Lost Tables: Soulard's

Soulard's

Ray and Marge Badock lived in Crestwood with their six children. Pam, the oldest, was born in 1946 and Dan, the youngest, in 1961. In between were Kay, Ray Jr., Pat and Tim.

Dan Badock remembered working at his father's service station.

My mom was Irish, Irish, Irish. She grew up in St. Vincent’s parish. Dad grew up in Maplewood. He was a World War II generation guy.
Dad owned a little service station in Kirkwood, on the corner of Big Bend and Geyer. It was called Ray Badock Fina Service. Just a little-bitty gas station. All of us boys had our time at the gas station, with the Fina patch. A million stories there and a lot of fun growing up.


Kay Badock, 1968	Tim Badock, 1976	Dan Badock, 1979

Kay Badock married Glennon Moran in June of 1969. Her two sisters were bridesmaids.

The following month, her sisters, 23-year-old Pam Badock and 15-year-old Pat Badock, drove to Hannibal to visit their aunt and uncle. About fifteen minutes from their destination, their car swerved off the highway while attempting to pass another vehicle and plunged down a steep embankment, landing in five feet of water. Both sisters were killed.

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In 1971, Kay and Glennon Moran moved to San Francisco. In 1973, they were divorced.

In 1974, Kay Moran opened a coffeehouse at 100 Carl Street in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. She called it the Other Cafe.

My phone bill was very large. I'd call home and ask, "Mom, how much garlic goes in chili?" or "Dad, what do you do in a business situation?"

She also relied on her own resourcefulness. She had never baked a waffle in her life. But when she decided to serve waffles at her cafe, she invented a recipe that her customers said made the best waffles in the city.

Once I got into the restaurant business, I found I enjoyed it.

The Other Cafe flourished, offering good food and good music. The restaurant was frequented by Bob Ayres, a college student living in the area. In 1976, Kay Moran asked Ayres if he wanted to buy the place. Ayres said that he did.

Bob Ayres would go on to become a top entertainment industry executive. He turned the Other Cafe into an iconic comedy club, spawning the careers of comedians Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Dana Carvey and many others.

The Other Cafe, 1986
Owners Richard Snow, Chip Romer and Bob Ayres

After selling the Other Cafe, Kay Moran returned to St. Louis, intent on opening another restaurant, with her parents as partners. Her first target was the Laclede's Landing area.

Unfortunately, every time we made a bid on a building, the price went up.

Eventually, they bought a building in the Soulard area, at the corner of Seventh and Soulard streets. They opened their new restaurant in August of 1977 and called it Soulard's Restaurant and Bar.

Kate Moran and her father, Ray Badock
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nov 2, 1977

Soulard's served both lunch and dinner. With the Monsanto Queeny plant across the street, Anheuser-Busch a mile south and Ralston Purina to the north, lunch was an instant success.

The lunch menu included Marge Badock's homemade soups and Kay Moran's sandwiches, many decorated with San Francisco inspired alfalfa sprouts, grown on the premises.

They grow rapidly enough so that we usually have them all the time, but every once in a while, they don't grow fast enough, and we run out. I love them, and I think most of our customers do, too.

In his November 2, 1977 review, St. Louis Post-Dispatch food critic Joe Pollack said that Soulard's offered, "extremely imaginative and pleasant food, and reasonable prices."

But despite the favorable reviews, Kay Moran stayed at Soulard's for only a few years. Her brother Dan explained her exit.

The combination was great in the beginning, but Kay, god love her, was temperamental and very independent. So she got happy feet and quickly split from mom and dad, and went out and did her own thing.

In June of 1980, Kay Moran opened Cafe Crepito in downtown St. Louis.

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Ray and Marge Badock continued running Soulard's, but they were looking toward retirement.

Ray Jr. had his own career as president of Madesco Investment Corporation, which operated the Bel-Air Hilton and Holiday Inn Riverfront hotels downtown.

Tim and Dan Badock were teenagers when Soulard's opened. They bused and waited tables, cleaned up and helped in the kitchen. After graduating from the University of Missouri with a marketing degree, Tim took a job with Conoco Oil in Houston.

Dan, who was two years younger than Tim, was the only Badock interested in his parents' restaurant. To that end, he entered the hotel and restaurant program at the University of Missouri.

While Dan was nearing graduation, Tim was having second thoughts about the oil business.

I realized I wanted to do something for myself. You want to get back something for what you put in, and I don't think that would have ever been possible with the oil company.

Dan remembered getting Tim's call.

He talked to me and said, "Hey, what do you think about you and I being partners? You can’t work all those hours." He knew that my intention was to go back home and run the restaurant. I said, "Sure, let’s do that."

Soulard's Restaurant and Bar, 1731 South 7th Street
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jul 10, 1985

Dan and Tim Badock took over the reigns from their parents in 1983. The first thing they did was dress up the dining room. They put white tablecloths on the oak tables and added fresh seafood to the menu. The tablecloths were Dan's idea.

