If you want a short but interesting side trip in St. Louis, you ought to consider the Bevo Mill area just off the Gravois Avenue alignment of Route 66.
BBC Travel took a closer look at that area and its burgeoning Bosnian immigrant community. An estimated 70,000 Bosnian war refugees landed in that one-moribund area of south St. Louis during the 1990s. There probably are more Bosnians in St. Louis than any non-Bosnia city.
That area is thriving, though a few Bosnians — a sign of how entrenched into the American culture they’ve become in barely a generation — have moved to the suburbs.
When I lived in the St. Louis region for almost a decade, I observed the effects of the Bosnian influence firsthand and dined at one or two of their restaurants in south St. Louis at the time.
Noting the short distance to the Bevo Mill area from Route 66, I added a couple of eateries to this website’s Restaurants listing.
One is Lemmons by Grbic, a restaurant that dates to the 1940s, as evidenced by its neon signs. (The restaurant is temporarily closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic but is expected to reopen by spring, according to its website.) It serves lots of Bosnian-style foods, including fried bread, Balkan sausage, Turkish egg and fried schnitzel.
The second is Grbic Restaurant, which sits near the intersection of Gravois where Route 66 veers west onto Chippewa Street. Among its offerings are grilled beef sausages, tarhana soup, wiener schnitzel, jager schnitzel, sarma cabbage rolls and more. It’s regarded by many as the finest Bosnian restaurant in St. Louis. You can read more about it here in Feast Magazine.
As for the Bevo Mill itself, it’s not Bosnian, but the faux windmill built by Anheuser-Busch in 1917 is such a landmark that the community is inextricably linked to it. Reversing many years of decline, it’s now an events center and beer garden.
(Hat tip to St. Louis Post-Dispatch; image of Bevo Mill in St. Louis by Paul Sableman; image of Lemmons in St. Louis by Thomas Hawk; image of Grbic Restaurant in St. Louis by Dutchtown St. Louis, all via Flickr)