board and the company’s largest single shareholder, and chief executive officer Dan Kopman, the brewery secured its first outside draft account three years after opening. As demand ramped up, so did the brewery’s

aspirations for growth.

The brewery’s first four beers were Pale Ale (English -style), Pilsner, Hefeweizen and Oatmeal Stout. “Personal preference and existing skill set drove the beer-style decisions,” Kopman says. “All that was available on any sort of scale in St. Louis was American light lager, so the emphasis was put on traditional European beer styles.”

In the beginning, Kopman says the goal was to be a great local brewpub, but as public demand grew, the brewery sought to expand production. At the time, brewpubs designated as retail outlets were prohibited from selling more than 2,000 barrels a year and also couldn’t sell to wholesalers. In order to overcome these hurdles, the company worked to have some of the state’s laws rewritten.

“When we opened in December 1991, the law only allowed for the sale of beer at The Schlafly Tap Room,” Kopman says.

“It was a complicated negotiation with Anheuser-Busch (A-B) to get open. In 1993, Tom Schlafly worked with A-B and legislators to amend the law to allow us to appoint a wholesaler. [But] we [still] could not sell direct. The limit on production was raised [from 2,000] to 10,000 barrels. This was enough to start draft distribution but not enough to justify building a new brewery for bottling beer.

“In 1997, with the vision of a future brewery in mind and work commencing on yet another change in the law, we entered into an agreement with August Schell [Brewing Co.] in New Ulm, Minnesota, to brew and bottle Schlafly Pale Ale and Schlafly Oatmeal Stout in 12-ounce bottles. In 2001, we completed the negotiations on the change in the law. The parties agreed that The Saint Louis Brewery could obtain a Missouri 22 percent abv manufacturer’s license that was already in use for Missouri wineries. This license allows for production with no limit, the right to self-distribute and to have an on-site retail license. By that time, Major Brands was already our Missouri wholesaler. It did not make sense to acquire those rights back. We purchased the vacant Shop ‘n Save store in Maplewood and opened Schlafly Bottleworks in 2003 [and] moved all the production from August Schell to Bottleworks.”

The brewery expanded its territory in 2005 to a 300-mile radius around St. Louis to neighboring states, excluding the Chicago area, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Now, Schlafly products are sold in 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., with plans to expand into Chicago and southern Ohio in 2015.

The greater St. Louis area remains the brewery’s highest priority followed by the central Midwest region. Most of Schlafly’s growth over the past six years was concentrated in a 50-mile radius from St. Louis.

“From 1991 to 2008, we had a steady rate of growth,” Kopman says. “From 2008 to 2012, we saw a very sharp increase in volume – it almost doubled, and almost all in St. Louis. In 2013 and 2014, we have seen more manageable growth in production and sales.”

After almost 23 years in business, Kopman is proud of the lasting impact that Schlafly has had on its community as well as on local beer culture and the Midwest craft beer industry at large. Recently, Kopman says he visited two up-and-coming regional breweries – Peel Brewery in O’Fallon, Illinois, and Earthbound Brewery in St. Louis, which led him to reflect on how much the Schlafly brand has changed and grown over the years.

“Speaking to these brewery owners reminds me of our own experience 23 years ago,” he says.

“I firmly believe that the future of St. Louis is in the hands of our younger employees and entrepreneurs like these new brewers. We have to be patient. But we will all leave it better than we found it. Schlafly Beer has grown from 25 employees to over 200, from one floor of The Schlafly Tap Room to much more. With growth comes complication. We are adding systems and people to organize the chaos. But the innovative chaos remains the same today as it was at the beginning. We want to make great beer every day.

Our customers deserve no less.”

The Schlafly Tap Room, 2100 Locust St., Downtown, St. Louis, Missouri, 314.241.2337x1, schlafly.com Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Ave., Maplewood, Missouri, 314.241.2337x2, schlafly.com

LocATion: Manhattan, Kansas FounDeD: 2007 SignATuRe STyLe: Pale Ale FiRST BeeR BReweD: Tallgrass Ale VoLuMe: 15,000 barrels a year whAT’S nexT: A new $7 million brewery, due

to open in spring 2015, which will increase its brewing capacity by up to 100,000 barrels a year.

When Tallgrass Brewing Co. launched in 2007, it was a production brewery based in Manhattan, Kansas. The brewery only distributed in Manhattan and Topeka until nine months after its launch.

Further, it only distributed one beer, Tallgrass Ale (now Tallgrass Pub Ale), and only in kegs.

“When we started in 2007, our home market in Manhattan was underdeveloped in terms of craft beer,” says founder Jeff Gill. “Combine that with [Manhattan’s] population of about 50,000, and you do not have a recipe for success for a production brewery. Clearly, we needed to expand into other larger and more developed markets to meet our critical mass of sales volume.”

Changing wholesalers enabled Tallgrass to reach the entire state of Kansas. The brewery began bottling two brands soon after the change of wholesalers and has expanded its portfolio ever since. “We did not go outside of Kansas until the spring of 2009 when we shipped beer to the Lincoln and Omaha markets,” Gill says.

A few years ago, Gill received a call from a customer in western Kansas who had no options to recycle 20 cases worth of empty Tallgrass beer bottles and packaging. That prompted Gill to reevaluate the brewery’s packaging options.

In 2010, Tallgrass decided to exclusively can rather than bottle its beer, which facilitated easier distribution. Gill, a former environmental geologist, published a “Canifesto” in April 2010 on the brewery’s website explaining the decision, based on ecology and economics. According to the Canifesto, recycling cans was more practical for customers, and cans are also 12 times lighter than glass, reducing energy cost to ship the same amount of beer.

“After a little research, I found out that bottles with paper boxes are just about the most wasteful, energy-intensive and hard-to-recycle things that can hold beer,” Gill wrote in his Canifesto. “It turns out that the humble aluminum can is the best choice for a whole lot of reasons.

Cans are better for the beer. Cans seal better than bottles and totally block sunlight, which keeps our beer tasting fresher, longer. Cans are more fun. You can take cans to the pool, concerts, lakes, stadiums, hot tubs, golf courses and anywhere else you can’t take glass. Last but not least, the aluminum can is way better for the environment than bottles.”

That decision garnered industry attention for the fledgling brewery, one of the few exclusively canning breweries in the nation up until that point.

“We felt like the belle of the ball at the 2010 Great American Beer Festival,” Gill says. “We were looking for additional distribution, made some good beers and were a fresh face on the scene.

All of this added up to craft beer distributors wanting to speak with us.”

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“We have entered into new partnership agreements with two new breweries that are owned or operated by former Schlafly Beer brewers and a third existing brewery,” he says.

“We have installed our own equipment and have staff overseeing production at these breweries.

Blackstone Brewery Co. in Nashville, Tennessee, and Backpocket Brewery near Iowa City, Iowa, produce Schlafly draft beers [and] Stevens Point Brewery in Wisconsin produces cans and some bottles of Schlafly Beer and Lewis Osterweis & Sons Hard Ginger Beer. Our plan, similar to our experience in the late ‘90s, is to move this production back to St. Louis to a new brewery.”

Tallgrass Brewing Co.

Bryan Rd.

The opening of Schlafly Bottleworks increased the brewery’s distribution beyond its initial 50mile radius around St. Louis. Since then, Schlafly has only increased production and distribution in St. Louis and across the country, pushing Bottleworks to maximum capacity. Kopman says the brewery overcame these hurdles by forging new partnerships with regional brewers.

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Tallgrass did expand its distribution, but the move had unanticipated and damaging ramifications. “With the change to exclusively can in 2010, we expanded our distribution reach too far,” Gill says. “We sent beer to Ohio, Montana, Virginia, Philadelphia and Colorado in 2011 and are in none of those places now. Looking back on it, several microbreweries have made similar mistakes like that. It is difficult to fly out of the gate and do well in the long run due to capacity constraints, internal controls on costs, sales support and transportation difficulties. A more mature brewery can do it, but there is certainly a learning curve to overcome

before biting off that much and chewing it.”

The costs and challenges of expansion hundreds of miles from Manhattan proved to be too much for Tallgrass at the time, but those hard lessons had an upside.

“In our early expansion forays, we would see a spike, and then steady dwindling of sales,” Gill says. “We paid the price over the course of 2011 to 2012 as we learned and adjusted our business. Since then, we have put those early lessons to use. We retrenched in the Midwest.

We have concentrated on what we can control: our beer quality, our beer brands and product-mix opportunities, and our relationships with our wholesalers. Now we are seeing consistent growth of our brands as we gain distribution and interest in our beer grows.”

