Meet St. Louis

Housed in a once vacant and crumbling gas station, Utah Station is breathing new life into a building and a vegan menu. Chef Chris Bertke starting crafting vegan drunk food in his kitchen late at night, now he’s serving up his recipes at the Benton Park restaurant. Opened this summer, Bertke says the menu is inspired by what he wants to eat, tacos, burgers, toasted ravioli, but without meat.

In 1983, Behshid and Hamishe Bahrami opened The Little Kitchen in Downtown St. Louis as a way to support their new baby girl, Natasha. They started out on a convention oven and an electric burner, serving up Persian food for downtown workers. The lines wrapped around the building. In 1993, they opened up the first Café Natasha on Delmar. In 2001, they opened up their third restaurant on South Gran...

At Urban Chestnut, new world meets old world. The nine-year-old brewery, with locations in The Grove and Midtown, has been brewing beer in St. Louis since 2010. Their revolution series is their take on modern American beers, while their reverence series is all about timeless European styles. Brewmaster Florian Kuplent hails from Bavaria. Kuplent and UCBC’s head chef Andrew Fair sat down for an int...

50 years ago, a group of Wash U grad students opened up a book store. It was full of anti-war books, Rolling Stone magazines, and all kinds of reading material that you couldn't find anywhere else. Today, it's St. Louis' biggest independent book store, surviving both the commercial book store boom and bust, and the online (read: Amazon) explosion. Meet St. Louis sat down with Kris Kleindienst and...

Caiti Carrow runs Jasper Paul PR, the hospitably public relations firm representing some of the very best in St. Louis’ food scene. From iNDO, to Retreat, and Yellowbelly, to Schlafly and Nathaniel Reid, their clients aren’t just receiving attention in St. Louis but across the country. Caiti sat down with the Meet St. Louis podcast to talk about the company she started at her kitchen table and how...

Zoe Robinson opened her first restaurant at 23 and she hasn’t stopped. A pioneer in the St. Louis restaurant scene, she has created some of the beautiful spaces in St. Louis, from I Fratellini to Bar Les Freres. Her latest restaurant, the James Beard-nominated Billie Jean, is no exception. For decades she has worked with head chef Ny Vonsaly, helping create restaurants that transport diners to rom...

Jessie Mueller created Rise coffee shop with one idea in mind: a place where all would be welcome. Mueller had never worked in a cafe when she got the idea to open the coffee shop in the Grove back in 2013. Over the years the coffee house has evolved, now serving food, but at its core remains the idea that is a place for the community to gather. Whether that’s for a mom’s group play date, to study...

Smash burgers! Mac's Local Eats took St. Louis by storm with their incredible burgers in 2017, quickly building a reputation for having some of the best food in town. They had a line out the door at lunchtime at their original location on Tamm Avenue every day, and now they're moving to Cherokee Street. Chris "Mac" McKenzie sat down with Meet St. Louis inside their new spot at Bluewood Brewing (18...

Mitch Frost took a look around The Grove and realized something: There were no late-night food options. Despite many of the bars in the neighborhood being open until 3 a.m., if revelers wanted to grab some grub before heading home, they were largely out of luck. Mitch also knew pizza, having spent much of his adulthood perfecting pies. So why not use that mastery to solve a problem? Pie Guy Pizza...

Abbey Spencer started off like many brewers, by brewing at home. Her first batch was pretty good, the second? Undrinkable. But the success of the first drove her to keep trying. And her recipes did not go unnoticed. Now she’s the head brewer of Third Wheel Brewing in St. Peter’s. She sat down with the Meet St. Louis podcast to talk her favorite style of beer, the importance of St. Louis Craft Beer...

If you haven't eaten in one of his restaurants, you've certainly heard of them. Rooster, Bailey's Range, Chocolate Bar, Bridge, Small Batch; they're all St. Louis staples. David Bailey has built an eatery empire in St. Louis and couldn't imagine doing it anywhere else. His restaurants all moved into unique buildings and he worked to keep their original personality, even if it meant taking a lot lo...

For more than a decade, Reine Bayoc has been serving up love and magic at her Shaw bakery. SweetArt started as a crazy dream, a dream that has seen serious success. People line up to the door to try what she describes as vegan soul food. That’s right. Vegan mac n’ cheese, vegan nachos and a veggie burger that Reine unabashedly calls the best ever. But her baked goods have always been her passion,...

Episode 51: David Stine by Meet St. Louis

When Mike Johnson turned 40, he was ready to get out of the restaurant business for good. But instead he decided to give a BBQ restaurant a shot. Now Sugarfire Smokehouse is a huge hit in St. Louis and around the country. He followed it up with Hi Pointe Drive-In and now his life is non-stop. The chef and father says spreading St. Louis style BBQ around the world is the best thing he can imagine....

Ted Kilgore is a self-proclaimed cocktail geek and has helped shape and create the craft cocktail industry in St. Louis. The owner of Planter’s House in Lafayette Square and Small Change in Benton Park, Kilgore has been mixing up cocktails in the city since 2006. He sat down with the Meet St. Louis Podcast to talk about the history of cocktails, the inspiration behind his creations and where he se...

Blues City Deli is one of the most beloved sandwich spots in the city. The line outside the shop every day at lunchtime can tell you that. But it's also known nationwide thanks to the marriage of food and music. Vince Valenza has built a St. Louis mainstay in just fifteen years, pushing past a few false starts to create his dream establishment at McNair and Victor. He's served musicians, athletes,...

When Charles Glenn auditioned to sing the National Anthem for the St. Louis Blues, his microphone went out two words in. He kept singing without it, and he was so good they hired him anyway. For nearly two decades, his signature voice has opened home Blues games, and Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final will be his swan song. Charles is stepping away from the microphone at the Enterprise Center at seas...

At the corner of Main Street and Mill Street in Festus sits one of the most popular breweries in the region. Main & Mill Brewing Company opened in 2014 and quickly grew in popularity for their unique beer and culture of spreading craft beer. It took a 3-year renovation to get their location ready, but since they opened their doors, people have traveled thousands of miles to taste their beer and be...

It started as a hobby, but today the Vines brothers print t-shirts for everyone looking to wear their city pride on their sleeve. Even the St. Louis Blues order t-shirts from the shop on Cherokee Street. Their love for their hometown is evident when you step foot inside their store, from your favorite neighborhood on a tote bag to a welcome mat inspired by the St. Louis Street Department, they pro...

Nick Bognar is young and hungry. He started working in the kitchen of his mom’s Ballwin restaurant Nippon Tei at 16, and ever since then he’s dreamed of opening his own restaurant. It took leaving St. Louis and his family’s restaurant to get more training and some life lessons before he would return to his hometown. A James Beard nomination for Rising Star Chef of the year was the push he need to...

There aren't many 100-year-old businesses, but St. Louis is lucky to have a century of great food thanks to Gioia's Deli. Meet St. Louis sat down with Alex and Amanda Donley, who now run the city's favorite sandwich shop, and talked about how they got here and where they see the deli going. Alex talks about the history of Gioia's, helping his mom during all those early mornings, and why he always...

She first took the stage as Annie at the Ozark Actor’s Theater at age 10 and was officially hooked. St. Louis-area native Taylor Louderman is now taking Broadway by storm, playing Regina George in Mean Girls. The Tony-nominated actress says the St. Louis theater scene is to credit her success as she continues to grow in New York as well as taking her skills to Hollywood. She’ll return to St. Louis...

Chris Bolyard was always an animal lover. As a child he wanted to be a veterinarian, today he owns a specialty butcher shop in Maplewood. At Bolyard’s Meat and Provisions, Bolyard shows love and respect for the animals by using locally raised and pastured meat and practicing nose to tail butchery. Nothing goes to waste. Chris Bolyard talks to Meet St. Louis about how he found his love for butchery...

St. Louis is full of incredible places, but the heart of the city is Forest Park. Nearly twice as big as Central Park, the incredible space available to residents and tourists alike is maintained by thousands of volunteers and a staff dedicated to keeping one of the most special places in country beautiful. Meet St. Louis sat down with Lesley Hoffarth, president and executive director of Forest Pa...

Fauxgerty is a woman-owned, sustainable fashion company based in St. Louis and started in a Central West End apartment in 2013. Since then, owner Chrissy Fogerty has expanded the brand with the help of her husband Jon to create a company that puts thought behind every jacket, skirt and blouse. Their signature cruelty-free faux leather jackets put them on the map, but they are quickly expanding acr...