Timothy Birdnow

This is a local St. Louis story; the iconic German restaurant Schneidhorst is closing its doors forever.

That was one of the last German restaurants in the St. Louis area.

So why should anyone care? What does this local story have to do with Aviary readers?

Its just that St. Louis was a very German city. Most of the south side of town was inhabited by Germans, and that is why local taverns were so ubiquitous. We had dozens of breweries in St. Louis, including of course the big boy Anheuser Busch but also including Griesedick Brothers, Lemp, Falstaff, Alpen Brau, Green Tree, Hyde Park, etc. We had fun German celebrations, like the Strassenfest. And we had great German restaurants.

The Bevo Mill - buillt at the halfway point between Busch's brewery and his home at Grant's Farm, was an icon in south city. But it hasn't served German food for a long time except for a couple of year s under the last owner. Sincc the city took the property over they had largely given the concession over to people more interested in afternoon brunch and parties. The current owners tried to revive the dining part, but they were young and just couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of rich German food and also didn't want to serve dinners. (They owned other, non-German restaurants in town.) Americans are becoming too lazy to work the way the old timers did. And the owners of Bevo couldn't find any chef willing or able  to cook the German food. So now they are catering in for events and were quite excited about the MEXICAN restaurants in the area; they plan on catering Mexican food in a German restaurant!

This is symptomatic of a cultural failure. Young people have been taught nothing about their heritage. Germans and Irish built St. Louis, but young people have been taught that Germans are evil monsters and war mongers. Forgotten is the fact that Germans fought loyally during the Civil War and in fact German volunteers helped Nathanial Fox - Lincoln's point man in St. Louis - hold the city and thus hold Missouri. Fox had all of four men under him; had he not recruited the Germans Missouri would have fallen and the war could have been quite different, as Missouri was the most populous southern state, had a lot of natural resources, industry, and controlled several major waterways as well as rail lines.

The Germans were overwhelmingly loyal to the Union because they hated slavery. They left a place where they were told what to do; they couldn't abide an institution that held people as chattel.

All of this is forgotten. Young people are taught social justice now.

St. Louis drove the Strassenfest - a very fun summer festival - out of town a number of years back and it died, despite efforts to find a new venue. Why did the city get rid of it? Because they thought it not "inclusive" enough. They figured the black citizens had little interest in it. So they promote the generic "Fair St. Louis" over the July 4 instead. Last time I checked there were no oompah bands or Lederhosen at that event.

So now Schneidhorst is closing. They had closed their German restaurant a few years ago, so it hardly matters at this point, but it is still the end of an era, the erasure of history from our minds.

St. Louis has become dominated by Mexican restaurants (there aren't even many Mexican or other Latin Americans in the area thanks to strict immigration policies in the state) and the ever present chains like Applebees, and the modern, hipster restaurants featuring weird vegetables, and everything wrapped in bacon with sun dried tomatoes and the like. Even the Italian fare is starting to slide to hipsters; an old Italian restaurant here called Lou Boccardi's now serves hemp in the food; like some horrible fare from Seattle, they are spiking Italian cuisine with POT!

This illustrates how the Progressives have succeeded at changing our culture. Food was and is a big part of who  are and who we were. The internationalists have been working for a long time to create an international cuisine, one that makes us all "citizens of the world" and they have labored under the guise of "healthy" to get us to eschew our traditions. I wrote about this at American Thinker many years ago.

If you are going to create a new Man you must first exorcise the old.

So it is especially sad to see the old Schneidhorst close. It was one of the last German restaurants. Now I only know of one, the Feasting Fox, and it is always half empty because the owners don't make that much of an effort.

I suspect most young people have never tried German food and think it is just bratwurst and saurkraut. But a good German dish is every bit as unique and delicious as any other ethnic cuisine. And it's ours; we should honor that tradition.

Especially since St. Louis has had this big revival in her beer tradition. We now have multiple microbreweries in town producing some great brews. German style beers were designed for German cuisine.

So much of the dislike of German food stems from the war on whiteness. Germans are seen as the archetype of "white male privilege". They would rather we eat Mexican food so that we grow accustomed to our Latin brothers, who will one day own this country, as is only fair (in their view).

Oh, well...guess I'll have to switch to Corona and tacos.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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