City guides: Louisville, St. Louis, Detroit
“Perhaps St. Louis’s most delicious people-watching perch is the patio of Herbie’s, which has a view of posh Euclid Street. Its shrimp and grits are the stuff of legend, as is the flamboyant chef who opened Herbie’s predecessor restaurant, Balaban’s, in 1972. According to lore, the late Lady Charles Perrine stipulated that after his spirit leaves this mortal coil, his ashes be washed down the curb with — what else? — a can of Budweiser. To this day, men of a certain age slow their pace and sigh as they approach the sewer grate nearest Herbie’s entrance.”
For a travel series in Crain’s Chicago Business, I wrote about some of my favorite places, including St. Louis.
When I learned that Crain’s Chicago Business was launching a series on destination travel around the Midwest, I signed up at once to write about some of my favorite cities. My travel guide to Louisville became the series opener; pieces on St. Louis and Detroit followed. Though the genre of business travel writing can be limiting, I seized the chance to take would-be visitors on side-trips into local lore, art, foodways, and history.
For all the detours, though, the guides didn’t skip main attractions. In Detroit, we dutifully journeyed to Shinola.
In Louisville, we tasted the high-proof stuff: “In the birthplace of Bourbon choices approach infinitude but this need not intimidate. Every establishment comes with a steward of the spirits, sometimes self-appointed, who will guide you with the passion of a violin virtuoso and the rigor of a nuclear physicist. Name a dietary preference or a price point or even a sentiment, and the barkeep will summon just the right glencairn-full.”
And in St. Louis, 800 words in, we finally made it to the arch. A complete draft is below.
Where: St. Louis, MO
Why: No other city embodies so fully great American promise and ambition. From here, Lewis and Clark conquered the Pacific and Charles Lindbergh the Atlantic. From here, Joseph Pulitzer captured the mind of the common man and Adolphus Busch his gut. And yet, St. Louis is humble to a fault, a small town vaguely apologetic for having turned into a big city. That may be why, just as soon as you get out from underneath the shadow of brawny downtown blocks, the city’s neighborhoods manage to retain the small-town idiosyncrasies of gaslit squares and embellished buildings, chronically chatty locals and unlikely cultural treasures.
Stay: So unshakable in St. Louis’s native sons and daughters is the spirit of hospitality that they will insist that perfect strangers lodge in their homes. Resist the temptation, if only because the city’s hotels offer terrific variety. In the Central West End, an area built up by media magnates and industrial barons, gilded gates open to reveal streets of Newport-sized residences. The Chase Park Plaza Hotel matches fin-de-siecle excesses of the neighborhood; returned to its gilded glory during a recent renovation, its circular drive, grand public halls, and well-appointed guest suites ooze Jazz Age. But one need not book a stay at the Chase Park Plaza to enjoy it: weekends draw local socialites to the hotel’s poolside lounge to tap feet and exchange winks to a live jazz set.
A similarly ebullient social scene swirls around the Cheshire Hotel, located at the edge of Forest Park which was once the site of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. The Cheshire deadpans British kitsch with hallways decorated in oils of Queen Victoria and porcelain statuettes of dogs, and rooms named after dear old Blighty’s favorite authors. Guests who score the Robert Louis Stevenson suite will enjoy a maritime theme set by a model pirate ship and elaborated by an in-room jacuzzi tub. The sun hardly ever sets over the Cheshire, which boasts two restaurants, a bar inlaid with ceramic tiles of Dickensian characters, a coffee house, a pool, a leathery cigar lounge, and a living room governed by a stuffed bear of menacing proportions.
Eat: Because the Gateway City rises where the American north meets the south, and the rich soil of the Midwest starts giving way to the dust of the Western frontier, its cuisine — as are other aspects of its identity – is intersectional. New, adventurous restaurateurs are exploring and exploiting this quality. Lately, bold, Southern-style cooking has seen a renaissance. At Juniper in the Central West End, fried oysters and green fried tomatoes are served alongside crispy chicken skins with a strawberry buttermilk dip. Closer to downtown, Blood and Sand, a supper club, conjures up Southern Gothic fare like upscale tater tots, fried peaches, and chicken feet.
St. Louisians pride themselves on a legacy of brewing — this is, after all, the birthplace of Bud — and take the craft seriously. Microbreweries abound; in the bohemian district of Grand Center, Schlafly Taproom and Urban Chestnut are within pub-crawling distance of one another. But the city is also cultivating a palette for wine, some of which arrives from surrounding Missouri vineyards. A hidden gem is Demun Street, where bistro tables of Demun Oyster Bar and intimate Sasha’s Wine Bar face a leafy boulevard. The block sits in a low-rise residential enclave and stumbling upon two well-curated wine lists is as surprising, and as welcome, as an oasis in the midst of a desert.
Perhaps St. Louis’s most delicious people-watching perch is the patio of Herbie’s, which has a view of posh Euclid Street. Its shrimp and grits are the stuff of legend, as is the flamboyant chef who opened Herbie’s predecessor restaurant, Balaban’s, in 1972. According to lore, the late Lady Charles Perrine stipulated that after his spirit leaves this mortal coil, his ashes be washed down the curb with — what else? — a can of Budweiser. To this day, men of a certain age slow their pace and sigh as they approach the sewer grate nearest Herbie’s entrance.
Do: St. Louis has a penchant for decorating; even humble worker cottages pay off with flourishes like stained glass and fine woodwork. Perfectly preserved neighborhoods such as Soulard — the city's French Quarter — offer blocks of uninterrupted 19th-century red-brick facades. There, neighborhood-scaled pubs and shops can occupy several afternoons, but the mornings are dedicated to an indoor farmer's market, housed in two historical brick-and-iron arcades. Like Soulard, Lafayette Square's stately houses are picture-perfect, a new-world Place du Vosges. Restaurants, bars, and boutiques flank a formal park. A casual visitor might feel transported in time until the illusion is broken by thoroughly modern phenomena like a street-level yoga studio, bicycle races around the square, and residents filing in and out of a church that's been converted into lofts in the last real estate boom.
Not all neighborhoods have weathered so well: Ferguson, MO, just beyond the city limits, vividly illustrates the struggles that some of St. Louis's communities are facing. But developments in downtown, and districts like Grand Center and the Delmar Loop are hopeful. Entrepreneurs, artists, and students are re-imagining long-vacant warehouses and bringing life to streets and parks. In Delmar Loop, a group of local business owners has transformed a once seedy stretch into a destination for quirky shops, craft brews, and live tunes. Blueberry Hill, an unfussy restaurant and music venue, hosts nightly performances; one Wednesday each month, catch a set by Chuck Berry, whose pompadour may have diminished but his stage presence has not.
St. Louis has no shortage of cultural landmarks. A fine art museum in Forest Park has recently opened an addition that presents consistently good exhibitions. The Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed a stunning concrete composition for the Pulitzer Foundation, which rotates imaginative contemporary art. A sculpture park, Citygarden, adds to growing downtown buzz. St. Louis’s eccentric tour de force, however, is the City Museum whose name belies the giddiness and terror of this post-industrial amusement park. A former manufacturing building, the museum is a maze of tunnels and slides, funhouse mirrors and arcade games that even the most mature of adults have no power to resist. Atop its roof is an aged school bus, forever careening, as if in a fever dream, towards the Mississippi below. It’s a perfect St. Louis postcard: a majestic vista, a forward thrust, and a gentle touch of insanity.
And, oh yeah. There’s also an arch.