The Trump Administration Is Writing a Death Sentence for America’s Most Important Restaurants
April 17, 2020
For a few months before the pandemic trapped us in our homes, I spent a fair amount of time driving around the Midwest. Scouting out new developments in the realm of food and drinks is central to what I do here at Esquire, and I was excited to see that there were plenty of new developments to check out in states like Indiana and Ohio and Missouri.
I took a tour of Ryan Morgan’s bakery, Sixteen Bricks, in Cincinnati, and I slid into a booth at Martha Hoover’s candlelit chapel of cocktails and vintage albums, Bar One Fourteen, in Indianapolis. I knew that I would be a dolt to visit Cleveland without dropping into Larder, a deli and bakery that has become recently famous for its pickles and pastrami. I drove straight there from Columbus and parked a block away at lunchtime. St. Louis impressed me most of all. Within 24 hours I had three meals in St. Louis that rivaled anything I could find in New York or Los Angeles: lunch at Winslow’s Table, dinner at Indo, and a solo brunch (I was the first person in line when the doors opened at 11 a.m.) at Balkan Treat Box, which serves Eastern European flatbreads good enough to make you stray from pizza.
