ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - While most of the 23 places featured in Esquire Magazine's "Best New Restaurants in America" list come from New York and San Francisco, the Midwest is still strongly represented. Missouri has three restaurants that made the list, including two in the St. Louis area.
For the last year, two Esquire writers have traveled the country to try new restaurants, even amid the pandemic.
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"We wore our masks. We ate outside at rickety tables in the rain; we got sublime hoagies and took them to the beach; in some cases, we just ordered boxes of food and carted them home," the report states.
The two restaurants in St. Louis to make the list were Indo on Tower Grove Avenue in the city and Balkan Treat Box in Webster Groves.
Here's what the magazine had to say about each:
No. 6, Indo
You wonder, as you sit at the counter at Indo and watch chef Nick Bognar at work: Can this guy do anything? Indo is not a sushi restaurant per se, yet electrifying bites of nigiri land in front of you during the course of a meal like random emoji lightning bolts of flavor. (Looking back now, I can’t help but think of Eddie Van Halen onstage unleashing a Mozartian flourish of arpeggios just for the virtuosic **** of it.) Meanwhile, much of the menu at Indo is rooted in the complexities of Thai cuisine that the chef grew up with. Bognar, goateed and headbanded, toggles between cutting boards and cultures with the sprezzatura of a shredder.
No. 16, Balkan Treat Box
We’ll admit that we didn’t have “Bosnian flatbreads” on our 2020 bingo card, either, but chef Loryn Nalic (whose husband, Edo, above, grew up in Bosnia) is doing some astonishing things with dough in the Show-Me State—things that (oh, the blasphemy) made us forget about pizza for a moment. I mean, the piping-hot boat of bread that is pide, with its duet of ajvar (a red-pepper spread) and kajmak (a creamy fresh cheese)! At first we didn’t understand why there was a line down the block at 11:00 in the morning. Then we took a bite. Let’s just say you’d better watch your back, pizza.
The other Missouri restaurant on the list was Fox and Pearl in Kanas City. They highlight the the midwest joint's "rabbit potpie, the beef-heart tartare, the pork terrine with fried duck liver, and, of course, the now-famous foie gras sausage—emulsified pork and bits of foie poached in duck fat."
See the full list, here.
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