22. Ted Drewes - Grand

"The Chippewa location is the original," Carlos would always insist my freshman year. Then I'd argue with him, because I knew better. Grand was first (in reality, it wasn't, but of the two that still exist, it is older). He'd giggle and I'd get infuriated over nothing and we'd change the subject, again and again.

My dad would come home late after an evening shift, or maybe it's an amalgamated memory of many late nights for different reasons. I had on footie pajamas and a kiddie concrete, strawberry or pineapple, always, sitting in the red van while he had hot fudge and my mother had butterscotch. Hot fudge and butterscotch took on gender, it was so solidly connected in my mind to the flavor of concretes at Ted Drewes.

When I announced I'd be going to Saint Louis University, my anatomy teacher, Mr. Termuhlen, was excited--that's where he went, that's where he met his wife. He had something for me to promise. I needed to find someone from Ohio, somebody in my dorm, which was his wife's dorm, of course, and take them to Ted Drewes. I didn't--I never fell in with any Ohioans, but I took other people there. And people took me there. History repeated itself, right, with my meeting Mike at SLU and getting married...but now I live in St. Louis and there's no romantic notions to pass on to anyone.

The whole last month of pregnancy, all I wanted was a Dutchman sundae (pronounced sun-duh, of course) and it was the one time of year the Chippewa location was closed. Grand is only open in the summer, but Chippewa stays open except for the dead of winter. I had to survive on Dairy Queen, which is like asking for a glass of red wine and being handed Boone's Farm.

Every summer, at some point, I turn to Mike and say "TD?" just like my parents used to. Code so the kids don't know, in case he vetoes. He never vetoes. We plop the kids in the car, in their pajamas and nightgowns, and drive down Grand, just to where it bends at Meramec Street. The bright yellow lights (mosquito prevention? I just don't know), the little blue neon sign, the completely unnecessary sandwich board on the sidewalk. Everybody sitting on the tailgates and trunks. My daughters are partial to mint sundaes, which sounds about as appetizing as a toothpaste shake, but they adore the thick green glue atop a scoop of custard. I usually succumb to the Dutchman, all that sticky goodness of chocolate and caramel and pecan. Mike has the strawberry shortcake.

Tonight, though, it was marshmallow chip. For a change.

21. Vess

Most grocery stores have their off-brand "private brand" soda. Most of them are pretty bad knock offs of the originals. I remember when I worked at Wal*Mart down in Houston, Sam's Cola and its cousins were a quarter a can in the coke machines outside the store--which kept the prices down on the brand name sodas but never tempted me enough to drink them. Actually, I did--I drank the lemon lime whatever it was. But most knock offs just aren't quite right.

I grew up with Vess and I didn't realize it was one of those kinds of brands, sort of a second-tier soda, until I didn't live here and couldn't find it in the stores. As a family, we didn't buy soda when I was little, but anytime we went up to Jack & Joe's house (my dad's aunt Jackie and her husband Joe), I drank Vess strawberry soda. They had a fridge in the basement that was all soda and beer: Vess was the soda, and Pabst was the beer.

Later I grew to love "Just Whistle" which was Vess' orange soda. I didn't realize cream soda was a brownish clear liquid in some parts of the country until I was in college; I thought it was supposed to be an artificial red color like Vess' version (I think this is a northern-southern distinction, actually, as I remember cream soda down in Georgia was red, too).

I don't drink a lot of soda anymore--probably have had two sodas this year. I drink a lot of coffee these days and I try not to ingest too much sugar. But sometimes I think about playing Life or Monopoly down in Jackie and Joe's basement with my cousin and my brother, at that old table that had been my great-grandmother's. I think about that sharp carbonated taste with the ultra-sweet fake strawberry or grape flavor, and I miss it.

16. Provel

No, I have not misspelled something.

Provel is cheese. Sort of. It's like American cheese--a pasteurized processed cheese. Not real cheese.

Provel is a St. Louis cheese. I have never yet seen it elsewhere--except perhaps in the satellite cities of Cape Girardeau or Columbia Missouri, that sort of place, where St. Louisans go to college or wind up after they go to college. I never saw it in Georgia or Texas or anywhere else I've spent time in a grocery store.

Provel goes on pizza. For those of you who don't know what "St. Louis style pizza" is, I'll explain. St. Louis style, just as someone who eats it on occasion, not as some sort of expert, is a round cracker crust pizza cut into squares, or sometimes into the traditional pie wedges. I like thin crust, crispy cracker crust with lots of toppings and low on the sauce. I have had wonderful St. Louis style pizza down at Pizza A-Go-Go, where Frank will play the little organ in the corner to entertain diners on a slow night. I've had decent St. Louis style other places...most of these places do not use provel (or give you the choice). Provel on a pizza must be piping hot right out of the oven to be palatable, but some places can make it decently.

Others (especially chain restaurants) do not. They are not ok. The pizzas have a weird sheen to them. Provel cheese was invented to replace mozzarella on pizzas--an easy to melt (and probably cheap) cheese that doesn't string when you bite into it. Provel doesn't do that, after all. It breaks apart easily in a bite. But then it sticks to the back of your teeth and roof of your mouth. You have to coat a pizza in more toppings than its little cracker crust can hold to hide the provel.

Provel makes my friend Mary sick when she eats it; when we go to St. Louis pizza places, we always request mozzarella instead of provel--many places will substitute for you.

For a long time, I thought provel was just a shortened form of the word provelone, which is a fine cheese in its own right. But no--provel is a combination of provelone, cheddar, and swiss all stuck together.

St. Louis has an Italian section in town called The Hill, and some places are fabulous little sandwich shops and grocery stores. Others are restaurants that specialize in Northern Italian cuisine. Plus a hard to swallow sweet red sauce and this weird, weird cheese.

It is best avoided.