Gourmet & Healthy in Saint Louis

What began as Yemina Mata's passion for healthier living through a natural-food- and supplement-based diet resulted in La Buena Salud, a grocery store stocking only natural and organic products. Opened in 1997 in the Soulard farmers' market, La Buena Salud today lures visitors to its current storefront—tucked away just off Washington Avenue—with an impressive array of locally grown meats, eggs, and produce, vitamins, and supplements. Yemina gregariously shares health food and natural-healing wisdom as patrons meander aisles of organic teas from Tulsi and Traditional Medicinals, specialty items, such as piloncillo cane sugar, and natural-health and diet books, all of which earned the store praise from Feast magazine and a polite thank-you note from Mother Nature.

Most butcher shops cut your meat for you, but few give you the skills to cut it yourself. For the experts at John’s Butcher Shoppee, sharing their skills is just a part of serving their community, something they’ve been doing for more than 38 years. The expert butchers set up shop at local Cabela’s locations, where they lead sessions on how to process deer into steaks, sausages, and ground meat. Back at their two locations, customers load up on homemade sausage, tender pork chops, and exotic meats such as elk, bison, and ostrich. The owners of the family business are often behind the counter, and take the time to cut or karate-chop a steak or pork chop to a customer’s desired size for no extra charge. Regular customers also take note of the butcher’s weekly meat raffle, dubbed Meat-O, wherein one lucky customer wins $25 in free meat to be served or bathed in however they see fit.

When Terry Yake found his way off his family's farm to pursue a career as a professional hockey player, he didn't dream that it would lead him back. During his time with the St. Louis Blues, Terry would return from every trip back home to Manitoba, Canada, with a care package under his arm, packed with the farm's fresh, free-range beef. His teammates got a taste at a backyard barbecue and began clamoring for more beef like a carnivorous pack of parrots. When Terry returned to the St. Louis area, so did the demand for his family's meat. He began running a bare-bones operation out of his garage, which eventually grew into a retail outlet that allows Terry to share the fruit of his family's labor with the community he now, happily, calls home.

All of T-Bones Natural Meats's beef comes from cows that graze freely, without the effects of hormones, steroids, or antibiotics. The same can be said for the free-range poultry, pork, and bison that the team procures from area farms. The animals eat what they would in nature, which Terry believes results in a better taste, a better conscience, and better nutrition—as studies have shown. Their sausages are made from pigs that have been raised equally kindly; the meat is wrapped in natural casings with all-natural add-ons, such as fresh mushrooms, just-chopped apples, and pure maple syrup. All the meat is flash-frozen, a more eco-friendly way of salting it and storing it in an ice palace.