Tallgrass, now the largest brewery in Kansas, currently sells its beer in 13 states. The brewery’s annual volume sits at approximately 15,000 barrels. Its new $7 million brewing facility, due to open in spring 2015, will increase its brewing capacity to 100,000 barrels annually and bolster its ability to effectively distribute and expand to chosen markets.

The new facility isn’t the brewery’s only new venture – in May, a full-service brewpub called The Tallgrass Taphouse is scheduled to open in Downtown Manhattan. There, guests will be able to sample pilot and small-batch beers served solely at the 10-barrel brewhouse and tasting room.

Gill reflects on the evolution of Tallgrass.

“The founding of Tallgrass has been more rewarding, more stressful and more challenging than I ever imagined,” he says.

“I hope that the majority of the breweries getting started now realize this before they take the plunge, and are starting their breweries with adequate capital backing, experience and dedication to the craft of creating and sharing quality craft beers. That hope is why I share so much of what we do and try to help other brewers as they are in the planning stages. I can do that because I know this industry is not a zero-sum game, and the success of Tallgrass in the long run will be affected by the strength and quality of the craft beer industry as a whole.”

Tallgrass Brewing Co., 8845 Quail Lane, Manhattan, Kansas, 785.537.1131, tallgrassbeer.com

4 Hands Brewing Co.

Location: St. Louis, Missouri Founded: 2011 Signature StyLe: India Pale Ale FirSt Beer Brewed: Outside of the core four,

the Bona Fide Imperial Stout VoLume: 7,800 barrels in 2014; 15,000 projected

for 2015

“We enter new markets to build our brand, not to sell cases,” Lemp says. “We really micromanage the markets we sell beer in.

Expansion plans within the next two years include Nashville, Kansas, Boston, Washington, D.C. and New York. Kansas and Nashville will be more of a volume play, while Boston, D.C. and New York will focus more on our barrel-aging and super-premium portfolio.”

what’S next: Twelve-ounce cans and more

bourbon and wine barrel-aging projects.

4 Hands Brewing Co. launched in December 2011 with draft beer sold to 50 target retail accounts in St. Louis. The beer portfolio was initially aimed at bridging the gap between new craft beer consumers and more sophisticated drinkers in St. Louis.

While 4 Hands leads with seasonals, its four core beers – Divided Sky Rye IPA, Cast Iron Oatmeal Brown, Single Speed Session and Reprise Centennial Red – have done very well in St. Louis, where Lemp says they’re most likely to thrive.

“Our goal was to cast a wide net that spoke to our target audience,” says 4 Hands president Kevin Lemp. “We wanted that customer to be able to find us when they went to see music, at the corner pub or out for a nice meal.”

“Our Divided Sky Rye IPA is a beautiful beer with fantastic ratings, but a lot of great breweries in the Philadelphia and D.C. markets make great IPAs,” Lemp says. “We don’t want these more delicate beers to have to make that trip when we have Bona Fide Imperial Stout, Chocolate Milk Stout, Cuvee Ange and other more unique offerings that we can bring to the market.”

While many craft breweries slowly evolved from local to regional over time, 4 Hands hoped to create a regional footprint from the beginning.

4 Hands’ process ensures in-house capacity to meet current sales orders as it plans for demand from additional markets.

“When 4 Hands launched, our goal was to build our brand in the St. Louis market the best we could,” Lemp says. “We also wanted to expand into the entire state of Missouri by the end of our first year. Due to local demand, we were not able to achieve that goal.”

“Our main challenge was keeping up with demand,” Lemp says about the brewery’s early expansion into other markets. “We have taken a deliberate and strategic approach to our expansion. When we could push out into a new market, we wanted to make sure we have the in-house capacity to keep our current demand in stock as well as planning for that new market’s demand.”

The brewery expanded to Columbia, Missouri, and Kansas City with limited distribution in Philadelphia and metro Illinois in its second year. 4 Hands entered Chicago, its second largest market, in the first quarter of 2014. Still, more than 75 percent of its total volume is sold in the greater St. Louis area.

Lemp had specific reasons for wanting 4 Hands to be a regional brewery. “[It] allows us to build and sell more of our premium portfolio,” he says.

“We are looking to sell a lot of beer in St. Louis. As we branch out, our strategy is quite the opposite.

We are looking to secure distribution in [fewer] outlets with the premium tier of our portfolio.

Higher price point, higher margin, less volume.”

To accomplish both local and regional growth, the brewery carefully built its beer portfolio.

“We created four core brands that we would offer year-round, two seasonal drivers and a selection of seasonal and barrel-aged projects,” Lemp says. “We were very thoughtful when designing the seasonal brands. We wanted to ensure that we could differentiate ourselves in out-of-state markets. Brands like Chocolate Milk Stout and Contact High fit that mold.

Product packaging also reflects the brewery’s transformation. When 4 Hands first launched, it was a draft-only brand due to limited volume.

After a year, the brewery sold its four core beers and seasonals in 22-ounce bottles, which generated profit from volume sales and fed expansion. A year later, it rereleased its core offerings in a 12-ounce four-pack. In November, 4 Hands introduced its latest package size as 12-ounce, six-pack cans with redesigned branding for each beer.

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The brewery will roll these savings over to the consumer by offering more beer – six-packs versus four-packs – at a similar price point.

4 hands Brewing co., 1220 S. eighth St., “Outside of St. Louis, we build our brand from LaSalle Park, St. Louis, missouri, the top down. We focus on the creative 314.436.1559, 4handsbrewery.com seasonals and barrel-aged offerings check it out! that separate us from other brands. I feel it’s important to gain thirsty for more midwestrespect from those ‘brand-building’ made beer? Learn the stories accounts in other markets to make and expansion plans in the us not just a local brewery, but a works for urban chestnut Brewing brewery that produces great quality beer.” co. in St. Louis and mother’s Brewing co. in Springfield, missouri, by visiting Moving into new markets is not about generating feastmagazine.com. volume, but about achieving specific objectives.

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“This is the future of our brand and an exciting step,” Lemp says. “We save a great deal of money by making the transition from bottles to cans.”

Looking back on 4 Hands’ growth, Lemp says: “We hit the Pennsylvania market too soon. We were a little starstruck and took the plunge without the proper inventory. We learned a valuable lesson: Take your time and launch with gusto.”

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strange magic WRITTen BY Liz Miller

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PHOTOgRAPHY BY Adrian Walker

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ILLUSTRATIOnS BY Adam Bertels/Lamb Grenade

six days after opening strange donuts in october 2013, co-owner corey smale was riding high.

In less than a year, he had leveraged a successful Kickstarter campaign into one of St. Louis’ most anticipated launches. After months of hosting and participating in events, developing the shop’s build-out, overcoming building and permit setbacks, and generating significant media attention, Strange Donuts was in business. “[That] weekend when we opened, we got crushed,” Smale would later recall. “We had a number in our heads that we thought, ‘If we do this, we’ll be good.’ We did four times that.

“I want to get behind being this hype donut shop.

You’ve got to come with a super quality product to stand up to the hype. That’s what we’re trying to live up to right now. Day six, we’ll see.”

Strange Donuts was not Smale’s first business, although it’s easily his most successful to date.

Before setting Strange in motion, he had never worked in the food industry or taken a baking or pastry class. He didn’t have one dream or goal in mind, but he had creative energy, a knack for smart marketing and the ambition to build something of his own.

Smale’s earliest attempt at entrepreneurship came at age 11, in the form of an eBay account he set up with his parent’s permission (and credit card) and some help from his grandmother.

“From a small age I was a huge pro wrestling fan,” he says. “I was also interested in making money on my own. During the summer one year, maybe ‘96, my grandma would [take me shopping] in the morning, and I would get the most valuable wrestling action figures… and I knew this market, so I started flipping them on eBay. Then in the afternoons she’d take me to the post office to ship them.”

As a teenager growing up in Festus, Missouri, just 30 minutes outside of St. Louis, Smale was in a punk rock band, which served as a creative outlet for more than music. “I was building a brand then; I just didn’t know it,” he says. “We were making our own T-shirts, flyers – anything to set what we were doing apart from everybody else.”

After high school, Smale studied communications at the University of MissouriSt. Louis. A few weeks before graduation, he landed an account executive job with Commonground, a Chicago advertising agency.

“They were branching out at the time, and I knew that they were on the verge of some crazy s***,” he says. “I went on the road immediately with Coca-

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Cola and toured with Lupe Fiasco, with Busta Rhymes for a while. I worked with Sprite… I did a bunch of fun stuff and met some really cool and interesting people. That’s when a spark was lit in me; I saw what was out there.”

