Few things make a better match than barbecue and the blues, and downtown St. Louis is about to get both. Sugarfire Smoke House inked a deal with Spinnaker St. Louis yesterday, March 10, for a new location in the rapidly expanding Mercantile Exchange building downtown.
“Barbecue and blues sort of go together. They both have Southern roots,” said Amos Harris, principal at Spinnaker and developer of the National Blues Museum, which is set to open next spring. The museum will celebrate, in all its forms, the influential African-American musical genre, which informed rock ‘n’ roll and other styles of modern music.
The new Sugarfire location will open in September, according to Harris, and will be located adjacent to the museum at 605 Washington Ave. Dual entrances will allow access from both the street and museum during business hours. The new location will be the fourth for Sugarfire which is co-owned by Mike Johnson, David Molina and Charlie Downs. Other locations include spots in Olivette, St. Charles and O’Fallon, Missouri. Johnson did not return requests for comment.
Sugarfire’s new digs are the latest among several other highly anticipated dining establishments in the MX space, including Gerard Craft’s Porano Pasta + Gelato, set to open this summer, and Tazé Mediterranean Street Food, which will open doors in April. Existing MX tenants include Robust and Pi Pizzeria. Harris said the brisk expansion was part of his ambition to put downtown St. Louis back on the map.
“We want the MX to be the ‘They’re there,'” Harris said. “It means when you come to St. Louis, the memory you take with you is that stretch of Washington Ave.”
This article appears in Guide to Beer 2015.