What do you think?
Rate this book
Lost Restaurants of St. Louis
St. Louis is a food town, and there are many restaurants that have captured the heart of the city. Some of them are no longer around. Rossino's low ceilings and even lower pipes didn't stop the pizza-hungry residents from crowding in. Jefferson Avenue Boarding House served elegant "Granny Food" in plush surroundings. King Burgers and onion rings ruled at Parkmoor. Dohack's claimed it was the first to name the "jack salmon." Author Ann Lemons Pollack details these and more restaurants lost to time in the Gateway City.
128 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2018
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 7, 2019
A trip down culinary memory land for St. Louisans that includes recipes for many old favorites like Mayfair dressing. A delightful blast from the past.
December 19, 2018
First, a disclaimer; I am a long friend of Ann Lemons-Pollock, and we've had many meals together. She was essential in changing my brother's eating habits. As he said, 'it was because of Ann that I ate salads in restaurants and not apple sauce.' She came into the world to do good, and this book is an example, 119 pages of missing food...food we went out to, treasured, and can't go back to . Ann recalls, describes, and shows many St. Louis restaurants once with us now lost. In a very concise and readable prose, she tells of owners, meals, neighborhoods, and the book is well-illustrated.
She begins with the World's Fair of 1904, a seminal moment for any St. Louisan, and recalls the many restaurants there and their innovations which gave people in the Midwest a view of better eating. This continues with chefs who introduced a lot of new trends in eating that has made St. Louis forsake meat loaf for other more tangy and challenging dishes.
Ann makes no bones (!) about the many people who came here, learned about food, and offered what they knew to the public, and her descriptions of the building blocks of making a good menu, location, and clientele are always fun to read and informative.
There are restaurants like the Lt. Robert E. Lee, which was a boat, the Parkmoor, an old favorite people hated to see go. (She admitted when the book came out, this was the place people asked about the most). There was Tony Faust's, the granddaddy of all restaurants, and the mysterious Beffa's, a true underground restaurant only insiders knew about. Lest we forge,t there is Noah's Ark, a restaurant in the shape of an ark with fiberglass animals decorating it...on the roof, so the city's more gregarious types wouldn't snatch them.
There is a good social history about the city here through its food, that ephemeral but vital part of our lives. Old stories are given, rivalries recalled, and as a bonus, the end of the book lists some older restaurants still in the running, like the jewel box Crown Candy Kitchen and its cannonball-sized BLT. Also, some recipes of the old flagship cuisines are given, so readers can recreate lost dining.
Her concise writing and quick pace makes this an enjoyable read, and even non-St. Louisans should find it enjoyable, if sad, because they can't eat the delicacies described. It's an excellent coffee table book...and dining room, kitchen, and whatever cozy reading nook one chooses. Peruse, and have snacks handy.
She begins with the World's Fair of 1904, a seminal moment for any St. Louisan, and recalls the many restaurants there and their innovations which gave people in the Midwest a view of better eating. This continues with chefs who introduced a lot of new trends in eating that has made St. Louis forsake meat loaf for other more tangy and challenging dishes.
Ann makes no bones (!) about the many people who came here, learned about food, and offered what they knew to the public, and her descriptions of the building blocks of making a good menu, location, and clientele are always fun to read and informative.
There are restaurants like the Lt. Robert E. Lee, which was a boat, the Parkmoor, an old favorite people hated to see go. (She admitted when the book came out, this was the place people asked about the most). There was Tony Faust's, the granddaddy of all restaurants, and the mysterious Beffa's, a true underground restaurant only insiders knew about. Lest we forge,t there is Noah's Ark, a restaurant in the shape of an ark with fiberglass animals decorating it...on the roof, so the city's more gregarious types wouldn't snatch them.
There is a good social history about the city here through its food, that ephemeral but vital part of our lives. Old stories are given, rivalries recalled, and as a bonus, the end of the book lists some older restaurants still in the running, like the jewel box Crown Candy Kitchen and its cannonball-sized BLT. Also, some recipes of the old flagship cuisines are given, so readers can recreate lost dining.
Her concise writing and quick pace makes this an enjoyable read, and even non-St. Louisans should find it enjoyable, if sad, because they can't eat the delicacies described. It's an excellent coffee table book...and dining room, kitchen, and whatever cozy reading nook one chooses. Peruse, and have snacks handy.
July 9, 2021
I begrudgingly read this after reading the author's Iconic Restaurants of St. Louis and I didn't really care for this book either but slogged through, anyway. The writing is terrible. The photos are very uneven, some too small to discern anything. The book design is also uninspiring, making me wonder if this was a self-published book. Argh. 2-stars because I have definitely seen worse, though if it's a 1-star book, I usually don't finish it.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews