Clara Moore and Matt Sorrell (pictured below) have delivered an excellent book with great information about where to buy food in metro St. Louis. As a contributor to their Kickstarter fund which helped get the book published, I am happy to report that the book has tons of useful content.
Shop Like A Chef: A Food Lover’s Guide To St. Louis Neighborhoods assembles retail food sources first by neighborhood, then (in greater detail) by the food they offer.
And it includes recipes! They include a variety of dishes ranging from gumbo to asparagus Milanese to Mexican wedding cookies to Sopska salata to buttermilk fried chicken to roasted eggplant “meatloaf.”
The book gives suburbanites who rarely enter St. Louis city (except for Cardinals games) numerous ideas for places to score food items not carried by the major chains. Or, if the items are available at chain grocers, the smaller shops may offer fresher versions or ethnic variations.
Likewise, for those city dwellers who have heard of places like Ballwin but never ventured there, SLAC:AFLGTSLN mentions stores like The Smokehouse Market (Chesterfield), Jalisco Market (Overland) and Piccolino’s (Ferguson).
Shop Like A Chef can help you plan for entertaining whether it’s a gourmet dinner or a sports-watching party. By suggesting new possibilities or rekindling a memory of something you read about in Bon Appetit ten years ago, SLAC:AFLGTSLN is a good resource for people who like to eat and especially for those who like to cook.
Like a huge plate of baba ghanoush (recipe on page 175), Shop Like A Chef can be savored in small bites or gobbled up in one sitting. If you love shopping for food and then preparing that food, get this book. And use it.
List price is 15.95. Click HERE for a list of bookstores and grocery stores that carry Shop Like A Chef. It is also available from Amazon.
