52nd City

A Taste of Pre-Mrs. T

I just had some of the best potato soup I've ever had, in the basement of St. Michael's Russian Orthodox Church, on 1901 Ann Avenue (nearly at the intersection of Russell and Gravois). I've been sick for a few days, and it's the first thing that's tasted good all week.

The church is holding a "Russian Foodfest" today and tomorrow. The entrance is easy to miss, but you can smell the boiled cabbage for near on a block. The atmosphere feels a bit like the Polish Festival, or St. Mary's, though more grassroots. There's a little bake sale table set up, where you can buy kolachy or angel dolls; a drink table, where you can get a sip of Russian tea, or buy crocheted Christmas bears; and a small cafeteria-style setup in the back of the room, where they're serving up peirogis, potato-leek soup, Russian cabbage rolls and sausage. I highly recommend the Russian tea, which (as far as I can tell) is lemon Nestea crystals mixed with spices, but I can't identify which ones. It tastes like the woods in a fairy tale, is the only way I can explain it. Earthy and spicy and maybe even a little pine-needly. (I bought a glass jar of it from the bake sale lady for $2). The only typically Russian thing I didn't see for sale was Faberge eggs.

We were the only people in the room under 70 (the average age was more like 85), and I'm sure that most of them are life-long members of the congregation. The basement is well kept up, but hasn't been remodeled since the '60s at least. Better than the tea, better than the soup, was the feeling of being wrapped up in the shadow of an older St. Louis, a place where you couldn't find Mrs. T's products in your grocer's frozen food case, because they hadn't been invented yet.