13 minute read
St. Louis Standards
32
ST. LOUIS STANDARDS
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ICONIC PEOPLE, PLACES & DISHES THAT ANCHOR STL’S FOOD SCENE[ ]
Old School
Hacienda’s Mexican fare connects the restaurant to the community — and to the past
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
When Alexandra “Alex” Rodriguez tells the story of Hacienda, she cannot separate the restaurant from her late father, Norberto, even though he would have disliked some of the details she chooses to share. A native of Tampico, Mexico, Norberto immigrated to the United States when he was just sixteen years old, making the journey by himself save for an acquaintance who was bound for New York. Though Norberto thought he’d make the way up east too, his fellow expat told him that the Big Apple might be too fast for him, handed him $10 and said he should try St. Louis instead. With no formal education and no English, Norberto accepted the money and was determined to figure it out.
“He always hated that I’d share he didn’t have a formal education, but I think that’s the coolest part,” Rodriguez says. “He is completely self-taught. He came here completely alone with only ten bucks and a ‘good luck’ from his friend. is first ob here as on a farm making one dollar a week. I can’t even imagine how little money that was, but he did what he had to do for a minute, then found his way into restaurants and worked his way up.”
Now at the helm of the restaurant her dad founded in 1968, Rodriguez can’t help but feel a sense of pride at what he accomplished, as well as an obligation to keep his dream alive. It’s a weight — albeit a welcome one — she feels because of Norberto s significant impact on the St. Louis dining scene. When he arrived in St. Louis in the early 1960s, Mexican cuisine was not widely available, but he was instrumental in changing that. He started out slowly, opening an American-style breakfast spot in downtown Overland, where he gradually added Mexican dishes to the menu here and there. It didn’t take long for him to develop a following, so he expanded both his hours and offerings, turning the daytime spot into a budding Mexican restaurant.
Norberto’s restaurant eventually outgrew the small breakfast spot’s space, and as he looked around for larger digs, he realized that there was enough demand for his Mexican dishes to open a place solely dedicated to the country’s culinary traditions. That restaurant, Hacienda, opened in 1968 just down Woodson Road from his original daytime concept, and was an instant success — so much that he began scouting for a second location a handful of years after opening the Overland original. When he came upon an old residenceturned-restaurant on Manchester Road in the middle of Rock Hill, he knew he’d found his spot.
When he opened the current Rock Hill Hacienda in 1977, the area as significantly less de eloped than it is today. However, Norberto had the foresight to see what the area could become, and he sold off his original location to some family members so that he could focus on the new place. As Rodriguez explains, there was just something special about the space that people felt drawn to, likely because of its colorful history — something that everyone who worked there embraced.
“This location was originally a residence that was owned by a steamboat captain,” Rodriguez says. “It had already been converted into a restaurant when my dad bought it, but if you look around, you can tell where the ex-
Hacienda has been a St. Louis tradition since 1968. | ANDY PAULISSEN
Alex Rodriguez proudly carries on her dad’s legacy. | ANDY PAULISSEN
e Rock Hill location has become an icon of the city’s dining scene. | ANDY PAULISSEN Hacienda’s warm atmosphere keep generations of diners coming back. | ANDY PAULISSEN
Hacienda makes as much from scratch as possible, including its chips. | ANDY PAULISSEN
terior walls were and where we added on. There’s just so much history here. The staff even thinks they have seen ghosts — there are all these stories about a woman in a purple dress. No one has seen her in a while though, so maybe she parted ways and is at rest.”
Though Rodriguez never saw any specters herself, she and her brother, John, have their own stories about the restaurant that they grew up in.
“We were there all the time,” Rodriguez says. “It’s funny; when you’re little, your normal is your normal. For me, having a restaurant was my normal, but I know it as definitely special. I remember being so little and helping put doilies on plates — when you are fi e, that feels special. e also learned how to fold napkins, just little things like that. When I got a little bigger, I did coat check during the holidays and definitely felt like a big kid doing that.”
Though Rodriguez and her brother understood somewhere deep down that the restaurant was their birthright, they were not convinced it would be their career. Instead, they went off on their own paths — Rodriguez to Chicago for art school and her brother to Berklee College of Music in Boston. However, when it became clear to Rodriguez about a decade ago that her father needed help, she returned to St. Louis and has been in charge of the restaurant ever since.
