1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 From Forest Park to charming neighborhoods, green spaces with history and Oh 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:09,000 that barbecue. Eating here is going to change your life. 3 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:12,000 St. Louis, Missouri has a lot to offer travelers. 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:16,320 We're eating and drinking our way through the city, sitting down with a James 5 00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:18,000 Beard award-winning chef. 6 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:23,760 The Central West End is really great and really in so many ways, the closest thing 7 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:26,000 we have to dining in Paris. 8 00:00:26,000 --> 00:00:28,000 A spicy pit master. 9 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:31,000 And learning why there are so many breweries in St. Louis. 10 00:00:31,000 --> 00:00:36,160 You know, as the brewing immigrants came into the Midwest, they saw St. Louis as one access 11 00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:41,360 to great water and the Mississippi River back then would freeze every winter. 12 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:45,280 Because eating on your travels is one of the joys of adventuring. 13 00:00:45,280 --> 00:00:47,400 It's the Travels with Darley Podcast. 14 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:52,600 We're by traveling with the locals, I bring you hidden gems to expand your mind and travel 15 00:00:52,600 --> 00:00:53,600 list. 16 00:00:53,600 --> 00:00:57,000 So keep on listening to this tasty Midwestern episode. 17 00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:03,000 [music] 18 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:07,280 If you're heading to St. Louis, barbecue and beer are must-tries. 19 00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:10,600 And the best place to eat is a highly debated topic. 20 00:01:10,600 --> 00:01:15,800 While ribs dominate the meat scene here, you can feast on beef brisket, burnt ends, pulled 21 00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:17,800 pork and more. 22 00:01:17,800 --> 00:01:22,760 We're heading to St. Louis's first established neighborhood, Soulard, where quaint brick, 23 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:29,760 row homes mix with restaurants and bars, to dine with a pit master at Bogart's Smokehouse. 24 00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:32,760 When I arrive to Bogart's, there's a line outside. 25 00:01:32,760 --> 00:01:37,440 When I finally step inside, I spot the chalk menu from afar. 26 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:44,760 It's buzzing in Bogart's with a casual lunchtime crowd eating barbecue in plastic baskets. 27 00:01:44,760 --> 00:01:50,240 In a city with lots of barbecue choices, Bogart's Smokehouse consistently brings in accolades 28 00:01:50,240 --> 00:01:52,160 as one of the best. 29 00:01:52,160 --> 00:01:58,160 And if you're coming here to eat, come hungry, because there are a lot of tasty options. 30 00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:04,160 Got some pastrami, got some turkey, some ribs, some brisket, some tri tip and some ham. 31 00:02:04,160 --> 00:02:07,160 A meat smorsgasbord right here. 32 00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:12,160 Pitmaster Skip Steel has been designing and building grills and perfecting his barbecue technique 33 00:02:12,160 --> 00:02:15,160 since he was just 14 years old. 34 00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:20,960 BBQ-ing in Memphis, Las Vegas, New York City and say Louis, he honed his skills. 35 00:02:20,960 --> 00:02:25,960 Back in the kitchen, he's showing me how he uses a blowtorch on a slab of ribs. 36 00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:26,960 I do mine different. 37 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:28,960 I do a hybrid barbecue. 38 00:02:28,960 --> 00:02:32,960 Mine's a cross between Kansas City and Memphis. 39 00:02:32,960 --> 00:02:36,960 Memphis is being home and I worked for some Kansas City chefs in the past. 40 00:02:36,960 --> 00:02:41,960 So what I've taken there is a little bit from here, a little bit from there and kind of blended them together. 41 00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:43,960 What should I try first? 42 00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:46,960 You know if you want to change your life, go straight for the ribs. 43 00:02:46,960 --> 00:02:51,960 I pick up a rib and have my first ever bite of St. Louis barbecue. 44 00:02:51,960 --> 00:02:56,960 That's a sign of a good cooked rib if you can see your teeth marks in the rim. 45 00:02:56,960 --> 00:02:57,960 That's some good ribs. 46 00:02:57,960 --> 00:02:59,960 This is probably something I hadn't had before. 47 00:02:59,960 --> 00:03:00,960 This is tri-tip. 48 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:02,960 That's a California barbecue item. 49 00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:06,960 We put it on a grill, smoke it till it hits a certain temperature and we pull it off. 50 00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:13,960 We bring it in and we're going to hit it with a blowtorch to caramelize the, what we call a Philadelphia crust on the outside 51 00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:18,960 And then we're going to cover it with a fermented soybean paste. 