Meet St. Louis

Ann Bognar opened Nippon Tei in West County more than two decades ago. Her son Nick grew up watching her in the kitchen at home and at the restaurant. Nick took the lessons learned from his family restaurant and opened Indo in the Botanical Heights neighborhood and now the mother-son duo will venture into a new restaurant Sado. The Bognars will bring modern Japanese cuisine and sushi to the Hill n...

Crazy Bowls and Wraps has been serving up healthy eats, things like kale and quinoa, way before they were ever trendy. And many people don’t realize the fast-casual spot is local to St. Louis. Keith and Gail Kitsis first opened their restaurant in 1994 and they’ve grown and expanded to 16 locations across the St. Louis metro area. Keith joined us on the podcast along with Kim Reitzner, the directo...

Waking up to the smell of donuts has been a reality for Syeeda Morris since she was a child. Her dad Amon Aziz started the beloved Pharaoh's Donuts in 1994. Now they have two locations, one in Downtown and one in the Central West End and they’re scoping out a third spot. Glazed is the top seller but for Syeeda it’s the ones that take a little decorating that strike her fancy. She finds calm and pe...

This week on the Meet St. Louis Podcast, we head to Dogtown and visit one of the fastest-growing breweries in the region. Rick Hagen and Greg Meyer built their brewery on a simple idea: Who doesn't want to own a brewery? From there, they added their love of music, adorning their one-of-a-kind space with original concert posters that could rival a record store. All the while, they were making excep...

St. Louis is one of those cities where you can always discover something new. That’s what this week’s episode was all about. Many of us have seen the giant chess piece in the Central West End. In fact, did you know it’s the world’s largest? How that came to be is just one of the stories Shannon Bailey, curator of the World Chess Hall of Fame, shared with us on the episode. Chess has put St. Louis...

Kurt Bellon is the first to admit that starting your own business is tough. And nearly impossible without the support of friends and family. For him, it was his brothers and mom who helped get his Japanese sando pop up off the ground, including tracking down the little red fire truck he uses to serve up his food at pop-ups around town. He also couldn’t do it without the support of the St. Louis re...

Social media is key for so many businesses these days. But for Allison Schilling, it’s the sole reason her business is where it is today. She started creating cheeseboards for fun and for friends and sharing them on a private Instagram page. @STLcheeseboards was born. But it wasn’t until a stranger discovered her page and reached out about purchasing one. Soon, she made the page public and began s...

Charlene and Darren Young weren’t in the restaurant business but they had a passion: Darren wanted to learn to make BBQ and turned to YouTube and Charlene wanted to share her culture and food of the Phillipines. It started on a whim but now they host regular pop-ups at Earthbound Brewery on Cherokee Street and you can find their smoked meats in the grocery store. Now they’re taking their passion n...

This week we headed over to Illinois to check out Goshen Coffee. The locally roasted coffee has been around since 2002 but it’s got a new look and a lot of new things happening, including a second location coming later this spring to Soulard. We sat down with CEO Jennifer Hughey and their Chief Coffee Officer Tony Ager at their Edwardsville cafe to talk all about beans, brewing and being a part of...

In 1942, Pat Connolly opened up a bar and restaurant in the neighborhood that would one day be known as Dogtown. Fast forward to today, it’s the oldest Irish bar in town and run by Joe Jovanovich, the third generation. Joe grew up in the bar and never planned to make it his career, but a sense of family and, he admits, a bit of naivety brought him back. Now he not only runs the restaurant but head...

CC Griggs moved to St. Louis from Lousiana and realized she couldn’t find the food of her hometown. So she set out to make some herself. It started off as just a hobby and then she quit her corporate job and decided to buy a food truck. The Crooked Boot food truck kicked off in 2016 with both ups and downs. But she found her footing and the opening of the 9 Mile Food Garden introduced her Creole S...

On this Valentine’s Day, it feels only right that we’d be talking chocolate. Specifically Honeymoon Chocolates. It’s a labor of love. One that started in a dorm room closet by now married couple Cam and Haley Loyet. Their chocolates are made bean to bar right here in St. Louis even though they’re sold in specialty shops all across the country. But what makes them extra unique is that they sweeten...

