Weekend trip to St. Louis
...mostly about eating food in the Chicago area on road trips
I’ll have an update soon to my ramen post from a few months back (see below), but here’s another food dispatch.
We were in St. Louis a couple of weekends ago, and since it’s only a 5-hour drive and we needed a car anyway once we’re there, we decided to rent a car and drive there. Car seat logistics matters a lot more in how we decide to travel now than I want it to…Anyway, we don’t own a car and we’re finding that road trips are good opportunities to get food that’s not very transit-accessible in the Chicago area.
The first one I can think of was not exactly a road trip. We drove out to Gary, Indiana, so I could get my first COVID vaccine in April 2021, when vaccination slots were very hard to come by in Chicago. I got vaccinated in a drive-through tent in a park by people in the military, we swung by Michael Jackson’s birth home a block away, and then got some fried and smoked seafood at Calumet Fisheries on the way back.
Last year, on our way back from another St. Louis trip, we wanted to hit one of the many South Side BBQ joints, but we miscalculated the timing and couldn’t do it. So we tried again when we drove to northern Michigan this summer, and went to Lexington Betty Smokehouse in Pullman.
Maybe the most notable thing at Lexington Betty was their rib tips. Rib tips are the cartilage-rich part of pork ribs that usually don’t make it to the plate when you get smoked ribs, and they are a staple in Chicago-style BBQ. Lexington Betty cuts the rib tips bigger than other (more traditional) places, so there’s more meaty parts and not just the cartilage-y parts.
For the latest trip to St. Louis, we were heading out on I-55, going southwest. We’d been wanting to check out a Middle Eastern restaurant in Bridgeview, where there’s a big Arab population1. So we got lunch at Al Bawadi Grill. Al Bawadi was recommended to us by a friend, but it’s also the most reviewed restaurant in the area (6000+ reviews on Google Maps), so it was an obvious choice.
We (correctly) figured the portions would be large, so we went with a pretty basic order of falafel and Al Bawadi Mixed Grill, which includes shish kabab (lamb), kufta kabab (ground lamb), and chicken tawook kabab.
The hummus at Al Bawadi was noticeably more acidic than any I’ve had before. Along with all the toppings you can see in the photo, it was very enjoyable.
Unless you’re going with a big group and you can share a bunch of different dishes, Al Bawadi Mixed Grill is a great choice to sample different kinds of meats. It may not be my favorite meat plate in the area (that would be at Kabobi in Albany Park), but every piece of food on it was very good.
We weren’t setting out to make any sort of a political statement, but Al Bawadi is also Palestinian. It’s possible you heard about Bridgeview in recent news for a related reason (content warning: hate crime). My wish is for everyone to be able to go to a Palestinian restaurant someday without conflict in Palestine being a thing we think about.
And something about St. Louis
It’d feel really wrong if my post about going to St. Louis only talks about food around Chicago.
We wanted to try Menya Rui, a newish ramen place that is supposed to be excellent. But the logistics didn’t work out.
We were able to get to Balkan Treat Box. One thing about St. Louis that would surprise people who aren’t familiar with the city is that it was the most popular destination for Bosnian refugees in the 1990s. So there’s a big Bosnian population, with quite a few Bosnian restaurants. Balkan Treat Box’s chef isn’t Bosnian herself, but it’s probably the most popular Bosnian/Balkan place in St. Louis at the moment. It’s a counter order place, and there was a huge line when I got there. But I was able to order quickly when I told them I wanted it to go.
We of course had to try their ćevapi2, the grilled sausage that’s ubiquitous in the Balkans, with slightly different recipes at each place. Combining the well-seasoned ćevapi with sharp onions and slightly acidic kajmak makes a whole lot of sense, and it’s clear why this is a classic combination.
Another hit was lamb lahmacun, which was a special (lahmacun with beef or cauliflower is a regular menu item). Lahmacun is the flatbread outside3. Inside is a mix of lamb, some veggies, herbs, and spices.
I know there are places like Cafe Beograd that serve similar food in Chicago4, but the concentration is definitely higher in St. Louis. I would try to check out other Bosnian restaurants in the area next time.
What I’m listening to now
I’m going to cheat and talk about music from early September. Given our son’s bedtime routine starts around 7:30, we didn’t think we would be going to the Chicago Jazz Festival at night. His nap was very late one day, though, and we decided we could go see Makaya McCraven. That also happened to be the night I wanted to go the most this year.
I’m embedding his latest album here, but really, I think jazz is supposed to be enjoyed as a live performance. Improvisation is at the heart of the genre, and being there when the music’s being made is a big part of the experience. So if you find Makaya McCraven (drums), Joel Ross (vibraphone), or Brandee Younger (harp) is playing in your area, I highly recommend going to see them.
FWIW, the toddler was captivated by Joel Ross’s solos.
Reference points we had for Bridgeview, other than knowing people who go to restaurants there with some regularity:
We’d watched a Major League Soccer game between the Chicago Fire and the New York Red Bulls at a stadium in Bridgeview. We had a deal to get in for free with transportation included, and the Red Bulls featured the Arsenal/France legend Thierry Henry. It feels a bit surreal that I’ve watched Thierry Henry in Bridgeview, Illinois. And I’d totally forgotten that the Red Bulls also had Juninho Pernambucano, probably the greatest free kick specialist ever.
We’d seen a documentary called The Feeling of Being Watched. This was about Arab families in Bridgeview who were unjustly surveilled by the FBI after 9/11.
Ć sounds close to ch in English.
Lahmacun is the Turkish name for the bread, and the c is pronounced like j in English. I don’t know how common lahmacun is in the Balkans, but there’s generally a strong Turkish influence there because of the Ottoman Empire. That includes the word ćevapi, which comes from the Turkish kebap.
Cafe Beograd is a Serbian place. There’s perhaps points to be made here that’s relevant for Israel/Palestine…