Saint Louis cuisine

Saint Louis style pizza, cut in squares on a crispy crust, with Provel cheese

Saint Louis cuisine, the food culture of the St. Louis, Missouri area, has a rich history and broad range of influences. It consists most obviously of Italian, German, Irish, and French influences, but includes many essentially American contributions, and many contributions to food nationally, even globally. It has its own unique forms of pizza, barbecue, ravioli, pork, pastries, and more.

History and composition

Saint Louis has a history going back to a French fortress in the 17th century, but its cultural styles are seen as centering most significantly around immigrants from Italy, Germany, and Ireland. Those three cultures immigrated heavily during the city's booming growth to dominance in the 19th century. Oktoberfest, sauerkraut, and bratwurst are still popular, today, as are Irish pubs, and Italian restaurants on The Hill dominate the local culinary topography.

The Joy of Cooking

Considered one of the most popular cookbooks in American history, The Joy of Cooking, was written by Saint Louis native Irma Rombauer, whose charming, fun writing is seen as having taught generations of Americans how to cook.^[1]

Saint Louis foods

A number of foods are specific to or famous as originating in Saint Louis:^[2]

Toasted ravioli

Toasted ravioli, from The Hill

Saint Louis boasts what locals consider some of the best Italian food in the country, in a region known as The Hill. One food that originated there is toasted ravioli, which is much as its name sounds, a kind of ravioli coated in breading and toasted dry or fried, instead of being boiled or baked wet. Credit for its invention is generally given to a restaurant called Oldani's, on The Hill, which is now known as Mama Campisi's.

Saint Louis style pizza

Much is made of "New York style" and "Chicago style" pizza, and the rivalry between them. But an equally unique, and regionally popular, variation is St. Louis–style pizza. Among its unique traits:

• It is cut in squares, not wedges. This better supports the toppings, known as a "tavern cut"
• The crust is thin and crisp, almost like a cracker, made with no yeast, again giving it unusual strength
• Crust strength is a factor, in part, because the toppings are traditionally in much larger pieces, like sliced instead of diced, or large chunks of sausage or hamburger, instead of small bits.
• Uses a unique cheese blend known as Provel, comprised of provolone, Swiss, and white cheddar, intended to allow the eater to bite through easily
• Is seasoned with more oregano (ergo less basil) than typical sauce.

Among the archetypical St Louis style pizza makers are Imo's and Cecil Whittakers.

Provel cheese

Invented specifically for St. Louis style pizza, provel cheese was apparently designed to have "a clean bite", meaning that it could be bitten through without leaving strings between the eater and the slice. It is made of provolone, swiss, and white cheddar cheese, and has a "buttery" texture.

Gooey butter cake

A slice of an atypical contemporary gooey butter cake, flavored with pumpkin, and garnished with whipped cream, instead of powdered sugar

Ostensibly originating with a botched cake recipe in the 1930s, gooey butter cake (or cookies) is a favorite of the region. The cake is flat and dense, made with typical cake ingredients, but is much heavier and moist with butter or cream cheese, ergo "gooey", and dusted with powdered sugar, not iced. It is served more as a snack or coffee cake than a dessert for formal celebrations. Nationally, foodies became aware of this treat when Paula Deen "borrowed" the recipe, publishing it nationally under her own name.

St. Louis–style BBQ

Pork steaks cooking, St. Louis style

Listed by Kingsford as one of the top ten barbecue cities,^[3] St. Louis–style barbecue involves direct grilling rather than indirect heat and smoking, and a larger volume of the style's sweet, sticky, acidic tomato-based sauce. This often anoints two special, St. Louis kinds of meat:

Pork steak

In much of the US, one only has pork chops, ham, bacon, and roasts from the pig. But in St. Louis, perhaps the most common variation is the Pork Steak, a shoulder cut that is slow-cooked until unusually tender, especially if barbecued.