Episode 171: Elmwood and Pizza Champ by Meet St. Louis

From the Arch grounds to the intricate details of our city’s architecture, to the blooming flowers of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, STL From Above allows us to experience the sites of this city from a whole new perspective. Justin Barr is the man behind the drone and the popular Instagram account soaring through your feed. He’s captured big moments like the Blues’ Stanley Cup parade and intimate...

When you hear SugarFire, your mind and your taste buds are likely thinking barbeque, but half of the business comes from Carolyn Downs' sweets. She’s been baking for decades and if you’ve eaten at some of St. Louis' favorite restaurants, you’ve likely fallen for her bread pudding or cakes or her pies. Or her pake. What’s a pake? Well it’s a pie inside of a cake. And right now it’s getting a nation...

Danni Eickenhorst loves a good story and she’s been helping share stories all around St. Louis for years in PR and marketing. But it wasn’t until her good friend Steve Ewing asked her to help him craft a press release announcing the closure of beloved Steve’s Hot Dogs back in 2019 that her story started to change. She decided to help him keep the place open and as partners they not only reopened b...

The Meet St. Louis Podcast is on a break this week due to the surging COVID-19 cases throughout the region. However, we have an episode that will hopefully help you with those New Year Resolutions! More plants, more people, more often. That’s the goal of St. Louis’s newest food delivery company, Rootberry. Launched this summer, Rootberry delivers plant-based meals to your doorstep, no subscription...

Episode 167: Schlafly by Meet St. Louis

From planners to calendars, to cards and puzzles, 1Canoe2 creates beautiful paper goods from their shop in Fulton, Mo. In fact you might have seen their items on the shelves of stores like Anthropology, a major pinch me moment for owner Beth Snyder. She started the company as a side gig to pursue her artistic passion but soon it grew to the point where she felt comfortable quitting her day job. Be...

Simone Faure says cookies changed her life. She began her journey in the pastry world in her hometown of New Orleans and it’s a journey that landed her in the Botanical Heights neighborhood, opening her bakery La Patisserie Chouquette. In fact, it was a talk from Oprah that gave her the push to open the doors in 2013 and since then, her shop has brought people from all across the region to try her...

Happy Holiday Season! We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving with lots and lots of delicious food. And of course, we hope you shopped local over the weekend. This week, we are diving in with a holiday tradition. For three generations, Meert Tree Farm has been a part of those holiday memories for thousands of families in the St. Louis area. They are located in Festus with 150 acres filled wit...

We took you inside the City Foundry in July and now that it's buzzing, we're making a return trip to speak to Sue and her husband Mark about the customer-favorite, Kalbi Taco Shack. With the new development in Midtown finally open, Kalbi Taco Shack sold 16,000 tacos in their first month! It's a record the family hopes to beat. Join us as we discuss family, marinades and a customer base that comes...

This week's episode combines two of Alexis' favorite things: Journalism and craft beer. Old Herald Brewery and Distillery in Collinsville is about to celebrate their third anniversary. Owner Derik Reiser opened his dream spot in the former home of the Collinsville Herald and he stuck with the newspaper theme as he named his beers: from Printer's Ink, a black ale, to the Weekend Edition, a citrus s...

Nothing excites Logan Ely like a vegetable, and he says he likes the simple ones, like rutabaga. For the chef and owner of Lucky Accomplice and SHIFT, his cooking is inspired by what the farmer has to offer. Logan grew up in St. Louis but when he decided to make cooking his career, he set off to work in some of the world’s best restaurants. “I wanted to be the dummy in the room,” he said during ou...

Alexis is back! This week we're giving you the story behind something that's probably in your fridge right now: Prairie Farms products. Their milk, cream, yogurt, cheese, butter, or ice cream. Maybe you've never thought about it but it all comes from a cow just nearby. Prairie Farms has been in business since the 1930s. They are a lot bigger now, made up of 700 family farms across the Midwest, and...