In 2010, Smale made the decision to move back to St. Louis and promptly launched a digital agency. “It was really just a room in my apartment with my friend [working] in Chicago, and we bounced ideas back and forth; we pitched ideas [to businesses],” he says.

One of those ideas flourished into a very successful guerilla marketing campaign and landed the agency national recognition, including coverage in Advertising Age. “Where’s the Cap’n?” targeted the Quaker Oats-owned cereal brand Cap’n Crunch, which had no social media presence in 2010. Smale and his partner launched a microsite, social media accounts and a petition, all directed at getting the Cap’n online. The public pitch didn’t earn the agency any money – but not long after, Quaker created an official Twitter account for Cap’n Crunch.

Smale’s next endeavor was a pet food company co-owned with his wife, Stephanie. The pair made pet food at home, which Smale branded and marketed, and then sold in local stores and online. Though the idea was strong, the business proved unsustainable with just two people behind it.

“It was a cool concept, but I didn’t know what I was doing because I didn’t have enough people invested in the idea with me,” Smale says. “I learned a huge lesson with that.”

In 2012, Smale went back to what he knew and joined the creative team at St. Louisbased advertising agency Hoffman-Lewis (now H&L Partners). During the day he wrote copy for television ads and billboards for national clients, and in his free time he began developing Strange Donuts.

Inspired by fun, innovative donut shops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, Smale saw an opportunity to bring

Strange Donuts co-owner Corey Smale sits outside the Maplewood shop in front of the company’s newly designed smart car.

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“we created a vibe and a culture – and that’s what i’m most interested in seeing, is where people take it.” - corey smale a different kind of donut to St. Louis. His wife thought of the name: “We knew we were going to do wild donuts, and I wanted you to hear it and be thinking about what that meant.”

In January 2013, Smale launched Strange Donuts.

There were no donuts yet, just a logo and several highly active social media accounts.

Strange Donuts co-owner Jason Bockman sips coffee outside the flagship store in Maplewood.

From the beginning, the brand was extremely aggressive on social media and quickly built a large following, drawing the attention of local and national press. Much of the buzz had to do with the brand’s culture and community – Strange Donuts has personality, and people wanted to be a part of that.

“People ask us how we [did] this, and I say that we’re only doing so much of it,” Smale says. “Like the hashtag #StrangeDonuts on Instagram – I’ve never used it, but there are over 2,000 posts with it, and none of those are mine. We created a vibe and a culture – and that’s what I’m most interested in seeing, is where people take it.”

On March 12, Smale launched a Kickstarter campaign focused on raising funds for the shop’s kitchen equipment. By April 11, the project had exceeded its initial funding goal of $10,000 by more than 20 percent. But even after the project was fully funded, challenges remained. Smale was an entrepreneur with a dream and experience in launching and marketing brands, but he had very little experience in business management.

Fortunately, he knew someone who did.

Gooey butter donuts make their way from the kitchen to the Maplewood shop’s front case.

While in college, Smale befriended Jason Bockman, who was studying international business. After earning his undergraduate degree, Bockman launched a St. Louis-based furniture company called BT Furnishings, which supplies universities with furniture and mattresses. In July 2013, Smale approached Bockman about coming on board to help organize and manage the business end of Strange Donuts.

“I needed him; I needed someone desperately, and I knew I was going to lose this business if I didn’t invest in people,” Smale says. “So I brought him in, and within six weeks the shop opened. And all of a sudden, I didn’t have to worry about things that I wasn’t best at, and I let him do that.”

Strange Donuts corporate chef Mary Boehne poses with a pile of Rainbow Pony donuts, made with classic glaze and sprinkles.

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At the time, Bockman was pursuing a business degree at Washington University in St. Louis, and after reviewing Strange’s business plan and finances, he was confident that he could help steer the company in the right direction.

“It was energizing to me,” Bockman says. “I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted [Smale] to do well – I wanted to help him do well. I saw some basic things to improve upon and the potential of what this could become.”

This October – on the heels of Smale’s 30th birthday – the flagship shop celebrated its first anniversary, and a second location opened in nearby Kirkwood, Missouri. A few weeks later, Smale and Bockman launched Strange Trap Kitchen – a concept kitchen housed inside of Brennan’s bar in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis. In late 2014, Smale and Bockman signed the lease on a space in Columbia, Missouri. The location will be a joint partnership with St. Louis’ Seoul Taco.

“There are still nights that I go in and make the donuts because if I don’t, no one else will, and I love that,” Bockman says. “I love that if I fail, it’s totally on me. If we succeed, I kind of look at that as a gift.”

From the beginning, Smale and Bockman were clear that the donuts at Strange – or #dones as they’re known on social media – would fall into three categories: Original Classics, like raspberry jelly-filled, cinnamon sugar and traditional glazed; New Creations, or nontraditional donut flavors such as gooey butter cake, s’mores and blueberry cheesecake; and Late Night Strangers, each a collaboration with a different local restaurant or food producer. Past St. Louis Strangers have included chicken-and-waffle donuts with

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“they push me in a way that i’ve never been pushed before, too. it’s not any less work than the four seasons; i’ll tell you that.” - mary boehne Porter’s Fried Chicken, pho donuts made with Mai Lee Restaurant, pizza donuts made with Pi Pizzeria and barbecue-rib donuts made with Bogart’s Smokehouse. Strangers are only offered on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 9pm until they’re sold out, and flavors and collaborations change each week.

Smale (left) and Bockman outside Strange Trap Kitchen in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis.

Before Strange Donuts opened, there were plenty of donut shops in St. Louis selling what resemble the shop’s Classics, but no other local businesses were turning out anything like its Strangers. The specialty donuts proved particularly crucial, as they could be sold at higher price points and connected Strange with restaurants and their audiences. A few weeks before the first shop opened, Strange Donuts participated in Slow Food St. Louis’ annual Art of Food benefit, where Smale and Bockman had a platform to share Strange with influential St. Louis chefs and business owners, and establish relationships for future collaborations.

“We hadn’t done anything like that,” Smale says.

“I think we got invited based on hype, for real, because we hadn’t done any Strangers yet – we weren’t even open. I met [Kevin] Nashan that night; I met Josh [Ferguson] from Kaldi’s [Coffee Roasting Co.]. It was a huge opportunity for us to meet a bunch of people.”

Nine months after opening, with the Kirkwood store already announced and expansion plans in the works, Strange made its next big investments by hiring Samantha Coates as its brand manager and Mary Boehne as its corporate chef.

Smale has many tattoos, including one of the bow tie worn by the main character in the film Problem Child, and of course, one of a donut.

Coates first met Smale and Bockman while studying business management and entrepreneurship at the University of Missouri.

At the time she was searching for a business to profile for an entrepreneurship class, and when she came across newly opened Strange Donuts, she reached out. Later that year, Smale and Bockman approached Coates with an opportunity.

“[Jason] said they were expanding and growing, and needed some help,” she says. “I said I’d be down to do anything. The day after I graduated, Corey texted me, ‘It’s time.’”

Today, Coates manages events for Strange (sometimes as many as five or six a week) as well as special orders and sponsorships (for birthday parties, corporate events, weddings) and coordinates with Boehne and the baking team to keep everyone on the same page.

In July 2014, Boehne left her position as the pastry chef at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis to oversee culinary operations as Strange Donuts’ corporate chef. Boehne describes the culture at Strange as hugely supportive, with endless freedom to experiment and create.

“We’re working really well together,” Boehne says. “They push me in a way that I’ve never been pushed before, too. It’s not any less work than the Four Seasons; I’ll tell you that.”

On Mondays, Smale, Bockman, Coates and Boehne meet to discuss everything from daily staffing and scheduling issues, to weekly concerns like Strangers and events, to larger, ongoing plans for growth. About an hour later, all 23 employees gather for a team meeting.

“The bakers’ meeting used to happen on Wednesday, which was [not enough time],” Boehne says. “Now we meet on Mondays, to give us a few days, and we usually talk about the next few weeks, too. But when it’s go-time, it’s go-time, and we just grind.”

On any given morning, customers of all ages line up at each Strange Donuts location to choose from a wide selection of colorful treats.

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On Tue., Nov. 18, Strange Trap Kitchen opened inside of Brennan’s, serving a selection of donuts not available at its other

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bockman’s eyes light up. “let’s do a shrimp po’boy with someone in the future, and let’s do crab rangoon ourselves this weekend. that’ll be fire.” - jason bockman two locations in flavors like brûléed bananas foster and cranberry-white chocolate mousse with walnut brittle. Smale and Bockman’s ultimate goal for Trap Kitchen is to create a space where they can test new ideas and grow. In the short-term, that means branching into other types of desserts and pastries.

