Brains - 25 Cents

I entered a Chinese restaurant and ordered a St. Paul sandwich.  It was a big moment --- the moment when I finished my list of foods to try that are only found in St. Louis.

Actually, it is a list of vegetarian foods to try.  Therefore, my list did not include a Brain Sandwich, once so popular that ads for it were painted on buildings.  Crispy pig snoots did not make the list.  Pork steaks, a staple of St. Louis BBQ, are also not on the list.

My vegetarian list contained five unique St. Louis foods: gooey butter cake, St. Louis pizza, toasted ravioli (cheese-filled), concretes, and St. Paul sandwiches.

Gooey butter cake is easy to find in St. Louis, but there are dozens of variations, and it took a long time to find a really good version (at Sugaree Bakery in Dogtown).

St. Louis pizza was invented by a man who was changing his career from laying floor tile to making pizza.  He hated stringy pizza, so he invented a cheese called provel that would not be stringy when melted.  He did not cut his pizza in wedges; he cut it in squares, just like floor tiles.  St. Louis pizza crust is thin and crispy, reminiscent of a saltine.

Toasted ravioli was not really new to me; it was featured on the menu of a restaurant near the place where I worked near Boston.  Toasted ravioli there was an appetizer or an entrée, and you could get it with red sauce or white sauce.  How toasted ravioli made it from St. Louis to Waltham, Massachusetts, I do not know.

When I moved to St. Louis, concretes became an instant hit with me because they are made of frozen custard.  Frozen custard was a summertime treat back when I was a kid on Long Island.  St. Louis has ramped up the idea of frozen custard, adding in a wide range of mix-in choices: fruit, chocolate, nuts, coconut, malt, gummi bears.  The frozen custard in St. Louis is thick --- so thick that it does not fall out of the cup when you turn the cup upside down.

The last item on my list of foods to try that are only found in St. Louis, a St. Paul sandwich, is only served in a few Chinese restaurants. 

I lived in St. Louis for 15 years before I tracked one down.  I ordered the vegetarian version, and here is what I got: an egg foo young patty, along with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, and thin sliced pickles, between two slices of white bread, wrapped up in a sheet of sandwich paper.  It was surprisingly good.

I couldn’t wait to tell my St. Louis friends that I had achieved a milestone and had eaten a St. Paul sandwich.  Most friends were dumbfounded; even though they had lived in St. Louis all their lives, they had never heard of a St. Paul sandwich.  I had to describe the sandwich, and they cringed when they heard the ingredients. 

In fact, one friend said I should have followed up my sandwich by swallowing some Tums --- Tums, after all, were invented in St. Louis.

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A man filmed a 1-minute YouTube tribute to his St. Paul sandwich.  Raucous music by Dutch Jackson, a St. Louis hip hop artist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4QqnJ7MZQ

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com