Rodriguez says that it’s been quite a ride since taking over, especially with the challenges the last year and a half has presented. She credits her longtime staff with keeping the restaurant going — some of whom have worked there for decades, including the kitchen manager, who has been a presence at the property even before her dad owned it.
“We joke around that he came with the building, because he literally did,” Rodriguez laughs. “He was working in the kitchen of the restaurant that was here before my dad bought it, and he just stayed on working even after the change. He’s worked in this building since he was seventeen making all of our recipes, and he’s still here today.”
Rodriguez feels that her kitchen manager’s story as well as the stories of her other longtime employees and her family are the reasons that Hacienda has such a special place in the hearts of St. Louis diners. Though she knows the food is delicious, she also understands that people continue to patronize the restaurant decades after its founding because they feel a connection to the people who work there. Those relationships are what sustained the restaurant through the pandemic-induced closures and switch to carry-out, and they continue to sustain her and her staff as they have adjusted to the new COVID-19 normal.
However, Rodriguez believes there are good things that have come out of the pandemic. Though she sadly had to close her fast-casual concept, Mayana, she was able to turn the former restaurant’s food truck into an Hacienda on wheels. Between that and the Hacienda catering truck, she and her team were able to not just keep the restaurant a oat, but spread oy and a little bit of normalcy to the community. She hopes to continue these new ventures while keeping the restaurant steady because she knows how much it means to people — and how much it means to her to keep up the house that her dad built.
“I’m always thinking of my dad,” Rodriguez says. “I always know what Dad did was special; I felt that growing up, and I always looked at it from that perspective. I feel honored and grateful to be here and am so proud of my dad — not just that he built this, but because of everything he did. He was self-taught and did this on his own, and I am honored and grateful I am a part of protecting this and keeping it going and keeping his dream alive.” n
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REEFERFRONT TIMES
[EDIBLES]
Weed Eater
High-potency cannabis edibles land in Missouri dispensaries
Written by DANNY WICENTOWSKI
In some recipes, tripling one ingredient might lead to disaster. But in Honeybee’s line of popular Blood Orange Strawberry fruit gumdrops, tripling the THC content — from 100mg to 300mg — has made no difference to the fruit a ors imbued into each drop by chef a e ens.
“It’s still such a small amount,” says Owens, the director of culinary for Proper Brands and its line of oneybee edibles. en ith these high potency ersions, e didn t find any real impact so far in the taste or in the consistency.”
Along with the gumdrops, Honeybee is rolling out a similarly upgraded ersion of its peanut and pretzel chocolate bar, its ten pieces containing a total of 300mg. Made with European milk chocolate, roasted peanuts and crunchy pretzel, the bar is marketed as “a gro n up ersion of a childhood fa orite.
It’s a product informed by Owens pre ious role as a chief chocolatier for Bissinger’s — though he notes that, as a high-end confectioner, he was often working to keep costs do n in a ery competiti e marketplace.
In cannabis, things are different. A bag of gumdrops can sell from $35 to $40 in a St. Louis dispensary, and the new “high potency arieties are selling for $75. For a confectioner, that price point means greater latitude to use ingredients like premium fine chocolate and real fruit. e ha e more e ibility, ens says, though he also adds that he s ust as e cited to create ne a ors for oneybee as he as as a chocolatier for a storied confectioner like Bissinger’s. The creati ity is certainly still here,” Owens says, and jokes, “We had 350 years of history at issinger s e e ust had a year
Colorado edibles manufacturer Robhots is bringing a line of edibles with a whopping 300mg of THC to Missouri markets. | VIA ROBHOTS
here. So we’re still working on building that. e e only got more years to go.”
Putting aside whether Owens and Honeybee can last to the year e re hoping humanity can make it that long, at least), Proper Cannabis co-founder Matt LaBrier points out that time is an important ariable hen talking about increasing a product’s THC potency. In a state where cannabis has been legal for little more than a year, patients with limited edible e perience can innocently intake more THC than they intend.
Safely eating edibles takes a le el of caution. It could be the difference between eating half a gumdrop and a full one, and LaBrier says that Proper, which produces the line of Honeybee edibles, has had to consider the relati e ine perience of issouri patients when determining just how strong to make its products. e references the ad ice he offers to cannabis users trying an edible for the first time tart slo .
“We were trying to be cognizant that this was a new market, and we didn’t want to come out of the gates with a product that had a chance of being ingested and being too much for folks,” he e plains. ut, pretty uickly after opening our door and selling oneybee all o er the state, e kept getting feedback that there was a market for higher-potency edibles.”
Indeed, e en ith the candy and chocolate designed for taste, patients who rely on edibles for relief from pain and insomnia may find themsel es eating and spending more than they’d like to attain the same effects.
Proper’s Honeybee line of edibles isn t the first to reach the 300mg benchmark for high potency in Missouri. Through a partnership with Kansas City-based cannabis producer lo r, the olorado edibles powerhouse Robhots offers t o a ors of mg T gummies, Peach Mango and Blue Raspberry, with each pack containing ten candies of 30mg THC each. The products sell for around in t. ouis area dispensaries. ansas ity nati e, Robhots founder Zack Romey has seen his company e pand from olorado into multiple cannabis industries. Like LaBrier, he credits public demand for higher THC content in edibles for dri ing the company to offer steadily stronger arieties; that includes a 1,000mg product where each gummy contains mg of T , significantly more than Missouri’s current crop of high-potency products. ou ha e people ho really can’t eat a bunch of sugar, but they can eat a small gummy that has the high dose that they need,” Romey points out. “With our products, what we really found successful is they taste great and there s consistency. ou re ne er going to ha e a patient ho eats a gummy and they get way more than a 50-milligram dose or a 30-milligram dose.”
Romey says he e pects issouri cannabis patients to see more high-potency edibles on dispensary menus, especially if the competition creates pressure for lower prices. ased on his e perience in olorado, he sees the a ailability of 300mg Robhots products as “stepping stones” to 500mg, and perhaps more.
“I get emails a couple times a eek from people saying, I ha e this condition, I was on this list of prescription narcotics,’” Romey says. “Now they’re just eating our gummies.” n
Sen. Elizabeth Warren is one of the Democratic lawmakers asking the president to act. | MAVERICK PICTURES / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
[WEED LAWS]
High Crimes
Senators call on Biden to pardon all nonviolent cannabis o enders
Written by LEE DEVITO
U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon sent a letter to President Joe Biden earlier this month calling on him to use his executive authority to issue a blanket pardon for all nonviolent federal cannabis offenders, whether currently or formerly incarcerated.
In the letter, the senators, all Democrats, called America’s war on drugs “failed and racist.”
“America’s cannabis policies have punished Black and Brown communities for too long,” the senators wrote, adding that despite legalization in states across the country, as well as roughly equal cannabis usage rates, “Black Americans are still nearly four times as likely to be arrested for cannabis possession as white Americans.”
The senators also note that 27 states and Washington, D.C., have decriminalized cannabis possession, while 36 states have legalized cannabis for medical use and eighteen states, two territories and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for adult use.
The senators point out that a majority of Americans, nearly seven in ten, support cannabis legalization.
On the campaign trail, Biden said that “we should decriminalize marijuana” and “everyone [with a marijuana record] should be let out of jail, their records expunged, be completely zeroed out.”
“Our country’s cannabis policies must be completely overhauled, but you have the power to act now: you can and should issue a blanket pardon for all non-violent federal cannabis offenses, fulfilling your promises to the American people and transforming the lives of tens of thousands [of] Americans,” the letter states.
“The Constitution grants you the authority to pardon broad classes of Americans to correct widespread injustice, as previous Presidents have done,” the letter added. “Most importantly, such a pardon — combined with your leadership on an accessible expungement process to formally clear the criminal records of those affected — would mark the beginning of a reversal of decades of ineffective and discriminatory cannabis policies, allowing Americans to return to their communities, find housing and jobs, and rebuild their lives without the burdens of an unjustly imposed criminal record.”
Earlier this year, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, also a Democrat, introduced the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which would legalize marijuana by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act, allowing for it to be taxed and regulated. The proposed legislation would also immediately expunge the criminal records of people with low-level marijuana offenses.
Last year, the U.S. House voted in support of the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which would also decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. It was the first time Congress ever took up cannabis reform legislation. n
