St. Louis Steaks #3: Culpeppers

The place.

As has become our wont lately, my family and I were out shopping at garage sales on a Saturday morning, and we got hungry…

My thought was well what would be better than a nice steak sandwich for lunch? We had pretty terrible luck with the garage sales, so I thought perhaps a nice lunch would make our day a bit better…at least till I made it out to Friar Tucks to get a another pick a six.

Randall’s if you’re reading this, I drive twenty miles round trip to get a pick a six…I’d much rather just go to your store on Jefferson which is less than 2 miles round trip…

So, being in the county anyway…we ended up going to Culpepper’s on Kirkwood (Lindbergh) Road. This is a place we’ve been many times. As we all know, they have great wings, a pretty decent, though not spectacular, beer selection, and a very good liquor selection.

This time though, I was there for a steak sandwich. I did find myslef a bit disappointed because there wasn’t a beer there that day that I really would like to have enjoyed, so I just stuck with pepsi.

I ordered my sandwich medium rare and with steak and hot sauce.

So here’ s my sandwich….

Om nom nom

Now, I dare you to tell me that you don’t want to just jump all over this bad boy. Truth time…I’ve had this sandwich many times. I don’t know that I have ever been to this establishment and ordered anything else. I love this sandwich.

Normally….

The whole plate.

Usually, at Culpeppers they use a good enough cut of meat that when it’s cooked it is tender enough to simply bite and chew it up. This time, there was so much fat and gristle that it really took away from the sandwich. I had to swallow significant portions of fat just to get to the meat. When a steak sandwich is hard to eat like this, it really takes away from everything it should be. I will say, that this could have been an anomaly, but it tasted a lot like a place who’s steak sandwiches I have sworn off. (I won’t mention them by name, because I’m going give theirs another go in the future for this series.)

It also could be just as likely that for their steak sandwiches, they are using inferior cuts of meat in order to save money during the recession, but I really hope that this is not the case because I have really enjoyed a great many of these sandwiches in the past and I really hope that this was just a fluke. To be sure, the next time I’m in, I will try again.

At least the taste of the meat, that wasn’t too gristley, was very good. I’m just going to hope I was unlucky this go round, but if this was my first try with them, I would not have another one. Now let’s have a bit more good stuff.

The cheese was very good and covered the whole piece of meat and the french roll that it was served on was crisp and warm. I’m not a bread guy and I loved it. I do wish that there had been a better covering with the onions though.

If nothing else, they do make great wings and my wife loves their chicken salad.