St. Louis–style ribs

St. Louis–style ribs are spare ribs with the sternum bone, cartilage and rib tips removed to create a rectangular-shaped rack. This cut of ribs, formalized by the USDA as "Pork Ribs, St. Louis Style," ostensibly originated with numerous meat-packing plants located in the region in the mid 20th century

Restaurants

Various restaurants in the metropolitan area describe their barbecue as St. Louis–style or offer St. Louis staples such as pork steaks and crispy snoots, including Bandana's BBQ in Sunset Hills, Missouri, Big Mama's BBQ in Belleville, Illinois; Charlotte's Rib, named for a local TV personality, in Ballwin, Missouri; C&K Barbecue; Ms. Piggies' Smokehouse in Maryland Heights, Missouri; Phil's BBQ in Affton, Missouri; Richard's Ribs in Kirkwood, Missouri; Roper's Ribs in Jennings, Missouri; Smoki O's; Super Smokers in Eureka, Missouri; and Uncle Huffy's Barbecue in Lebanon, Illinois; and Wheelans Barbecue Shack in Carlyle, Illinois; Bullys in Columbia, Illinois; and Alan's in South County.

Slinger

Now popular across the midwest, the Slinger is a Saint Louis diner food consisting of two eggs, hash browns, and a hamburger, steak, or other meat, all covered in chili, onions, and cheddar or American cheese.

Gerber sandwich

The Gerber sandwich originated at the locally famous Ruma's Deli. It is an open-faced sandwich, with italian or french bread, garlic butter, ham, and provel cheese. It is sprinkled with paprika and toasted.

Saint Paul sandwich

The St. Paul sandwich originated in Saint Louis in the 1940s. This unique little gem is white bread with an egg foo young patty inside, served with dill pickle, white onion, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato. Its inventor, Steven Yuen at Park Chop Suey in Lafayette Square Saint Louis, named the sandwich after his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota.

Famous contributions

Other foods were originally invented or originating in the St Louis area, but are now integrated into wider cuisine

Saint Louis World's Fair

Festival Hall, at the Saint Louis World's Fair

The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, popularly known as the St. Louis World's Fair, is famous for originating, or more often introducing to the world, a great many foods that have worldwide popularity, today, including:

• The ice cream cone, especially the waffle cone. George Bang, owner of the Bannery Creamery ostensibly ran out of bowls to sell for his ice cream at the fair, and started using rolled up waffles.
• Hot dogs (frankfurters in buns): Anton Ludwig Feuchtwanger, a Bavarian sausage seller, is said to have served sausages in rolls at the World's Fair–either the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago or the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis^[4]–allegedly because the white gloves he gave to customers so that they could eat his hot sausages in comfort began to disappear as souvenirs.^[5]
• Peanut butter: Invented by a St Louis physician as a way of getting protein to elderly people with poor teeth, it was introduced to the world at the fair.^[6]
• Iced tea had existed as a novelty for some years, but became world-famous at the Fair.^[7]
• Machine-spun cotton candy was invented in 1897 by the dentist William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton and first introduced to a wide audience at the 1904 World's Fair as "Fairy Floss"^[8] with great success, selling 68,655 boxes at 25¢ per box (equivalent to $6 per box today).
• The fair also introduced the phrase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away".^[9]
• The hamburger (cooked on a bun, not raw hamburg sausage) gained national recognition at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair when the New York Tribune namelessly attributed the hamburger as, "the innovation of a food vendor on the pike".^[10]

Concrete (Blizzard)

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard in Saint Louis, Missouri, Route 66 location

The local ice cream shop Ted Drewes originated a form of ice cream that was mixed into a sort of "shake" so thick that you could hang a spoon in it, upside-down. This was imitated, years later, by Dairy Queen.^[11]

Mayfair salad dressing

Mayfair salad dressing is anchovy-based, created at Saint Louis's first five star restaurant,^[12] The Mayfair Room, at the Mayfair Hotel, downtown.

See also

• Cuisine of the Midwestern United States
• Cuisine of the United States
• St. Louis World's Fair
• Quad City-style pizza
• Horseshoe sandwich
• Red Hot Riplets

References