They initially hired a classically trained chef from France to run Trap Kitchen, but the chef experienced some health issues, which stalled the plan. In the meantime, an interim chef has stepped up to keep the shop running.

The Trap Kitchen also keeps different hours than Strange’s other shops – it’s open from 7 to 11am Tuesday through Friday, though Brennan’s doesn’t open for business during the week until 3pm. In the four-hour daytime window that neither business operates, Smale and Bockman see potential.

According to Bockman, the hope is to open the space up to chefs or food producers to host popups during the neighborhood’s lunch rush.

“I think donuts will always be popular, and honestly, you could have this business for a lifetime,” Bockman says. “Not to get unfocused – but looking toward the future – that’s why the Trap Kitchen makes so much sense; we’re morphing into some other foods. It’s not going to be just donuts; it’s going to be donuts and pastries.

“And on the weekends, when Trap Kitchen is closed, my hope is that people will come in and say, ‘Why aren’t you open? Why can’t I come here and get a Mimosa and eggs and bacon?’ I think we’re able to spread [our concept] a little bit.”

“[Mishka] has stores in Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, and they’re coming to a donut shop in St. Louis,” Bockman says.

“That’s huge.”

In advance of the chaotic week, Smale and Bockman organized their weekly staff meeting at an indoor go-kart track in south St. Louis county.

A series of tables just off the go-kart track are pushed together, and everyone sits down and huddles into a circle.

Bockman goes over scheduling before explaining the week’s roster of events, which leads into a brainstorming session for the week’s Stranger. Due to the volume of events slated that week, coupled with the work being put into opening Trap Kitchen later that month, the team decides to make the Stranger an in-house collaboration, as opposed to one with a local business.

Tom Davis (find him on Twitter @TedParty), who works at the Maplewood shop, throws out the idea of a shrimp po’boy donut.

“The shrimp makes me nervous – it will be hard to keep warm,” Boehne says. “Maybe if we were teaming up with someone…”

“What if they’re fried?” Bockman says. “[Then] they don’t have to be [kept as] warm.”

In November 2014, Strange returned as a participating business at the Art of Food benefit.

The team partnered with Such and Such Farm in DeSoto, Missouri, to serve a buttercup squashfilled donut made with farm-fresh eggs topped with persimmon glaze and caramel crumble.

The benefit was one of several big events that Strange participated in over the course of four days.

A day before Art of Food, the Maplewood shop hosted an event and merchandise release with New York City-based streetwear company Mishka and St. Louis-based streetwear shop SwedLife – an example of collaboration based on culture and community, as opposed to one focused on food.

After pausing for a moment, Boehne suggests: “What about a crab-rangoon donut with sweetand-sour glaze or duck-sauce glaze?”

Bockman’s eyes light up. “Let’s do a shrimp po’boy with [someone in the future], and let’s do crab rangoon ourselves this weekend,” he says. “That’ll be fire. We’ll serve them in boats. They’d be dope in a boat. Sauce on the side.”

Smale pitches in here and there, but stays mostly quiet until the meeting ends. In just a year, he and Bockman have taken an idea and built it way beyond even their own expectations, and now they’re watching a talented group of people help them move it forward. As the meeting draws to a close and go-karts whip loudly around the nearby track, Smale stands up and announces the team’s next adventure.

“Let’s race some cars,” he says. “And the winner gets a medal.”

Strange Donuts, 2709 Sutton Blvd., Maplewood, Missouri, and 107½ E. Argonne Drive, Kirkwood, Missouri; Strange Trap Kitchen, 4659 Maryland Ave. (inside Brennan’s), Central West End, St. Louis, Missouri; 314.932.5851, strangedonuts.com

Go behind the scenes with the Strange team at Strange Trap Kitchen in St. Louis in the January episode of Feast TV.

Smale (top left), Boehne and Bockman outside the flagship Strange Donuts location in Maplewood.

PICTURED (art): Frederick James

Brown, 110 paintings from the History of Art series, 1999/2001, dimensions and media vary. Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, gift of the William T. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee, 1999.20.1-110, 2001.1.1-2, Š Frederick J. Brown Trust.

TasTemakers roundTable eDITeD By Liz Miller AND Catherine Neville eveNT DATe: Mon., Nov. 10

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TRANsCRIPTION By Matt Duchesne

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PhOTOGRAPhy By Landon Vonderschmidt

LOCATION: Café Sebastienne at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art,

4420 WARWICK BLvD., NORTh PLAzA, KANsAs CITy, MIssOuRI, 816.561.7740, KeMPeRART.ORG/CAFe

|

CATeReD By Jennifer Maloney, exeCuTIve CheF, CAFé seBAsTIeNNe

GuesT lIsT ryan brazeal

Novel, 815 W. 17th St., Westside, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.221.0785, novelkc.com

mIchael corvIno

The American Restaurant, 200 E. 25th St. #400, Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.545.8001, theamericankc.com

colby GarrelTs

Bluestem, 900 Westport Road, Westport, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.561.1101, bluestemkc.com Rye, 10551 Mission Road, Leawood, Kansas, 913.642.5800, ryekc.com

debbIe Gold

Chef Debbie Gold is currently in the process of developing her next project.

JonaThan JusTus

Justus Drugstore, 106 W. Main St., Smithville, Missouri, 816.532.2300, drugstorerestaurant.com

caTherIne nevIlle

Publisher, Feast Magazine

PaTrIck ryan

Port Fonda, 4141 Pennsylvania Ave., Westport, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.216.6462, portfondakc.com

celIna TIo

Julian, 6227 Brookside Plaza, Brookside, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.214.8454, juliankc.com Collection and The Belfry, 1532 Grand Blvd. (The Belfry entrance is on 16th Street), Crossroads Arts District, Kansas City, Missouri, 816.471.7111, facebook.com/thebelfrylounge and facebook.com/collectionrestaurant

chef-owners across The kansas cITy culInary sPecTrum GaTher To dIscuss The scene and where IT’s GoInG In 2015.

Catherine neville: Today, I want to really

dig into where the Kansas City restaurant industry is headed, what the foundation of the industry is and how you can create success in the community. The first thing I want everybody to do is to introduce yourselves and your work, and give us a quick snapshot of the feel of your restaurant and the food and drink that you serve.

Debbie GolD: My name’s Debbie Gold, and

right now I’m in between projects.

Celina tio: Celina Tio. Julian in Brookside and

Collection and The Belfry at the Crossroads [Arts District]. Julian focuses on feel-good food, and The Belfry focuses on craft beer, bourbon and chef-driven bar food.

Jonathan Justus: I’m Jonathan Justus of

Justus Drugstore. We’re doing food that is

culturally and geographically about [Kansas City] – using the whole animal; wild, foraged products; and lovely [locally] grown products. ryan brazeal: My name’s Ryan Brazeal. I

work at Novel restaurant on the Westside of Kansas City. It’s a pretty intimate restaurant; we change the menu quite frequently, work with a lot of local producers and try to do innovative Midwestern cuisine – food that evokes memories and creates an experience for guests.

Colby Garrelts: I’m Colby Garrelts. I have Bluestem in Westport, where we focus on American fine dining, and then Rye out in Leawood [Kansas], where we basically focus on Midwest comfort food.

PatriCk ryan: I’ve got Port Fonda in Westport. We do Mexican food and Mexican

drinks focusing on tequila and mezcal.

MiChael Corvino: I’m at The American [Restaurant] in Crown Center, and I’m doing progressive fine dining. neville: One of the things I noted as you were

coming in is that you all know one another and you’re obviously very friendly with one PICTURED ABOVE LEFT: Chef Jennifer Maloney prepares lunch for the roundtable in the kitchen at Café Sebastienne at the Kemper.

PICTURED ABOVE RIGHT (ART): Matthew Ritchie, “Experienced Time,” 2003, enamel on Sintra and vinyl, 102-by-384½ inches.

Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, museum purchase, Enid and Crosby Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004.9, © Matthew Ritchie.

Inspired Local Food Culture

JANUARY 2015

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another. Can you talk about the role that a sense of community plays in the Kansas City restaurant scene, and how you interact with one another?

Brazeal: I’ll field this one because I was one of the latecomers to the Kansas City restaurant scene. I worked here for a little while, and then moved away and then came back, and everybody was so welcoming and helped me so much to introduce me to other contemporary chefs and helped me find the purveyors and the local producers that we use. I was doing an interview a while back, and somebody asked, “What is it that sets the Kansas City food scene apart from other food scenes?” I didn’t really have anything to say; at the time I couldn’t come up with a good sound bite, but later on I was thinking about it and said, “You know what, it really is the community.” Mike [Corvino] and I ate at Pat’s restaurant [Port Fonda] last night. We all frequent [one another’s] establishments, we all hang out together on our days off and the sense of community and camaraderie in the way everybody works together to promote the common good, I think it’s really special here, and I haven’t seen it in other markets. ryaN: When I grew up and was cooking here, it almost felt like you had to leave – like there weren’t enough good places for everybody to work at. I think that’s why a lot of us left and came back and why it is so fun for us to cultivate this food and beverage scene here, in our community, because we’re appreciative of it now. It’s really cool.

I thInk It all goes back to food memorIes and thIngs you’re comfortable wIth. - Ryan Brazeal

PICTURED TOP RIGHT:

Chef Jennifer Maloney’s shaved Brussels sprout salad with kale, dried cranberries and almonds. PICTURED abOvE: Ryan Brazeal, chef-owner of Novel.

Garrelts: I also think [Kansas City] is a really big small town, and everyone’s got to play nice. And they do because there’s only so much to go around; there’s only so many diners in this town. You can tell by the size of the restaurant scene in St. Louis that it’s similar. It’s competitive, but it’s healthy.

Gold: To go on what [Colby] said, and sort of opposite of Ryan [Brazeal], being the one who has been in

this town the longest as a chef, we’re not a cutthroat competition; we’re a friendly competition. I think we all know how hard the business is, and it’s about supporting [one another] because we are working so hard, and it’s about wanting everybody to succeed. It’s about what can I do to help you get there because in turn it will come back. tio: It helps the whole city and the whole food scene in general.

Neville: Speaking of the city and the food scene in general, what role do you think a thriving, independent food scene plays in the overall health and the life of a city?

Garrelts: I think Kansas City has a big chip on its shoulder, just the culture of it in general. I think everyone who lives here or is from here, we all kind of fight that tooth and nail, and I think it makes us bring our A-game constantly. Because we are constantly trying to be recognized, we are constantly trying to be noticed, and I think that chip is kind of a healthy thing.

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Ryan: To me, the more [places] and the better places we have also educates the diners in Kansas City, so in turn they kind of expect more and want more out of the places that do open.

It’s a great feeling for all of us that want to do the best that we can, where[as] 10 and 20 years ago – not that I was here at that time, but I ate out as a kid – people wanted to dumb it down, and now people don’t want that at all. neville: Patrick, I thought it was interesting when you said that you previously felt that chefs had to move away in order to have interesting careers – like there wasn’t necessarily enough volume of diners who were interested in these types of restaurants.

Gold: But it’s not about the diners. I mean,

it is to a certain point because I was the one saying “Go ahead and go,” and I think actually, nationally, the climate has changed in the U.S. There weren’t enough people in Kansas City to learn from, and as [Patrick] was about to say, it was very incestuous. You could tell [who] the chef of a restaurant [had] worked for beforehand by [his or her] food. So to go off and find different ways of cooking and styles and techniques, and then bring it back to Kansas City, it helped grow the field and helped grow the creative level of what we can do. neville: How do you educate the diner? How do you develop a critical mass of people who are interested in that kind of dining experience?

GaRRelts: I think there’s a little bit of figuring it out, too. You have to figure out what you can and can’t do. I had to figure out for a long time, at Bluestem in particular, because of our price point; I couldn’t go too far out of the box. I couldn’t serve a lot of offal, a lot of things [like] that, because the people who are spending that kind of money want premium cuts, they want a premium experience and they don’t want to have to think when they eat. It’s one of those things, too; it just boils down to understanding your market and what to do with it, essentially.

dessert first

neville: I hear what you’re saying, but at the same time you’re saying that the diner has changed. It’s kind of like the chicken-and-egg scenario because if the diner isn’t exposed to a challenging culinary experience, they’ll never be seeking that out.

GaRRelts: Oh, absolutely.

Ryan: Many people in Kansas City have a little

bit of disposable income to travel a bit. These people go to larger cities, and they eat at great places, have drinks at great places. They come back here, and there’s no reason our public won’t accept exactly what all of those places are trying to do. I think for me, you do have to try to open up great places. It’s not really about the education, but it is about the offering – doing something cool, unique and different that hasn’t existed here. In a way, education might not be the right word, but it is.

Join Girl Scouts at Dessert First, where chefs transform Girl Scout Cookies into delicious desserts and guests vote for their favorite.

February 26, 2015 at the Chase Park Plaza girlscoutsem.org/dessertfirst Crawford Taylor Foundation

neville: When you’re talking about opening Gold: The Food Network has done that; I’ll tell you that much. Seriously, it has. But it’s from day one in Kansas City really, in my opinion. It’s all marketing on your menu. It’s how you write the items on your menu so you don’t scare people, in a sense. And when they become comfortable and they go to your restaurants and they trust your food, then they’re willing to experiment because they know whatever they’ve eaten with you has always been good. So if you want to try something a little bit different or what you think is crazy, you’re going to do it with one of the chefs in town you trust. neville: Do you find the same thing at The

American, Michael [Corvino]?

CoRvino: I’ve always kind of said that my job isn’t

to educate people; it’s to feed people, so I think I can’t teach each individual diner about something different that I’m doing. It’s how I was embraced in this community a year ago; it’s the more restaurants doing better food with better quality ingredients, doing more fun things with them, the more people are going to start getting business.

Justus: I think we’re almost approaching this in a rear-end way because the question originally said, “What do you feel the restaurant scene can do for Kansas City?” I mean you look almost anywhere, the first thing that happens when a neighborhood becomes, maybe industrial into something hip, it’s always the restaurant. It’s always the first thing that comes in. You don’t really have to educate the public to give them something good. No matter what it is, if they’re not familiar with it, you may have some backlash, but if it’s good, people are going to accept it, and it happens organically. It’s not really an education process other than people saying, “Hey you know, I didn’t think I’d like this – heart, brains, whatever – but this is damn tasty.”

places that are cool and different, when you were creating the concept for your restaurant, sitting down and saying, “This is what I want to offer people,” how did you determine what that would be? Were you looking for what inspired you, specifically? Or were you looking for opportunities and holes in the market?

GaRRelts: I look at my father because he’s the perfect age group; he’s the guy with the money.

And that was one of the reasons I opened Rye. I grew up eating fried chicken and barbecue. That was my world. I looked at him one afternoon, and I was like, “This is what I need to do.” Because that’s how I cooked at home, it’s how I’ve always cooked at home, and the fine dining part was as much of my education as what I sought after, and then we just turned around and did what we knew.

Ryan: And this is why it’s cool to get together

because Colby and I are really great friends, and I love his restaurants. And when I started opening up Port Fonda, I wanted to open a place that I liked, that was just for me. That way I figured if it failed, if it sucked or went out of business, at least I could look myself in the mirror and say I gave it a shot; I tried to gear a place just for me. Luckily for me, I’m the target market for what a lot of cooks and chefs like to do. So it works for me I guess.

Gold: [Catherine], you asked if we are looking for

holes in the market. In my opinion, I think we are all cooking food we like to eat ourselves because that’s the passion behind what you do: You’re making something and you go, “Oh my god that looks so good.” But I have to say, in Kansas City we’re such a young culinary market. There’s so much room to grow, and at this point it’s not really about what concept you want to do, but it’s about what food you want to work with next.

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GarrelTs: I think really young cooks – and I’m guilty of this [but] I don’t do it any more – but for a long time in my career, I’d cook food to impress people. And there becomes a huge sense of maturity at some point when you quit doing that. I have young cooks right now who write menu items on the menu, and sometimes I just scratch my head, like, “Who are you trying to impress? I’m sure that it’s good, and we’re going to sit down and taste different textures, but would you sit down with your family and eat this family-style?”

Gold: And they throw in 12 ingredients, or they mix ethnicities.

Neville: I think they call it fusion.

[Everyone laughs] Gold: Well, it’s worse than that.

...the more restaurants doing better food with better quality ingredients, the more people are going to start getting business.

- Michael Corvino

Tio: Actually, I’ve always joked and said you can tell, just by the menu item and description, how old the cook was and if it was a guy or a girl.

Neville: What do you think about the single-word menu descriptions? The fact that people will just say “sorrel” or something like that.

CorviNo: Let’s just say that my menu is very immature.

[Everyone laughs] GarrelTs: No, it’s not. Well when you’re at a certain house, you’ve got to do that. That’s what you’re there to do, actually, is to impress people. You’re at the top of the hill.

