Ted Drewes Frozen Custard
A concrete leaves this window upside down, and it has since 1959.1
Why go
Ted Drewes Jr. made the first one, and he described a concrete as a malt or shake so thick that it is served upside down.1 That is still the test at the counter. The family had been selling custard a long time before it had a name for this: Ted Drewes Sr. was a local tennis star and opened his first stand in Florida in 1929, then one on Natural Bridge Road in 1930 and one on South Grand in 1931.2 The Chippewa stand opened in 1941, on Route 66.2
Order this / avoid
- Order: a concrete. Watch them flip it before they hand it over.1
- Avoid: assuming the two stands keep one calendar. South Grand runs through the summers and Chippewa is the one that has been there since 1941.2
What locals & experts say
- Steve Gamber on how the concrete happened, to St. Louis Magazine and quoted by Feast:
Just to shut me up ... Ted turned the malt upside down right in front of me and said 'is this thick enough for you? If it falls out, it's free.'
Gamber paid for his malt.1 - David Chang, before a St. Louis trip, to Feast (July 2015):
Ted Drewes is another thing – I've heard so much shit about how if there wasn't Ted Drewes, there wouldn't be Shake Shack. The regional pride of St. Louis in my Momofuku employees over the years has been insane.
1
Good to know
- Where it sits: on Chippewa Street, on the old Route 66 alignment.2
- In winter: the Chippewa parking lot goes over to Christmas trees.2
Verdict
should-visit — Ted Drewes Jr. invented the concrete in 1959 to shut up a fourteen-year-old who kept asking for a thicker malt, and the upside-down handover is still how it is served. The stand has been on Chippewa Street since 1941 and the family was selling custard in 1929. David Chang named it as a stop he wanted on a St. Louis trip and said he had heard Shake Shack would not exist without it. What keeps it off the top rung is that no bylined critic has written about the custard itself.