The circumstances, of course, were not ideal. In town for Mom's memorial service and to start cleaning out the house, Piers was also working every day so he didn't have to take leave to be with me. Thus his introductory sightseeing consisted of evenings out with friends and two weekend jaunts around town when we needed a break from the house sorting.
Piers' strongest impressions? How similar it was to the stereotypical America he'd seen on TV. From the slightly down-at-the-heel cluster of tall buildings and stadia that is downtown to the leafy lanes of suburbia, St. Louis was, to him "everytown USA" as presented by the American media.
"In size, dimensions, buildings and density of urbanisation the city centre was not so different from an English town," said Piers. "However, as soon as you got into the suburbs it was very much more open, less dense, more like the American suburbia on TV. Houses all set back. Big gardens, drives with multiple cars, every house with a garage, no shrubbery around the front of the gardens so that it has the open feel of continuous parkland dotted with homes. I now understand the traditional image of the paper boy cycling down the sidewalk and throwing papers at the porches on his way past."
The domestic architecture was a bit of a shock for him, and, unsurprisingly, he found the older, more subtle, elegant and architecturally pure homes of Frontenac and Ladue far more to his taste than the lumbering "McMansions" that are going up in Chesterfield.
"Overly ostentations, pretentious, attempting to claim something they're not, and in so doing are actually generating an entirely new form of architecture," he observed. "The French chateau style was very amusing, because I could almost see the originator of that style turning around to an architect, showing a picture of a bad chateau in the first place, then adding a bit more of this style, mashing in a bit of that, then popping a southern mansion's columned porch on the front."
Also high on his amusement list was how clearly fascinated by English style the St. Louisans are, yet how many of their mock Tudor homes looked far more Bavarian to his British eyes than anything actually found at home.
We took a quick walk around Chesterfield's Faust park one evening, where buildings from the town's settlement days have been moved and assembled into an historic district. "I can’t quite see how those buildings evolved into the offices and homes of modern St. Louis," Piers said. "I just didn't see the progression of architecture."
Then he saw the older, more modest neighbourhoods of The Hill and South Saint Louis, and saw a whole different style. "Almost more like LA with all small houses behind tiny lawns. It didn’t have the suburban feel that Chesterfield had. So effectively there seem to be three types of urbanisation: the City itself with its business and industrial feel, then two types of suburbia, inner and outer," he said.
The bit of sightseeing we did brought him back to a more accustomed popuation density and sense of history. St. Charles, the original capital of Missouri, and Laclede's Landing both made impressions with their early 19th century architecture and their cobbled streets. "I can get a feel for some of this history you're always going on about," he said.
Our quick drives around town were really scouting expeditions for the trip coming at Easter, which was always planned as a proper vacation. What's high on Piers' list to return to?
"Definitely the brewery. I was quite interested that it was thrown over such a large space and that people could drive in and around it. I loved the wolves, or whatever they were," he mused. (Those are giant stone foxes in Bavarian dress, sitting on the corners of the bottling plant hoisting large beer steins.) "I definitely want to go to the top of the Arch and have a see through those little windows. I’d like to go back and see the zoo and spend some time in Forest Park."
On his first drive around Busch Stadium (something he has, of course, seen a lot of already on his fiance's MLB.com feed and yet barely recognised from that), he was surprised by how small it looked. This is a trick of architectural perspective, as the lines to the outfield are of the usual length and there's a huge entertainment area behind the bleachers, but he thought "were someone to hit a home run I would suspect it would fly out and hit a car. I can only anticipate, once we're in it, that it will be open, full of light." Stay tuned for Piers' first baseball game on 23 April.)
Most of our free time wasn't spent sightseeing, however, but over evening meals. So while Piers had only a sampler of tourist attractions, the week gave him a full immersion into the St. Louis restaurant scene.
His best experience? As expected, Annie Gunn's. "Quality plates of food, a fantastic sommelier, a broad wine list and a menu that made the most of local, seasonal meat and produce. Very much like a top quality restaurant in Europe," he said, while tucking into a melt-in-the-mouth pork belly with caramelised apples, sauteed potato and sweet and sour cabbage. (A dish calculated to delight him in any restaurant.) My pork chop (so big it provided two more meals) with pecan molasses sauce topped with grated fresh horseradish was exquisite, and dad gave top marks for his wild Alaskan Salmon. We also discovered a couple of excellent American wines: the Kent Rasmussen winery "Carneros" 2007 pinot noir and the Penner-Ash 2008 Willamette Valley pinot noir.
In second place stands Charlie Gittos, an Italian institution from "The Hill" that's recently expanded into Chesterfield. Piers' review: "The service at Gittos was great, I liked the fact that the waiter knew enough about the menu to really advise us on our choices and on the wine, but then when he realised we were serious about the wine he offered to bring the sommelier over to enhance the experience, it wasn't necessary as the wine chosen by your usual author was excellent. They understood my tomato allergy and, despite being an Italian restaurant heavy on that ingredient, provided me with excellent options." The white pizza with clams is something we'll try again at home, and the veal scaloppine topped with crab sauce was a big hit. Piers also judged this the best toasted ravioli (a St. Louis specialty) he'd had thus far.
We had a good Sicilian red here, which was probably the best value for money on what we found to be a pricey wine list. In fact, we noticed across all the restaurants we went to that American wine lists actually seem to be more expensive than British, with the cheapest bottles often coming in at $40, where we'd expect to see £25 bottles ... and remember, that's with tax included ... on the lists of similar restaurants at home. Do Brits drink so much more that the volumes bring the prices down, we wondered? Or is it that with the preponderance of wine makers in Europe provide more competition and therefore make it more economical?
Cunetto's House of Pasta (dubbed the "house of waiting" by our friends Anne and Mike) didn't fare so well, with average service and sub-standard pasta served up after waiting almost 2 hours to get a table and food at the no-reservations establishment on The Hill. Now that I spend my life in much nicer restaurants I realise that the appeal of Cunettos was huge piles of food for not a lot of money. Fortunately, we're both at a point in our lives where we can go for quality over quantity. And Cunetto's is not going to win in that game.
Later that same night he was perhaps the most memorable thing to hit Schneithorst's bierkeller in many a month, sending his beer back because the glass was too cold. (He had specifically requested a room temperature glass and got a frosted one.) "I'm sorry, you Americans serve beer far too cold," he harrumphed. "Fine when it's bad beer and you need the temperature to kill the taste. But this was a good Bavarian wheat beer. Why chill it to the point that you can't taste the quality?"
And just to complete the sweep of St. Louis culinary tradition, we took him to Ted Drewes. The 1930s era ice cream hut has been standing beside what was Route 66 since that road was the only main highway to the west, and its "frozen custard" is justifiably famous. "Unctuous, very filling and a nice balance of flavours," Piers said of his "Cardinal Sin" concrete that mixed chocolate and cherries into the vanilla custard. Terrible for my diet, of course, but it's clear we're coming back here after the ball game next month. Traditions must be upheld, after all.
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