PLACES WE LOVE: Young's Restaurant and Ice Creamery

This review is a long-time coming.
If the Sillyfamily had a Top-10 List, Young's would definitely be on it.  We visit the family-owned Valley Park restaurant about once a month.  Here's why:

*It's family-friendly.  You can bring the kids, bring your friends, bring your friends' kids...you never worry about whether your baby is fussy or the kids want to walk up to the counter and order their own ice cream. The trains that pass by regularly are a bonus--the kids love to hear them, see them and count the cars.

*The chicken is AMAZING.  I challenge you to find better fried chicken in St. Louis.  They were recently voted "Best Fried Chicken" in the Riverfront Times.  The coating is perfectly crispy and the chicken is perfectly juicy.  I'm told that the fried fish is also yummy, but I never stray from my favorite chicken!  The french fries are equally golden-brown and delicious (GB&D in chef Alton Brown-lingo).

*The ice cream is WONDERFUL.  My *personal* favorite is a little treat called a "cherry chip concrete".  I can't find it anywhere else in town.  It's a cherry shell topping (like Magic Shell, but cherry) mixed into their vanilla ice cream and topped with more cherry shell.  Let me say this...during one of their battles with eminent domain, when Young's had to close their doors and eventually move across highway 141 to their current location, I called, several times a year, for 2-3 years, hoping to find they had re-opened so I could get my fix of cherry chip.  No lie.  :)

*The family is WELCOMING.  Grant and Sibyl Young are always behind the counter and behind the fryer.  They're always glad to see you & there's a real sense of small-town familiarity.  It's a nice change, in a chain-restaurant world, to find a family that has kept a legacy going for over 50 years and really seem to love what they do.

Young's also caters--we order fried chicken, pasta salad and a gorgeous fruit platter with chocolate dip every year for our Indy 500 party and it is always a hit!

This is a Sillyfamily favorite indeed--and you should make it one of your own silly family favorites!

The Fountain on Locust--a different kind of soda fountain

So this is the World's Smallest Hot Fudge Sundae...check it out next to the sugar packet for scale.  It's about 2-3 bites of heaven.  The vanilla ice cream is truly some of the best vanilla we've ever tasted, brought in from Wisconsin's Cedar Crest Dairy, the only dairy in the country that ages its ice cream.  Yummy!  And minimal guilt!

You may be thinking that this family is a little obsessed with sweets--and we are.  In fact, Sillymom and Sillydad met in a candy store over 15 years ago.  But, just because we love desserts doesn't mean we can't appreciate the rest of the menu...

The whole family visited The Fountain right before Sillyman left for a month at camp.  We were thinking it would be fun to introduce the kids to an old-fashioned soda fountain and figured there would be traditional soda fountain fare on the menu--grilled cheese, burgers, sandwiches, malts and shakes--and we were right, but these menu items are definitely a bit more gourmet.

One of our favorite parts of our lunch was the "Signature Polish Dill Pickle Soup".  It is a potato-based soup with the unmistakable salty tang of crushed dill pickles.  It was totally unique and absolutely delicious!  If you go, don't miss it.

Another favorite of Sillymom's was the "High Hat" sandwich--a classic egg salad, made with large chunks of hard-boiled egg, dijon mustard, capers, celery and onion, and topped with fresh spinach on whole grain bread.  I would definitely order it again--if--I didn't try the "Royal Grille"--an "adult grilled cheese" sandwich made with white cheddar, mozzarella and fuji apple slices.

Now, Sillybro ordered a Hot Roast Beef Melt--without the rosemary-grilled onions and horseradish--and enjoyed that quite a bit.

We also tried a chocolate egg cream (a soda-fountain classic drink made with milk, seltzer and flavored syrup) which was interesting--a little bit like a YooHoo soda--and best when we first received it ice-cold.  As it sat on the table, we liked it less and less, though, and we probably wouldn't order it again.

The Fountain on Locust is one of the most photographed restaurants in St. Louis and when you check out the vivid murals on the walls and ceiling and the cool light fixtures, you'll know why.  It also has a bathroom which was rated one of the "world's best" and you know we had to check that out!  Verdict: the bathrooms were clean and charming, but world's best?  We don't know about that....

We made a reservation at 11:30 on a Friday and were pretty glad we did, because the place filled up quickly starting at about noon.  Unfortunately, after we were quickly seated, the service went downhill.  The lunch was about two hours long, with extended waits between visits from the waiter.  By the time we got to our dessert, we mostly just wanted to leave.  It's also quite loud, due to the popularity and the tall ceilings and lack of soft, sound-absorbing surfaces.

Even so, I would be willing to go back, especially for dinner or late-night drinks with friends.  The Fountain has an extensive retro drink menu as well as a long list of "adult" ice cream martinis.  Overall,  I think it may be a better option for a date-night than it is for a family lunch, as the kids were unimpressed with the  "fancy" ingredients on traditional sandwiches, but it's definitely worth checking out!