St. Louis University Area BBQ Joints

Bob in St. Louis said:

Dang.. I think I gained a pound just reading!

Click to expand...

Thanks Bob.

It was funny, we rode up Lindell, making our way past WashU over to Delmar.

The intent was to hit Fitz's.

For the non MoFo's in the room, Fitz's is a soda company, Root Beer is their signature, local to St Louis.

So we were on our way to Fitz's, which has a diner type set up out in front of the brewery. At least, I think that is the set up, I still haven't made it there.

So we are driving down Delmar and looking at all the shops/restaurants and I'm more focusing on the road. Looking forward to the long awaited Loop Trolley to start on the tracks embedded in the road, unfortunately for the area its been a 4+ year project.


So after my daughter points out the tattoo place where all her college friends are getting their nipples pierced (sorry, another thread maybe) we come upon Fitz's.
And then she blurts out on a whim "Salt & Smoke".
I said, "Really? That place is on our list. We'll have to go there next time (Nov). I didn't realize they were located in the Delmar Loop."

So parking is outback behind Delmar, we get in the lot behind Fitz's.

And, Then, God, Made, An, Appearance.

We got out of the car, and God changed the wind direction so that the parking lot now received a crosswind past the Salt + Smoke smokers.

Emily blurted out, screw Fitz's, we're going to Salt + Smoke.

The smell was heavenly and drew us in like rats to the Pied Piper.

I'm going to stray a bit with the rest of the story. BBQ was not involved.

Oh wait, there is BBQ sauce involved!

So it was parent weekend last week, any of you with college kids knows what that means. For most of you with a kid in college that has a football team, that is like a "homecoming" weekend which includes a games and such.

SLU use to have a football team (fun fact, the first forward pass came during a SLU game way way back) but no longer. So they team up "homecoming" with something else. Last year was a men's soccer game, this time around was a women's volleyball. The sports aspect to the weekend is secondary.


This is SLU's 200th anniversary. First college west of the Mississippi 200 years ago.


My daughter performed on the hip hop team during this years' celebration. They closed down Grand and invited the neighborhood. It was pretty cool, although Grand is a main street and arterial streets like Laclede were closed off too so the StL'Fo's probably didn't think it was too cool.

For Em and I, it means we get to eat whenever we are together!

I'm a Chicago Southsider, through and through. Emily is following in Dad's footsteps. That means 2 things. First and foremost, we are White Sox fans. Secondly, our next favorite team is whoever is playing the Cubs!

Sidebar: two years ago when the Cubs played the Cleveland Indians in the finals, Em and I had full Indian regalia on. What the heck would make a Sox fan wear Indian colors? When playing the Cubs of course.


In that light, we love the Cardinals! Em went to see the Cards play the Sox earlier in the year (don't get me started on non-World Series interleague play). So for parents weekend, we stayed at the Westin at Cupples Station (I know more about Samuel Cupples than I know about some Chicago Founders, as Cupples lived on what has become SLU, but there is additional backstory there as well when SLU built a building a century ago that blocked his view of downtown so he donated his land to WashU, which sold it back to SLU after his death. Fascinating)

So we stayed across the street from Cardinals stadium. I rue the day the White Sox decided on their new stadium design, as it was the last "arena" style ballpark and when it was completed in about '91 it was already out of date. They chopped off the top 10 rows, put a small roof over the last 16 rows, and tried with various improvements to bring it down to scale and modernize. The changes have been good, but they picked the wrong plan and are stuck with it.

New parks, Arlington, Busch, etc are the future. StL has a golden opportunity here and they are trying to cash in. They made the park below street level and left center field open to the street. Out in center, across the street actually, is a complex of restaurants and such that take advantage of this. Emily had a SLU dance on the top floor of this building overlooking the park. Cubs have something somewhat similar with the rooftop places around the park, but those are independent of the park and most have blocked views due to recent construction. They are now building a sports "neighborhood" around it.

In St Louis, its called Cardinal Nation. Couple brew pubs, couple eateries, Fox sports is there, all for a gameday experience.


Fast forward to last Saturday. Cards were idle, needed 16 phases of math to come into play to still be in it. Cardinal Nation restaurant was empty but the general gathering brew pub area was brusseling. Cards needed help. Everyone was rooting for the Dodgers, as the quasi math going into the formula for Cards making it to the wild card included them.

It was fun! Emily and I loved telling people we were from Chicago, stipulating South Side, and professing our second love for the Cards.

Cardinals did not end up in the playoffs, but we still had a great time with the folks around the stadium.


Not sure what order the pictures will post in, but Emily had 2 dogs, one ketchup only and one bacon mac and cheese, I had St Louis pork steak. Thats were the BBQ sauce came in. The picture is CRAP. This was a pork shoulder, cut 1" thick, slowly braised and maybe smoked. I know two things. It was pork. It was good.

Got back to the Westin by 7pm. Em had an organic chem test to study for.

Salt + Smoke at 1pm, Cardinal Nation at 6pm.

I woke her up from our food coma at 7am for breakfast and then I had the 5 hour ride back.


Love the view of the park from ground level!



Hope she did okay on the test!

Sorry for the bad pics

Thanks Vagabond.


I know, she could have done far worse BBQ wise


:grin: