August 19, 2005
Ted Drewes
My next culinary stop on the St. Louis trip was Gino's, a great old Italian restaurant near the Hill. After that meal, my family and I went to Ted Drewes, which is one of my favorite places to go in St. Louis. And I'm not even an ice-cream junkie. But the great thing about Ted Drewes is that everyone comes here from all over St. Louis, it's always crowded, and on a hot August night you can stand there with everyone else and cool down by eating a delicious concrete. It's just one of the great communal experiences in St. Louis. When I was there, I saw all sorts of people, including a just-crowned beauty queen chowing down on some ice-cream (I can only imagine how long she had been waiting to do that).
Ted Drewes evidently invented the concrete, when a particular customer kept asking for a shake made thicker and thicker. Concretes are now all over the midwest, and I'm sure that the origin story I've heard is hotly contested. It's even in New York now, in Danny Meyer's Shake Shack in Madison Square Park.
So, next time you are in St. Louis, Ted Drewes is a must. Until then, I leave with only a picture of the wonderful concrete:
