the hot list
Best Local Farm
New Roots Urban Farm Feeding bodies and spirits is a lofty goal, one these farmers accomplish by getting their hands dirty. Their garden produces hundreds of pounds of produce a year, some to sell, some to donate back to the community. North St. Louis, newrootsurbanfarm.org.
Homegrown
goodies from local producers? It’s posted online: nearly $500,000 (at last count) for meat, fish, veggies, milk, cheese, chocolate, soap, beer, coffee and more. Tower Grove, 314.865.5260.
We love St. Louis because we love to support our local businesses. If only there were a word like “locavore” to describe someone who not only ate food grown within a short distance, but wore local clothes, planted local flowers and washed with local soap. There may not be one word to describe this person, but turns out, St. Louis has plenty of places where a locavore can shop, eat and play.
Best Farmers’ Market
Best Spot to Score Local Designers
314.843.7848
NV Showroom Boutique
Best Farm-to-Fork Destination
Lots of boutiques are passionate about stocking one-of-a-kind items, but this one’s just as passionate about linking Midwest designers to new markets for their clothes, shoes and accessories, both in the store and on the runway. Downtown, 314.932.5382. Best spot to Support Local Goods
Local Harvest Grocery Want to know how much this shop has spent stocking its shelves with foods and alivemag.com
Sappington This grocery store is the first in the area to be owned by a farmers’ cooperative, which means it has a huge stake in linking local, sustainable farmers with St. Louis consumers, more and more of whom are searching out natural foods. Sappington,
Café Osage Bowood Farm’s plants come from its greenhouse in Clarksville, but much of the produce it serves in the café travels an even shorter distance— across the street. Come summer, gardeners continually bring in baskets
of fresh vegetables or herbs from the roof. Central West End , 314.454.6868. Best Locally Sourced Menu
Terrene It’s not that we don’t trust restaurants when they say they buy local, but we like it when they name names: freerange geese from Sassafras Valley Farm, chops from Ozark Mountain Pork Co-op and mushrooms from Ozark Forest. Central West End, 314.535.5100. Best CSA
Winslow’s Home and Farm Because farming’s unpredictable, community-supported agriculture can be a tough row to hoe. Hybrid models like this one, where more than one farm supplies a cooperative or retail store, may be the wave of the future. And the restaurant is irresistible. University City, 314.725.7559.
JUNE 2010 ALIVE STL 69