At the end of the nineteenth century, St. Louis, Missouri, garnered the nickname Fourth City. Its population trailed only New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, making it the fourth largest city in the country. While other cities have since surpassed it in population, St. Louis is better known now as the Gateway to the West thanks to the Gateway Arch, completed in 1965. But married couple Greg Mueller and Erica McKinley are bringing the old moniker back with their restaurant, Fourth City Barbecue.
“It was going to be Mueller Barbecue, but we just couldn’t do that,” Mueller said, referring to the iconic status of Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor. He’s a student of Texas barbecue, calling Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto an inspiration. Mueller read it while learning to smoke meats in Seattle. He and McKinley had left the St. Louis area for his job as a senior financial analyst for Boeing. As his barbecue skills increased, the couple considered opening a joint in the area, but the Seattle scene was getting crowded. Still, Mueller wanted a change. “Every one of those corporate chairs has a hole at the bottom that sucks your soul out,” he said. So he quit his job, and they moved back to St. Louis.
Mueller’s first barbecue stop back in St. Louis was the pit room at Navin’s BBQ (closed in late 2023). It advertised itself as a cross between Texas and Kansas City styles when it opened in 2021 with a wood-burning offset smoker in a city that prefers rotisseries. “I knew after working there, that this thing had legs,” Mueller said of his barbecue dreams. After leaving Navin’s, he and McKinley sold vacuum-sealed barbecue with reheating instructions until they found the empty kitchen at Fortune Teller Bar where they opened Fourth City Barbecue last summer.
“I hesitate to call it Texas [style] because that term doesn’t land here,” Mueller said, but the Lone Star hallmarks are evident. He smokes with a five hundred-gallon Primitive Pits offset smoker. Thick-sliced brisket, with plenty of black pepper and a good dose of smoke, is a menu highlight. The sausages are house-made, and the special when I visited was a pastrami-brined beef short rib. It was gargantuan, pull-apart tender, and well spiced. It was even better dipped in the mustard barbecue sauce, one of several varieties made in-house.
The sides, all made by McKinley, were unconventional for both St. Louis and Texas. The star was a savory bacon fried rice, studded with lardons and garnished with green onion. Creamy macaroni salad paired well with the crunch of the broccoli salad that incorporated almonds, raisins, and apples. Rather than white bread, McKinley bakes a sweet and buttery cornbread that comes with every plate along with hot honey butter.
Mueller didn’t forget his St. Louis roots when developing the menu either. Red Hot Riplets is a beloved spicy barbecue potato chip flavor that was developed locally by Old Vienna brand. It’s a damn fine bag of chips that you should seek out while in St. Louis. The company now sell bottles of the sweet and fiery seasoning mix, which Mueller incorporates into his uniquely flavored hot links. Mueller said his target for his red barbecue sauce was a blend of Stubb’s and the St. Louis staple of Maull’s, the first bottled barbecue sauce in America. As for fuel, Mueller didn’t want to mimic Central Texas, and instead went with a blend of local white oak and some hickory for its bold flavor. Rather than thinking of his food as St. Louis or Texas barbecue, he said, “This is what St. Louis barbecue can be.”
St. Louis barbecue is hard to pin down. It’s known for pork steaks cooked over coals and basted with Maull’s, but that’s more commonly found in backyards than restaurants. “Saint Louis barbecue is sweet and saucy,” Mueller said. “If you ask me what I grew up eating, it was sweet, sauced baby back ribs.” And that might sound odd to folks familiar with St. Louis-cut pork ribs. But that trimmed portion of the spare rib was coined by the USDA in 1983, and had nothing to do with barbecue in St. Louis.
Fourth City Barbecue wasn’t serving pork ribs when I visited, but I had plenty of time the following day to explore some of the well-known rib joints in town. Pappy’s Smokehouse (opened in 2008), Bogart’s Smokehouse (2011), and Adam’s Smokehouse (2013) are all rooted in the same barbecue family tree. They all share side options like apple sauce and baked beans as dark as molasses, but all have their own signature rib methods. At Bogart’s the cooks brush an apricot glaze onto the smoked baby backs before hitting them with a blow torch to caramelize the bark. The staff uses apple butter at Adam’s in a similar method that darkens the bark to a candy coating. Pappy’s keeps it simpler with a heavy, sweet rub on its baby backs.
I tried them all. I understand that a Texas barbecue fan is supposed to prefer a simply seasoned and smoked spare rib, but the sweet baby backs ribs from all these joints felt like a treat. The ribs from Adam’s were an especially great way to start the day thanks to its 10:30 a.m. opening time, and its house-made smoked salami as a side. That salami alone makes Adam’s a joint to be treasured. The tri-tip at Bogart’s was impressive as well, and those sweet and spicy fire and ice pickles at Pappy’s are addictive.
At Fourth City, it was rewarding to find a new version of St. Louis barbecue. Those sweet baby backs are great, but it was the variety of meats and sides made with care by Mueller and McKinley that made Fourth City a place I can’t wait to see more from. And in my travels across the country seeing the ways in which Texas barbecue is translated, it’s less satisfying to see joints make a perfect facsimile of Texas than one like Fourth City, which blends Texas-style skills and methods with flavors and traditions from their own time and place.
