Defiantly Local

Crown Candy Kitchen
1401 St. Louis Ave
St. Louis, Missouri
www.crowncandykitchen.com

I’ve always held a special place in my heart for Saint Louis, partially because I grew up there, partially because it has a unique vibe that’s not found in many places.  It rivals New Orleans in age, and remains a unique Midwestern metropolis, identifying more with the East Coast than the Midwest in its own weird way.  If urban spelunking is your thing, Saint Louis is a dream come true.

As a teenager, I discovered my real love of urban areas.  Growing up in the suburbs was worthwhile and sanitized the way it’s meant to be. However, I remain grateful to parents who allowed their only daughter to go to high school in the city, to learn the lessons of navigation, meet people from other walks of life, and gain the street smarts that have served me well in urban areas all over the lower 48 for the last few years.  They let me wander.  I drove past hundred year old mansions across from the world’s fair grounds every morning on the way to school, went to Mass in the Basilica that took 80 years to fully complete, and wandered an eclectic neighborhood whenever possible.

Fascinated by what I’d discovered just in the Central West End and the southside neighborhoods of my friends, I was desperate to explore more.  One weekend senior year of high school, my dear friends J and Linny and I took my 1967 Impala into downtown along with a video camera to explore new territory.  I had of course been downtown for events, baseball games, school field trips, and with my parents who knew exactly how to get where we were going and get out. 

Wandering with my friends, I saw for the first time the real decay of the north side of downtown.  I was suddenly aware of this land that my father in his politically oblivious way referred to as “Injun country” for its wide open spaces and potential danger around the few corners that existed.  With newly adult eyes, I was seeing the results of one of the worst urban renewal campaigns in history.  What was once thriving with homes, businesses, and industry was now a seemingly bombed out mess of a few remaining structures, open lots, pot holes, and flooded storm drains.  Just blocks from the crowded tourist areas of the Gateway Arch, Busch stadium, and the courthouse were the tangled ruins of neighborhoods abandoned to the ravages of time.

Fast forward twelve years.  The mess of empty buildings, razed lots, and the old Vess Cola bottle sign are still there.  Yet, somehow in our 1994 journey, I had missed the literal crown jewel of the entire area that has managed to both survive and thrive - Crown Candy Kitchen.

Started in 1913 by two Greek friends, Crown Candy Kitchen remains an icon of the city and one of very, very few businesses still surviving on the north side of downtown.  The neighborhood around it shows few signs of life - empty places both extant and razed with just a few offices, mostly industrial support, and one or two storefronts still operational.  Yet on the corner of St. Louis Avenue and 14th Street is the most crowded restaurant in all of downtown.

Patrons take a step back in time as they cross the threshhold.  The pressed tin ceiling is as clean and crisp today as the day it opened 94 years ago.  The green and white linoleum floor was probably laid in the 1950s and has been scrubbed clean every night for the last half century.  Coca-Cola signs from decades past line the top shelves, and signed Saint Louis Blues hockey sticks hang on the walls. The menu on the wall is one of those pressed-plastic letter jobs like they have at stadium concession stands, the plastic now an unusual tinge of yellow with a faded, splashing Pepsi cup bursting from its center.

Patrons fight for booths at lunchtime.  As this is a clock-punching crowd, it’s best to arrive on the hour or half hour as half the restaurant gets up and departs at once to get back to work.  They fight for these tiny tables for the home-cooked food and the tradition of the working man’s lunch. 

Each table has a “Seaburg Wall-o-matic” jukebox on it that once connected to the main jukebox for the restaurant.  The songs are still in place.  As my compadre joined me to sample this somehow elusive local fare, I was debating which I would have liked to hear more, Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” The Doors’ ”Light My Fire” or The Troggs song that I’d not heard before.  As Stina dropped into her seat and our server appeared, I stopped surfing this earliest of ipods.

We selected our lunch, and having been on the road for too many weeks, I underestimated the Midwest portion size.  Stina and I shared my yummy small salad and still didn’t finish it as our heaping lunch plates were served.  Lunch was both tasty and enormous, and we set aside our plates with food left for the starving children in Africa so that we could have the coup de grace of Crown Candy Kitchen: dessert.

You go to Crown Candy Kitchen for the meal, but what you’re really after is the sugar.  After all, lunch is served in the lobby of a still-operating, old-school candy kitchen.  The ice cream is hand dipped, the ingredients are fresh, and whether planned or not, you can’t leave without at least a quarter pound of chocolate for yourself or someone whose diet you intend to ruin.  So, a shared banana split later, Stina and I headed for the counter to buy more sugar.

The kitchen whips up every sort of chocolate concotion imaginable.  Non-pareils, malted milk balls, cream centers, caramels, Swedish fish…the list is long and mouth-watering.  Any moment, the candy man from Willy Wonka seems bound to emerge from the back and break into his song while handing over those weird little styrofoam spaceships with the bits of colored sugar inside.

Either way, leaving full of the local flavor, it’s fun to step out the front door to a clear view of the Gateway Arch just over the hill - the signature of the city and a reminder that this place, despite the loss of the entire neighborhood around it, is defiantly local.