When I moved to St. Louis in the summer of 2001 to take a job with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I landed in a city so unlike Salt Lake, it took me months to orient myself.
Generic brand vodka at the grocery store! Brain sandwiches at the corner bar! Midwestern gliding vowels! Humidity so high, my hair was now curly, not straight!
But the two cultural touchstones that confused me the most: 1. The “high school question” and 2. Provel cheese.
I soon learned that “Where’d you go to high school?” was a fast way for people to ask about religion, class and politics without asking about religion, class and politics.
Provel was… trickier to figure out. Allegedly a mix of cheddar, swiss and Provolone, it’s used exclusively on St. Louis-style thin-crust pizzas. The first time I tried it, it struck me as a bit like Elmer’s wood glue in flavor and mouth feel. After a year or so, I cultivated a genuine appreciation, even a fondness, for it. And that wasn’t because St. Louis natives threatened to smack me or never talk to me again after I admitted I thought it tasted a little funny.
You know what else tastes funny when you’re not used to it, though? Frog eye salad. And its distant cousin, marshmallow ambrosia salad. Also a dish my grandmother used to make, falling on the more obscure side of the Utah Jell-O spectrum: a holiday aspic made from unflavored Knox gelatin, cauliflower and canned shrimp.
Part of why I came around to Provel is because it became inseparable to me from St. Louis: the shotgun houses and the long skinny backyards full of zoysia grass and the humid July air and baseball play-by-plays on the radio and the Mississippi River. You can make and sell Provel pizza in Brooklyn (as a hipster from St. Louis tried to do about seven years ago), but removed from its natural environment, it’s just …. a weird, tangy cheese. And frog eye salad in St. Louis is just a curious custardy dessert that you’ll be taking home with you, untouched, at the end of the potluck.
In my 20 years in St. Louis, I never tried a brain sandwich, though I went to plenty of places that sold them. I’m not sure you can even get them there anymore. Like Salt Lake City, the St. Louis food and drink scene is way more diverse and cosmopolitan than it was 20 years ago.
When St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser, sold out to InBev in 2008, people’s loyalties shifted to microbrews. Because it changed the way people drank their beer (a core social activity for a lot of folks), it couldn’t help but shift the way people thought and talked about themselves and their city.
I see the same thing happening in Salt Lake City, as people loosen up about alcohol (and coffee! For a substance that’s been somewhat verboten in this culture, I’ve never seen such large large coffees).
I’ve also been overjoyed to see how robust the food and drink scene in Utah has become, with a multitude of bars, restaurants and markets reflecting many different cultures and foodways.
Eating and drinking is entertaining, delicious and necessary. So it’s easy to forget that it’s also language, a social thermometer, a mirror, a social hinge, an encyclopedia, a cultural memory bank, a story container, a grief-soother, a meaning-maker, a joy expressor, a peace broker. It’s a way we can start a conversation when we don’t know what to say, a point we can start from when we don’t understand each other.
I’m looking forward to covering new restaurants and bars, and of course following the latest developments with the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. But most of all, I’m looking forward to telling stories about this city and the people who live here.
Stefene Russell is The Tribune’s Utah Eats reporter.