52 00:03:18,960 --> 00:03:19,960 53 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:20,960 Oh, yeah. 54 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:21,960 Feeling it? 55 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:24,960 I can taste that nice caramelization outside. 56 00:03:24,960 --> 00:03:26,960 It's a little sweet too. 57 00:03:26,960 --> 00:03:32,960 And while all the meat options are really tasty, don't leave without trying the beans. 58 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:34,960 The beans are awesome. 59 00:03:34,960 --> 00:03:38,960 The way we cook those is they actually cook underneath the brisket. 60 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:42,960 So whatever the brisket starts to get hot, they drip down into the pan of beans below it. 61 00:03:42,960 --> 00:03:45,960 That's the love the brisket gives the beans. 62 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:47,960 That's the problem with traveling though. 63 00:03:47,960 --> 00:03:50,960 You come to these good places and then you go home and you're like, 64 00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:52,960 there's just something about being at Bogart's Bogart’s in a historic St Louis neighborhood that makes the meat taste that much better. 65 00:03:52,960 --> 00:04:04,960 And to learn more about St. Louis's love affair with beer, I'm heading to Square One Brewery, located in historic Lafayette Square, home to beautiful Victorian homes. 66 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:10,960 Square One Brewery is housed in a historic building that in the 19th century served as a tavern. 67 00:04:10,960 --> 00:04:13,960 And later a tavern and dance hall. 68 00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:16,960 And then it switched from beer to soda during prohibition. 69 00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:24,960 Only to switch back in the 1930s and today remains strong as a sustainable brewery, distillery and restaurant. 70 00:04:24,960 --> 00:04:33,960 Since the weather is so nice, I'm sitting in Square One's outdoor courtyard with beermaster John Witte, to taste some handcrafted beer. 71 00:04:33,960 --> 00:04:35,960 And he's chosen one that matches my hair. 72 00:04:35,960 --> 00:04:36,960 Thank you. 73 00:04:36,960 --> 00:04:37,960 and maybe my personality. 74 00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:41,960 So spicy blonde, I like what you've chosen for me. 75 00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:44,960 Well, and we're here, you know, it's outside in the courtyard. 76 00:04:44,960 --> 00:04:46,960 It's a beautiful day in St. Louis. 77 00:04:46,960 --> 00:04:50,960 So this is our twist, our version of a Belgian Witbier, 78 00:04:50,960 --> 00:04:56,960 Traditionally, a Belgian Wit is an unfiltered wheat beer that's fermented with the Belgian yeast. 79 00:04:56,960 --> 00:04:59,960 And it's spiced with coriander and orange peel. 80 00:04:59,960 --> 00:05:04,960 Well, our version of it, we take everything else the same and we substitute lemon grass and ginger. 81 00:05:04,960 --> 00:05:07,960 So it has a must-have, a Thai flair to it. 82 00:05:07,960 --> 00:05:08,960 Yeah, exactly. 83 00:05:08,960 --> 00:05:09,960 It goes great with Chinese food. 84 00:05:09,960 --> 00:05:11,960 We need to have a little bit more of that on the menu. 85 00:05:11,960 --> 00:05:17,960 But no, it's just a great, it's great refreshing, you're outside, you know, sunny day in St. Louis. 86 00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:20,960 And it's just a really, really great refreshing beer. 87 00:05:20,960 --> 00:05:25,960 That's good, it's very refreshing. 88 00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:28,960 And I can taste a little bit of that lemon grass. 89 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:30,960 I haven't had that before in a beer. 90 00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:32,960 It says sunshine in a glass. 91 00:05:32,960 --> 00:05:35,960 Now there are a lot of breweries in St. Louis. 92 00:05:35,960 --> 00:05:37,960 Why are there so many? 93 00:05:37,960 --> 00:05:42,960 Well, I think originally it was, you know, as the brewery and immigrants came into the Midwest, 94 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:48,960 they saw St. Louis's one access to great water and the Mississippi River back then would freeze every winter. 95 00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:55,960 So the breweries could actually pull ice out of the river and St. Louis also has a lot of natural limestone caves. 96 00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:58,960 Actually from here, from our location south, it's all limestone caves. 97 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:03,960 And so the breweries would actually be over top of these caves, they could drop ice down into the caves in the winter time. 98 00:06:03,960 --> 00:06:07,960 And they could keep that cool cave temperature down around 40 degrees year-round. 99 00:06:07,960 --> 00:06:15,960 So they could not only refrigerate their beers, but when the Germans came and then introduced loggers and loggering needs cold fermentation temperatures, 100 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:18,960 they could actually brew loggers beers year-round here in St. Louis. 101 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:21,960 And obviously before mechanical refrigeration. 102 00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:26,960 So that started out and St. Louis is known for, you know, great waters for our cities. 103 00:06:26,960 --> 00:06:32,960 So I joke with the owner all the time that it, you know, it pays me a really good salary to make something really simple. 