Gold: But to answer [Catherine’s] question, I don’t think you have to write every single

thing that’s on a plate. It’s overload, it’s hard to read the menu and people get lost in the menu. It’s a balance because part of it is what servers are there for, part of their job is to help people through the menu and help people understand what it is.

Neville: Do you think it also gets back to the idea where [Debbie] said you want the diner to trust you? Where you say, “If you typically like this one single plate, then go with me on this dish.”

GarrelTs: We’ll do that just so I can change preparations and not have to change the menu 90 times.

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Gold: But also, simplicity says a lot.

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Garrelts: I think the issue is there are a lot of restaurants [that] call themselves Italian, and then they’ve got ahi tuna tacos on the menu.

Brazeal: I think it all goes back to food memories and things you’re comfortable with. Because on my menu I’ve got a dish that leans toward Asian, one that leans toward [French], but it’s all based on something I had as a child or familiar flavors that people are comfortable with. You see these young cooks, like [Colby is] talking about, doing blueberries and crab on pasta. And you’re like, “Yeah maybe it does taste good.” Maybe this will be a winner – and you’ve got to put yourself out there and try new things – but if you base it off historical flavors and timeless classics and you give it your right turn, your twist or your signature or something, that’s what makes it approachable, familiar and good. That’s always something I look for when I conceptualize a dish; it always goes back to something I ate, even if it wasn’t as a child. I didn’t eat a lot of Thai food as a child, but I have as an adult, and I think a lot of other people have, too. They’re familiar and comfortable with these ingredients now, and that’s why America is a melting pot. I think that’s why it’s so hard to really pin down Midwestern cuisine because I know that when I was growing up, so much of it came out of old cooking magazines or the Joy of Cooking, which were great, but it was introducing the Midwest and the rest of America to food from these other cultures that now have become part of our lifestyle.

Neville: I think you can look at the evolution of the American idea of what a taco is as a good example. The American idea of a taco used to be those hard shells with ground beef, Cheddar cheese and shredded lettuce. Now

PICTURED LEFT: Chef Debbie Gold. PICTURED bELow: Chef Maloney’s roasted spaghetti squash with blisterd cherry tomatoes, spicy greens and chile flakes.

... it’s about wanting everybody to succeed. it’s about what can i do to help you get there because in turn it will come back.

- Debbie Gold

it’s one of those things too; it just boils down to understanding your market and what to do with it, essentially.

- Colby Garrelts

PICTURED abovE: Colby Garrelts, chef-owner of Bluestem in Kansas City and Rye in Leawood, Kansas.

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we’ve come to understand that an actual authentic taco is something completely different. But how did that education happen? How do you guys see that, as the people who are giving diners those foods and introducing them to things they’re unfamiliar with?

Gold: Food evolves; that’s why. From the beginning of time, food has evolved. I think even if you look

at food from the early 1900s and Escoffier and what he was doing, there’s still a base for, let’s say, Port Fonda’s Mexican, there’s a base of what you do. But is it the same food they were even doing in the 1950s? Somewhat, but it has evolved and slowly moves over time.

Garrelts: I think back in the day, though, when the French culinary landscape ruled dining, you didn’t stray from recipes. Like if you did Escoffier’s crème brûlée, you did Escoffier’s crème brûlée. That was a big thing. I think there has been a shift, even since I’ve started cooking, because when I first started, it was still a little bit like that. And then American chefs started finding their own voices. I think the access to information is a huge thing. I remember not knowing what went on in the kitchen of Charlie Trotter’s, or what went on in the kitchen at Joël Robuchon, unless you bought a book.

Ryan: Yeah, some of the best restaurants in the country, the only thing you could ever know about them is if one of your friends or family members [went] there and [brought] back a menu. Now you can watch YouTube videos of every single thing they do.

Justus: There’s a term we haven’t used here, a term that gets thrown around a lot, and it’s really important to me: sustainability. Corporate restaurants don’t give a s*** about sustainability, and we’re ruining and s******* all over everything at a very rapid rate.

GaRRelts: And I think that’s translated to us and to the public.

tio: I think it’s about relationships. I think the butcher shops are coming back because they’re about relationships. Anybody can get a cut of meat; you could go to Cosentino’s [Food Stores in Kansas City], and you could have them order anything. If you want a piece of wagyu, and you go to McGonigle’s [Market], they’re going to get it for you, but you’re going to get it at Cosentino’s, too.

They’re a big chain. But I think [with] people now, you can’t just have OK service and OK food, or even above-average food and above-average service.

You need to give somebody something other than that. And I think the mom-and-pop or our small local restaurants are giving people a face, a conversation, a relationship, that brings them back. Butcher shops, back in the day, they were relationships.

Ryan: And it’s not bad, but there’s also a bunch of young, super dips*** kids who can watch videos on YouTube at all of these different restaurants and watch all these techniques from Noma, or wherever. There’s some super unrealistic comfort [with it] – like they get really comfortable feeling like they know it or they’ve been there, when really they probably can’t cook a family meal properly.

GaRRelts: You used to [need] someone [to] teach you how to butcher something, and now you can watch it on YouTube. neville: That kind of leads into the idea of trends.

I’m not a big fan of trends, but I do think that what we’re seeing is a movement toward local butcher shops and the craft of that. What do you guys see as where the industry is going now? We’ve talked about the fact that [when] people are looking for more authentic experiences and are much more educated, they understand things better.

GaRRelts: I think things like those butcher shops and stuff are here to stay. It’s kind of like the farm-to-table movement; no one will ever take that out of their mouths anymore because that’s the way it’s obviously supposed to be.

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having problems because if you notice, a lot of the places that are opening up now are trying to say housemade, hand-crafted. It’s the passion that it evokes, and I think the corporate group blew up so big because after the little butcher shops and the little sandwich shops went away, it was all mass-produced, the standard was mediocre and everybody was OK with a mediocre standard. Now, mediocre isn’t OK anymore so that’s why corporate people are trying to figure out, “How do we do what we do and keep our standards and our bottom line where we want it to be [but] not be mediocre?”

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CoRvino: I think it goes back to when we were Justus: You know I think it is going two directions

at once, and very, very rapidly. Craft is becoming more craft – I mean think about 10 years ago, there wasn’t craft anything – and 15 years ago even less so. I mean who was doing house charcuterie 15 years ago in this country? Look at who is now. At the same time, in the other direction, it’s becoming more corporate and more homogenous. It’s pushing in those two directions at once, and then very, very rapidly on both ends.

GaRRelts: I do feel like the corporate sides of

restaurants are definitely challenged now. In markets of this size – back when I worked with Debbie – corporate restaurants ruled this town.

What’s crazy is 30 years before that it was momand-pop diners on every corner, and then corporate restaurants came in, and that [all] got flushed down the toilet. And now I think you’re seeing a resurgence, and I don’t think it’s going to go away. neville: I think it’s a reaction to the corporate restaurants. And it’s almost like now you have these two very different sides of dining. I don’t know if the corporate restaurant is going away, but…

GaRRelts: It’s definitely taking a hit.

Ryan: I don’t feel bad saying there’s a lot you can

learn from corporate restaurants. It’s good to make money; it’s good to have structure; it’s good to have systems, food cost, all that kind of stuff. But then it’s also cool to have fun in a relevant restaurant.

BRazeal: But it’s also nice to not have to fill out a form to take a day off. Or if I need some spices, I don’t have to requisition it.

talking about educating the people and the guests and them wanting to eat better food. It won’t happen overnight, but if the people going to Seasons 52 and McCormick & Schmick’s [Seafood & Steaks] on [Country Club] Plaza – I’ve never eaten there, but I’m going to guess it’s pretty generic and it’s not as good of quality as the things we bring in – well they do a thousand covers a night on weekends. If [guests] want to pay a little bit more – or in a lot of cases, the same – and eat at our restaurants, [for something] not so generic and better quality and more interesting…

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tio: And in some cases, you pay less, way less.

CoRvino: Exactly. There would become more of

us, and those places could go away.

BRazeal: I think we all do our part by purchasing from the local farmers. Maybe it costs a little bit more than buying the precut onions, and maybe it’s a little bit harder to clean because there’s real dirt on the bottom of it, and they’re not all uniform, but we do our part to create a demand, and the supply will eventually come up – it’s the laws of economics. We create a demand and the supply presents itself, prices go down, you have more choices, more opportunities for other people to do it, and then some of these other restaurants look at what we’re doing and say, “Hey, listen, we could do this, too.” Maybe it’s on a different scale, maybe it’s kind of a different restaurant, but to support Midwestern producers and in turn create a unique culinary scene here. neville: How do you seek out those producers? Do

you go to their farms, or do they come to you?

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GaRRelts: They come to us. That’s the best thing about Kansas City. When I lived in Chicago or Los Angeles, it’s like you had to call someone. Here, they come to your back door. It’s awesome. When Thane [Palmberg Farm] started out years ago, he’d just pull up in the back with bushel baskets and say, “What you do you want?” He picked it, he weighed it and you paid him. That was great.

Gold: Back to what Ryan was saying with the farmers, I think another reason why we are

becoming more successful as an independent group is we bring a sense of community to the whole situation. We are supporting the community, not going outside, for the most part, for a big percentage of what we do and what we make. There’s a percentage of what we make that we can’t get in Kansas City because we’re landlocked, so if you want good fish, you have to go outside of Kansas City to get it. neville: I think your larger point is that sense of community and connection, and diners who are drawn to your restaurants are responding to it. They’re seeking it out. They don’t want generic, boring canned green beans.

Gold: Right. And it was a smaller percentage of the demographic, and I think since,

especially since 2008, the landscape has changed.

There are so many concepTs or niches in our markeT ThaT we have space for, and i wanT personally To be able To go To Those places.

- Patrick Ryan

Ryan: I think that’s true to a certain extent, speaking mostly about what’s happening here in the urban core or in Kansas City. Like Jonathan’s place [Justus Drugstore in Smithville, Missouri] is different and awesome because of where it is, but if you go to the suburbs farther out south, they’re not looking for something super different.

PICTURED TOP RIGHT:

Patrick Ryan, chefowner of Port Fonda.

PICTURED bOTTOm lEfT:

Chef Maloney’s poblanoroasted butternut squash and turnips.

Gold: On the weekends they are.

[Everyone laughs] neville: So what happened in 2008?

Gold: Well it’s when the economy sort of hit bottom. I think the first change was the war in

Iraq; that was a big one, and in 2008 when the economy changed, expectations and what people could afford changed: the whole idea of getting quality product at a more affordable or a different level of what you have to pay for. So what I said with what’s going on with the corporate restaurant thing is that people still want really good food, and since 2008, it has changed – what they can afford to pay for that. neville: What you guys are offering is kind of a bespoke experience at your restaurants.

You can only get it in your individual restaurants. I think there’s a big shift in what people are seeking out in that food is almost a form of entertainment now. You’ll spend the entire evening dining; that’ll be what you do for the evening as opposed to saying, “Let’s go grab a quick bite to eat, and then let’s go to the show.” Now they say, “Let’s sit down and have a twohour meal,” or whatever. I think the way people are seeing food as being part of their lives is shifting. I think people put more value in quality. They’re willing to pay more for food because they understand that they’re paying for the relationship with the farmer, with the producer.

Ryan: I think that experience is probably at individual places. People are OK with that two or three-hour experience with that individual place. But people here also seem a lot more comfortable with bouncing around a little bit more, like having one thing at one place and

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Inspired Local Food Culture

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moving to another. That’s why I love being in Westport because there’s so much going on. neville: How have you guys seen Kansas City change over the past 10 years? I know Westport has changed quite a bit, and I think the restaurant scene has been a big part of that. How do you see the restaurant scene feeding into the growth of the city?

GaRRelts: I think there are a lot more restaurants.

Gold: Well there’s that, but I’m going to tell you, when us independent people look for

spaces, a lot of it is about affordability. We’re not going to go into a space that we can’t figure out how to make money in. This is not any unique situation to Kansas City – you tend to go to neighborhoods that are not as traversed. neville: That’s the same for artists who are looking for space; it’s very similar. It’s like, you want to do this work…

Gold: It’s like the start of gastropubs; that’s what they were doing. They wanted to do really good food, but they couldn’t afford to be in the high-rent district, so they found a little neighborhood and they opened up a pub that did really good food. I think, for [Patrick] in Westport, that worked out perfectly. He can open a place that he could afford, make money and do really [well].

There’s a Term we haven’T used here, a Term ThaT geTs Thrown around a loT, and iT’s really imporTanT To me: susTainabiliTy. - Jonathan Justus

PICTURED TOP RIGHT: Jonathan

Justus, chef-owner of Justus Drugstore in Smithville, Missouri. PICTURED AbOvE CEnTER: Chef Maloney’s grilled maple-brined heritage pork loin served with pear-ginger chutney. PICTURED RIGHT: Celina Tio, chef-owner of Julian and Collection and The Belfry.

Ryan: People ask me how it has changed. If you would’ve asked me 10 years ago – everything from like Green Dirt Farm dinners to the resurgence of The American and different places I’ve opened up – if you had asked me 10 years ago if those places would have succeeded or would’ve been successful, I would’ve said no way. I wouldn’t have been trying to be an a**hole about it; I just don’t see it happening. But now, I firmly believe – and this is why I love the city so much – right now I think anything is possible. It sounds stupid and corny, but if you have a really good idea, and you’re going to try hard and become a part of the community, I think you can do whatever you want. There are so many concepts or niches in our market that we have space for, and I want, personally, to be able to go to those places. You can do whatever you want here.

Gold: I agree. And 10, 15, 20 years ago there wasn’t enough support for the independent

restaurant; there was not enough understanding, so there was a learning curve at that point because that’s when I came here. It has changed.

GaRRelts: I think there’s a really dangerous thing involved in that, too, because I see – and

I’ve seen it for 10 years – that there are a lot of restaurants in this town that are very similar with different people.

i Think our small local resTauranTs are giving people a face, a conversaTion, a relaTionship, ThaT brings Them back.

- Celina Tio

Ryan: And that’s one thing I think we need more of: more diversity, more ethnic types of places.

Justus: I was in San Francisco for nearly 20 years, and I think about Indian food. You go to an Indian restaurant [in Kansas City], and it’s southern, it’s northern, Pakistani, all rolled into one, and it’s pretty generic. And there’s coastal, there’s inland, just as one example.

GaRRelts: And part of that goes back to education for the public.

CoRvino: It’s like we have Mexican and hipster Mexican.

Justus: And yet when I was growing up here, there was the taco meat, and the sauce

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was always the local brand, it’s called Spanish Gardens, and the cheese was powdered Kraft Parmesan, and if you went out to a restaurant or you ate at home, that’s what you had.

Tio: Julian just turned five, and there are probably 20 other restaurants that the Julian guest goes to today that didn’t exist five years ago. And that’s substantial growth.

always just a ghost town at night. And you see the county lines moving farther and farther south and north across the river; you say, “Hey why can’t we do something to revitalize Downtown and make it a destination, and have people come down here and fill up these apartments?” And obviously that’s more than one restaurant can do. But if we all do our small part and support these small microeconomies, we can make something happen.

We can create an environment of change.

Neville: Where do you see holes in the industry?

CorviNo: Well they’re working on it. It’s not Brazeal: Downtown, The Plaza, local independent-

operated restaurants in these giant hubs. ryaN: Honestly we’re probably 5 percent of where we should be or probably could be in 10, 15, 20 years. There will be a ton of people coming back here, opening up and then going back out of business because it’s just not good.

GarrelTs: I feel it when places open. You can tell; you can see their trajectory.

fast, but construction has been going since I came here. They’re taking that road and making it walkable and making a bike path and not four lanes where fast traffic goes through the Crossroads.

Gold: They won’t give an independent person a

decent deal.

Brazeal: Well they will once nobody else is going

to make it there.

JusTus: The relationship between the city and

the restaurants and the suburbs are all about to change. I live out where the restaurant is. It used to be agrarian; it’s a bedroom community now, and everything surrounding us has changed.

Everything. We are the only independent restaurant, serving real food anyway, remotely around us within two counties. As people are moving more and more into the city… you know white flight in the ‘50s, it was all about race. As people are kind of moving back, [it’s] a different demographic – and that demographic is willing to support independent restaurants much more readily than people that are going to live out in the suburbs. As the city develops, hopefully more and more in that way, there will be more room for independent restaurants. If you go up to St. [Joseph], there are 80,000 people up there.

There’s not a single dining… there’s nothing.

GarrelTs: There’s a reason why that is, it’s

obvious, otherwise one of us would’ve done something by now. I truly believe in density, and we just do not have density here. If you go to Chicago and open something that is almost subpar and a letdown, you will get crushed. There are so many people there.

than it has ever before. I mean I drive around from south Westport to North Plaza, [and] there’s two to three new hotels and condo buildings going up.

Brazeal: And Downtown, that’s why it was

important for me to open up something Downtown. I grew up skateboarding [there], and my parents worked in the Bottoms, and it was

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GarrelTs: I grew up out there. The whole

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#17373 ryaN: It was really cool to come back to Kansas

City and operate a business here because it makes a lot of sense for me. I know the people that are here; I understand the culture and the attitudes and things like that. I bet Port Fonda could translate into a lot of other markets, but I would have no idea what to do in Miami or Boston; I’m not that guy. So I love being here; it’s been a really, really great experience for me to come back home and [not only] do something really fun for me personally, but also give the city something I think is relevant to our whole scene.

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we opened Bluestem, we were children; we had no idea what we were doing. I’m lucky I’m sitting here at this point because we did about everything wrong that we could’ve done wrong. To me now, even though we just gutted it and remodeled it, Bluestem is definitely a snapshot of my career. That’s who I was in that time. I think as you grow, as you grow as a chef and as you grow as an operator, you start to really figure out who you are when you can sit in it for awhile. You start to realize who you are as a chef.

the food industry was at that time, in 10 years. Like I said, 2008 changed the whole playing field.

GarrelTs: I think fine dining, and this whole industry, is very cyclical. I know fine dining will come back, it just does.

Gold: But it’s a different definition. The definition

of fine dining has changed completely.

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GarrelTs: We had been in other cities, and when

Gold: But Bluestem was also a reflection of where ryaN: I think Kansas City is growing faster now

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Tio: I’m still waiting on Grand [Street]; [for them]

Neville: Colby [Garrelts], you opened Rye Brazeal: There’s a market share. But there’s also room for a lot of other, you know with [Kansas City’s] Power and Light [District], the infrastructure is there, but it’s a bunch of generic franchises that are turning over. And I’d love to see a really great independent, locally owned steakhouse; somewhere where the money is recirculated into the economy.

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Corvino: It’s already coming back; it’s just more casually influenced.

Garrelts: I think the fluff is what people are turned off by. The layers and layers of china.

Justus: The pomp and circumstance. ryan: But that will probably come back at some point.

Garrelts: There is a restaurant here in town that will remain nameless, but they are one of the most expensive restaurants in this town, and the place is crazy. It’s not very clean. They get away with the prices they’re doing because the place is so worn-in; it’s so comfortable that people almost don’t think about the prices.

neville: Celina [Tio], you opened a craft beer and bourbon bar, The Belfry. Talk about the different sides of what you’re doing with Julian and now with Collection and The Belfry. Were those different sides of your personality, or were you looking for something a little bit different? tio: I guess it’s a little bit of both. When you PICTURED ToP LEFT: Three of chef

Maloney’s courses plated together: shaved Brussels sprout salad, grilled maple-brined heritage pork loin with pear-ginger chutney and poblanoroasted butternut squash and turnips.

JOIN US!

inspired by the tastemakers roundtable, Feast is hosting a panel discussion with Kansas City chefs at the Kemper for a night of food, drink and conversation on Mon., Jan. 26 from 6 to 8pm. visit the events section of feastmagazine.com for pricing and ticket information.

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grow up in the fine dining world, everything is about wine, although I’ve been drinking [beer] – I remember when I [lived] in Philadelphia, I was looking forward to visiting my friend in San Francisco; I was like I’ll get Anchor Steam [Beer] there; I was excited. Oddly, I couldn’t find any of it on draft anywhere in San Francisco; I guess they sent it all to Pennsylvania – so I’ve always been into beer, and I’ve always been drinking bourbon. Bourbon was one of those after college, “What was going to be my spirit of choice when I go out to dinner or something?” So [The Belfry] ended up being that and a love affair of beer and bourbon.

There are a lot of great craft beer places in town, and I think Kansas City does it really well for being the size that we are. I wanted to be a part of that, and I didn’t think there were tons [of places] doing the food side as well. If you’re spending upwards of $50 on a 750-millileter bottle of beer, shouldn’t the food kind of match that? That’s what I was going for. neville: I’m kind of curious where you all see the Midwest food-and-drink scene headed. Do you see collaboration between chefs in other cities?

ryan: We just had a dinner with chef Cary Taylor from Big Star in Chicago last night.

Facebook post how sweet Kansas City is all the time. I’ll just link articles.

Garrelts: I know all the boys in St. Louis,

Gold: I think there’s a long history of Kansas

and I go to New Orleans with them and compete in barbecue competitions. We’re doing kind of a collaboration series with people right now in Kansas City, and then we’re probably going to try to do something with the St. Louis guys. You guys [including Debbie] set the precedent years ago at The American, back when that wasn’t always as big of a deal as it [is] now.

City actually doing really good food. If you think about it, the barbecue in this city is actually one of the first cuisines in Kansas City that we cared about and had passion for.

Kansas City got known for barbecue.

Garrelts: You talk to anyone on a plane flying here, [who’s] not from here, that’s the first thing [he or she] talks about.

ryan: I think when you’re first here, you’re so proud, and you’re so great at championing your city. I think you get to a point where you just kind of put your head down and do what you do, and the attention kind of comes. If you do great stuff, the attention is there. I feel like 2015 is the year of me not having to

Justus: [Barbecue] is the one real tradition [in Kansas City]. [At] the opening of the Hannibal Bridge [in 1869] and the centennial of the country, they fed 40,000 people [barbecue]. There is more lineage and [barbecue] tradition here by far, more than any other city in this country.

Go behind the scenes at Café sebastienne at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary art in Kansas City to watch the tastemakers roundtable in the January episode of Feast TV.

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A HOLE LOT OF GOODNESS. Baked or fried, powdered or studded with sprinkles, donuts make satisfying sweet and savory treats. This month, we invited our Instagram followers to share photos of the donuts they were devouring – whether a classic glazed served with a piping-hot cup of coffee for breakfast or one piled high with ingredients for a late-night snack – by tagging photos with the hashtag #feastgram. For a closer look at creative donuts, turn to p. 68, where we explore the growth of St. Louis-based Strange Donuts during its first year in business. If you’d rather save the donuts for dessert, find a rich breakfast recipe for cheese quiche with a flaky butter crust by Pint Size Bakery’s Christy Augustin on p. 50.

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| 1 | Colton BrandenBurg @coltooonn Ever love something so much it #Hurts? #HurtsDonuts #Donuts #Amazing #Delicious | 2 | VinCent Van doughnut @vincentvandoughnut Boozy eggnog-creme brulee filled bismark with eggnog glaze and shaved almonds #HandmadeFromScratch

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| 3 | jordyn gehret @jordyngehret @StrangeDonuts Making morning meetings better

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| 4 | liBBy FieldS @libbyfields some days donuts are essential #JohnsSpaceAgeDonuts | 5 | julie Weldele @julesabeth New dessert @ScapeSTL coffee ‘n donuts: sugared coffee donuts with glazed donut gelato and Kahlua-coffee reduction #DessertFirst #Donuts |5|

| 6 | real red Faux

@realredfaux Pretzel doughzel holes with #Schlafly black beer caramel sauce = massive win.

| 7 | Sean o’dell @dadofmojo My new favorite donut place. I stopped to take a picture of the awesome sign and got a fried pie for 99 cents. Now I’m trying to figure out when I’ll be able to go back. | 8 | Suzanne VarugheSe @suzannevarughese If you need me, I’ll be here. Forever #HurtsDonuts | 9 | Meredith SChulte @mmschulte Tank 7 Donuts #WestportAleHouse | 10 | patriCk deVine @patrickdevine Pumpkin Spice Faux-Nut from @ChouquetteSTL #Fauxnut #Donut #Pastry #StLouis

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Want to see your photos in the February issue of Feast?

Next month our focus turns to chocolate, and we want to see the treats you’re making at home and buying from your favorite local shops – whether topped with sea salt or baked into flaky croissants. To submit your photos for consideration, simply include the hashtag #feastgram and tag @feastmag on your Instagram photos beginning Thu., Jan. 1.

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PHoTogrAPHy CourTESy oF Instagram users

#feastgram

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Wine Excellence!

Whether you’re looking for a wine to serve or to cellar,our world-class selection rivals any specialty shop. Shop our fabulous wines and save when you buy six 750 ml bottles. We also offer special wine pricing every Wednesday, or as we like to call it Winesday. Mix and match, it’s up to you!

Certified Specialists of Wine We have more Certified Specialists of Wine (CSW) than any local grocer. They’ll be happy to help you find some truly wonderful wines!

For our list of CSWs and locations, look inside Feast magazine or visit schnucks.com

Savor the Date!

Jan. 24-25, 2015 The Chase Park Plaza Hotel One-Day Admission Tickets on sale at most Schnucks Courtesy Centers. For more information, visit repstl.org

Presented by Schnucks

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