On this episode of The Sauce podcast, host Lauren sits down with Elliott Brown, chef and co-owner of Scout’s, a new fine dining restaurant in Midtown, and The Biscuit Joint, St. Louis’s beloved scratch-made breakfast sandwich shop, for a conversation about pandemic pop-ups, family, and building two very different restaurants off the same philosophy. Scout’s was also our cover feature for the July issue.
Elliott walks through how it all began with Dinner at the Loft, launched in 2020 after he and his business partner, Brandon Panosh, were furloughed from The Last Hotel. What started as one dinner cooked at his own kitchen table and posted to Instagram grew, by word of mouth, into roughly 175 pop-up dinners in homes across St. Louis, serving close to 1,000 guests before the two ever opened a restaurant of their own.
That following became the foundation for The Biscuit Joint, a scratch-made breakfast sandwich shop inspired by a tiny biscuit counter in Nashville, and eventually for Scout’s, which opened six months ago as a New American restaurant built on Italian cooking technique.
Elliott takes us room by room through Scout’s, from the family-photo-filled living room lounge and intimate dining room to the open kitchen with communal seating and the shared backyard patio recently featured in Sauce Magazine. He breaks down the division of labor with Brandon — bread and pasta are his, vegetables are Brandon’s — why vegetables come first in their approach to Italian cooking, and how bartender Emma built the cocktail program from scratch.
Elliott also opens up about growing up in Wentzville, discovering a love of cooking as a kid, skipping community college for culinary school, and the story behind the name Scouts — his seven-year-old daughter, whose warmth shaped the restaurant’s family-first identity. He shares how he and Brandon are learning to protect their time outside of work, from fishing and football to leaning on faith and their team.
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Presented by Swade Dispensary, with 12 locations across Missouri. Learn more at swadecannabis.com. Our other podcast sponsor is LHM.