104 00:06:32,960 --> 00:06:35,960 I mean, it's only for ingredients, how can you really mess that up? 105 00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:41,960 But water is the primary component. You know, 95% of that is water. 106 00:06:41,960 --> 00:06:44,960 So if you have access to great water, you've at least got a good start. 107 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:47,960 Everybody that we serve here is actually made on site. 108 00:06:47,960 --> 00:06:54,960 And I joke with people, it's like, we don't distribute our beers, so it doesn't leave the premise unless you're taking it in a growler to go. 109 00:06:54,960 --> 00:06:58,960 But our distribution is about 30 feet. So from the walk-in cooler to the taps. 110 00:06:58,960 --> 00:06:59,960 It's fresh. 111 00:06:59,960 --> 00:07:02,960 Yes, exactly. It's as fresh as you can. 112 00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:06,960 But so really, it puts us as almost like a niche within the niche. 113 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:13,960 If you're looking at kind of the craft industry, we're the niche where when people are more and more people are doing brewcations 114 00:07:13,960 --> 00:07:19,960 A lot of times they will come down to square one because you can only get square ones beer at square one. 115 00:07:19,960 --> 00:07:21,960 That's neat. I love it. A brewcation. 116 00:07:21,960 --> 00:07:25,960 So getting more and more popular? Well, cheers to that. Absolutely. 117 00:07:25,960 --> 00:07:39,960 For more upscale, dining experience, we're stopping by Bracery by Niche, where James Beard Award winner for Best Chef Midwest, Gerard Craft, 118 00:07:39,960 --> 00:07:47,960 creates unpretentious culinary masterpieces and brings a European vibe to the Central West End neighborhood. 119 00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:53,960 Craft has a number of restaurants in St. Louis, getting into the business at a young age. 120 00:07:53,960 --> 00:07:58,960 Gerard, how did you end up in St. Louis with all these restaurants? 121 00:07:58,960 --> 00:08:05,960 I was 25 years old and I'd kind of lived all over the country and done some traveling around the world. 122 00:08:05,960 --> 00:08:12,960 And I wanted something new and I wanted to be a part of a growing culinary scene as opposed to just joining an existing one. 123 00:08:12,960 --> 00:08:21,960 And I kind of saw the writing on the wall in St. Louis with Larry Forgeone at the time had come here in Kevin Nash in Sydney Street. 124 00:08:21,960 --> 00:08:26,960 It just moved here. And it felt like something was about to happen. 125 00:08:26,960 --> 00:08:31,960 And I just wanted to be a part of helping make that come to fruition. 126 00:08:31,960 --> 00:08:41,960 The Central West End is really great and really in so many ways, the closest thing we have to dining in Paris and the architecture is very old French. 127 00:08:41,960 --> 00:08:51,960 And the people are almost very peritian in the way they live and dining at all the restaurants, walk around, shop, they all have dogs. 128 00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:54,960 It's a lot of fun and it's really reminiscent of Paris. 129 00:08:54,960 --> 00:09:03,960 One of the popular menu items at Brasserie may sound simple to make, but it's often the most simple ingredients that can be the most difficult to master. 130 00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:14,960 Local pan-seared and roasted chicken with oyster mushrooms and it's got a thick slab of rustic country toast on the bottom. 131 00:09:14,960 --> 00:09:20,960 And then we make a sauce by deglazing the pan with white wine, butter and roasted garlic. 132 00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:29,960 And pour that all over the top and the bread at the bottom just kind of sucks up all the butter and sauce and all the goodness, the little treat right at the end of the dish. 133 00:09:29,960 --> 00:09:36,960 The skin is the best part. 134 00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:39,960 I love chicken skin. 135 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:44,960 It's good, it's nice and crispy and the chicken is really moist. 136 00:09:44,960 --> 00:09:46,960 I can see why it is the most popular. 137 00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:47,960 Absolutely. 138 00:09:47,960 --> 00:09:50,960 Worth traveling to try. 139 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:54,960 So whether you want to discover beer in a city that's well known for it, 140 00:09:54,960 --> 00:10:02,960 saver roasted chicken from a star chef and a neighborhood reminiscent of Paris or get blow-tourged barbecue. 141 00:10:02,960 --> 00:10:10,960 You can find it in St. Louis and after you eat and drink, there are charming historic neighborhoods to explore. 142 00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:14,960 I'm looking forward to exploring more with you. 143 00:10:14,960 --> 00:10:21,960 We're getting close to wrapping season one of the Travels with Darling podcast and launching straight into season two. 144 00:10:21,960 --> 00:10:28,960 Please subscribe and share this podcast and our PBS and streaming Travels with Darling TV series with your friends. 145 00:10:28,960 --> 00:10:35,960 I travel all the time and I love sharing what I'm discovering with you. 146 00:10:35,960 --> 00:10:39,960 [Music] 147 00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:43,960 [Music] 148 00:10:43,960 --> 00:10:47,960 [Music] 149 00:10:47,960 --> 00:10:51,960 [Music] 150 00:10:51,960 --> 00:10:55,960 [Music] 151 00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:59,960 [Music] 152 00:10:59,960 --> 00:11:01,960 You