'Dead' Dining Trends: How Does St. Louis Rate?

"Dead" Dining Trends: How Does St. Louis Rate?

By Ian Froeb Fri., Jun. 3 2011 at 12:00 PM

Trendy pie? No, thanks. We're still eating our trendy cupcakes.

Earlier this week, the New York branch of Eater published an article titled "10 NYC Food & Dining Trends That Are Officially Dead." Since St. Louis tends to be at least a few years behind the capital of the world when it comes to such things (see: cupcakes), I thought it might be fun to examine the status of these "dead" trends in our fair city.

Image via

This photo of a beer growler has received the craft-beer-enthusiast stamp of approval.

Old-Timey Dining Rooms: Eater is tired of restaurants with "a bunch of retro junk on the walls." I can think of only a few restaurants that favor a retro look, though these places don't necessarily have much in common with one another: DeMun Oyster Bar (antique mirrors everywhere) and the Fountain on Locust (Art Deco), for example. "Old-timey" certainly hasn't reached trend status here.

Growlers: Growlers are/were a trend? Really? Growlers are simply one of the many aspects of the craft-beer boom. Eater suggests canned beer has supplanted growlers, but the comparison is false: Growlers are meant for draft beer; cans supposedly offer better storage for beer than glass bottles. Not a trend, period, let alone one in St. Louis.

Discount Fine-Dining: St. Louis doesn't have enough "fine" dining options for such a trend to reach critical mass, but with the explosion of locally based Groupon-esque services (including, yes, one offered by this paper) and the proliferation of casual menus like the "Southern Bistro" concept at Monarch and the Monday "family supper" menu at Niche, something like this trend is alive and well in St. Louis.

Speakeasies: This presents a conundrum. If St. Louis has a number of speakeasies, would the vast majority of us know about it? There's the Thaxton Speakeasy, but it doesn't really try to be "secret."

Tiki: Eater seems to be referring to actual tiki bars, rather than tiki-bar cocktails. As far as I know, St. Louis has no new tiki bars -- anyone know differently? -- but some of our mixology-focused bars do have tiki-influenced drinks. (Taste, for example, which I visited recently for my upcoming review, has two.)

Tags:

banh mi, comfort food, cupcakes, food trends, gastropubs, growlers, pie, speakeasies, tiki bars

We Recommend

Amr Salah

I have the pleasure to brief you on our Data Visualization software"Trend Compass".

TC is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animatedway by displaying in one chart 5 axis (X, Y, Time, Bubble size &Bubble color) instead of just the traditional X and Y axis. Discovertrends hidden in spreadsheets. It could be used in analysis,research, presentation etc. In different business sectors, to name afew we have Deutsche Bank, NBC Universal, RIM, VanguardInstitutional Investor, Ipsos, Princeton University as our clients.

NBC presentation on TED using Trend Compass exported Videos. Now onCNN Money / Fortune (Dec 21st,2010):http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/20...

The following link is for our new Geographical Trend Compass(Earthquake in Japan - Mag vs Depth vs Time):http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Link on Ads Monitoring on TV Satellite Channels. Pick Duration (Adsdaily duration) vs Repeat (Ads repetition per day).http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Link showing drilling feature (Parent/Child) - Just double-click on anybubble:http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Link on UK Master Card vs Visa performance :http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Links on Funds:http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Link on other KPIs :http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Link on Chile's Earthquake (Feb 27th 2010):http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

This a link on weather data :http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

This is a bank link to compare Deposits, Withdrawals and numbers ofCustomers for different branches over time ( all in 1 Chart) :http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

Misc Examples :http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...http://www.epicsyst.com/test/v...

This is a project we did with Princeton University on US unemployment :http://www.epicsyst.com/main3....

A 3 minutes video presentation of above by Professor Alan KruegerBendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at PrincetonUniversity and currently Chief Economist at the US Treasury usingTrend Compass :http://epicsyst.com/trendcompa...

You can download a trial version. It has a feature to exportEXE,PPS,HTML and AVI files. The most impressive is the AVI since youcan record Audio/Video for the charts you create.

http://epicsyst.com/trendcompa...

All the best.

Amr SalahTrend Compass TeamEpic Systemswww.epicsyst.com

Growler's are very much a trend in the craft beer circles! Collecting and refilling them is very popular (but it's bad etiquette to bring in another brewery's empty growler!), especially from local brewers (like Schlafly's) or even Cicero's will fill you a growler of anything they have on tap. And anyone who willingly drinks craft beers from a can doesn't know what they're talking about to begin with.

In many cities, the growler has evolved to become a buy-one-access-all concept that permits the owner to use it at every local brewpubs/breweries. Basically, there's a universal growler system which all the companies recognize and support. While I realize that breweries don't always reject selling their beer in 'foreign' labeled containers, the lower refill price of the universal growler saves cash and keeps less glass in circulation (and in your pantry).