In our April cover story, senior staff writer Ligaya Figueras spoke with 11 visionaries who have altered St. Louis’ culinary scene. They told us their experience in their own words. And all month long, we’ve been revealing the parts of the interview with these men and women that you didn’t see right here in Extra Sauce. First we brought you more from Joe Edwards, then it was Karen Duffy, Patrick Horine, Pat Shannon-VanMatre, Suchin Prapaisilp, Trip Straub, Tom Schlafly, Dan Kopman and Gerard Craft. Now, we bring you more from our final Game Changer Bill Cardwell, owner of Cardwell’s At the Plaza and BC’s Kitchen.
My parents had an inn in Vermont. At 7 or 8, I started cooking with my mother in the kitchen.
When I was in culinary school in New Haven, I worked for Albert Stockli. Albert owned The Stonehenge Inn in Richfield, Conn. He was the founding chef of The Four Seasons with Joe Baum in New York in the ’60s. And he was the executive chef for Restaurant Associates for most of the ’60s. He would have been one of my key mentors. His style of cooking, work ethic. He shaped my vision of how I would cook: seasonal cooking with international flavors.
I’d be humbled and happy, but I don’t consider myself [the Godfather of the current St. Louis restaurant scene]. There have always been a lot of great cooks in St. Louis. I just came at a time when there weren’t that many public restaurants. There’s always been Tony’s, Al Baker’s, a handful of other restaurants in Clayton. I can remember when I opened the Clayton restaurant, all the country club chefs and managers coming because they were losing dining business because people were going to the restaurant as opposed to going to the club.
[The Burger Meister burger has been] on the menu since 1994. A good friend wrote The Burgermeister Cookbook with recipes from chefs. We did that book to raise money for the Culinary Institute. Since that book was published, it was natural to put that burger on the menu. It had a homemade bun originally and it was stuffed inside with the blue cheese and then topped with the melting Cheddar and the bacon, and relish on the outside. The relish is an adaptation of my mother’s tomato chutney recipe. The problem was we’d get: “blue cheese on the side,” “no blue cheese.” To accommodate everybody’s request, we changed the format. That was a compromise. You have to make compromises every day.
BC’s Kitchen in Lake St. Louis … there was really nothing out there. It’s been a gamble but its starting to turn around.
Strong business nights, everything flows, no blurps in the service, the team works together – front-of-the-house, back-of-the-house. That’s a good night.
This article appears in April 2011.