We got in there and the place was old. It was dated, but it had its own charm. So I came up with the idea of putting linens on the tables. Let’s try to do a nicer thing and actually get a dinner clientele. Let’s do some steaks and seafood. Let’s make it a nicer place for people who have the money and want to go out to eat.
We were already filling the place up for lunch everyday. Our strategy was to try and get those people to come back down to the city and have dinner before a game or an event or whatever.

Soulard's dining room featured a tin ceiling, brick walls, wooden floors and church pews for seating. A large mahogany bar was near the front door. Two suits of German armor flanked a fireplace, with stained-glass windows above.

Fireplace, suits of armor and stained-glass windows

Soulard's was also open for breakfast, unusual for St. Louis restaurants. Dan said offering breakfast was an easy decision.

For years we did breakfast. It wasn’t a huge thing. It was added revenue. When you have to go in and are getting ready for the day, taking deliveries and so forth, our philosophy was you might as well scramble a few eggs.
We got our fair share of news and sports people and regulars who come in for a daily breakfast of poached eggs topped with chili or whole-wheat waffles. A lot of people didn't need a menu and always knew what they wanted.

1985 Soulard's Menu
(click image to enlarge)

When Tim Badock returned to Soulard's, he lived in one of two apartments upstairs from the restaurant. Dan explained that his brother's upstairs abode was short lived, as the Badock brothers turned it into a second dining room.

In 1985, we took the two shotgun apartments upstairs and renovated them. I remember getting into arguments with mom and dad and my brother. I said there is no way we can put 50 more seats in this building and try to push that food out of the kitchen we have. That’s going to be a disaster. It’s not going to work. I had the practical knowledge of what kind of square footage you need in the kitchen in order to functionally produce and put the food out.
So everybody bought into it and we invested in a little satellite kitchen upstairs that could service that dining room. It could run on its own and it worked out perfectly.
At that time on seventh street, some of the buildings were being razed. As those building came down, it opened up the view to the arch. We got really excited. Tim got the idea to put in a big window. We also wanted to put in a balcony and make it look like the French Quarter. Of course, you’re dealing with the City of St. Louis. They wouldn’t go for all that, but we got our window.

Soulard's Upstairs Dining Room

In contrast to the darker ambiance downstairs, the upstairs dining room was light and airy. The pastel color scheme and white tablecloths reflected the bright daylight pouring through the new window, with its view of the arch and the busy street below.

The upstairs space was open for lunch and for private parties in the evening. The luncheon menu was a bit fancier, a modification of the dinner menu. Downstairs, the fare at noon was more soup and sandwiches. According to the younger Badock brother, the new space was an instant success.

We put in the dining room in August of '85 and we were off and running. We would fill two dining rooms at lunch every day from 1985 through the '90s. Then we booked the hell out of rehearsal dinners; there’s all those old churches down there. We’d get a lot of business meetings, and it could be private. With Anheuser-Busch down the street and Ralston, we’d fill that room up for lunch every day during the week.

The Badock Family, circa 1990
(Front L to R) Kay, Ray Sr., Kay's daughter Clara, Marge, Kay's husband Tim Noble
(Rear L to R) Tim, Tim's wife Michele, Ray Jr., Dan's wife Diane, Dan

Soulard's was known for their sauces. Cognac sauce served over a peppered fillet was one of the best items on the menu. The peppered pork tenderloin was a house specialty. Created by Tim Badock, it was served with either a garlic-mayonnaise or a raspberry sauce. Pork chops were served with a Guinness cream sauce.

Soulard's house salad dressing was created by Marge Badock. It was bottled and sold in the restaurant.

As for dessert, the bread pudding with whiskey sauce was always on the menu. It was created by Catholean Gully, one of the restaurant's early cooks, who haled from Mississippi.

Peppered pork tenderloin with raspberry sauce

Kay Badock Moran Noble died in April of 1991 after a long illness. She was only 42. Marge Badock died a few months later at the age of 66. Ray Badock Sr. died in June of 1996 at the age of 74. Ray Badock Jr. died in December of 1996 at the age of 44.

In 1993, Soulard's suffered a fire, but recovered and reopened with a more modern decor. As Dan Badock recounted, the restaurant did well into the next decade.

We were able to rebound the business. We had a good run from the early '90s right up to about 2007. We did about a million three in that little place. It did a lot of business for a small place, and it was enough to feed two families. Life was pretty good overall.

Soulard's Downstairs Dining Room

Tim and Dan Badock, 1995


Soulard's Lunch Menu (click image to enlarge)


Soulard's Dinner Menu (click image to enlarge)

In 2007, rumors surfaced that Anheuser-Busch was being acquired by InBev. The sale took place in 2008. According to Dan Badock, that was a "light switch" for Soulard's.

They were our 800-pound gorilla. We knew everybody there. We had all those purchasing guys coming in, all the vendors and all the companies that would buy from Anheuser-Busch, not to mention they all had secretaries and they’d always have a party for something. They were a big piece of our business model.
People were packing up. They let everybody go. They gutted the corporate office. Buildings were going vacant. I think there were around four thousand people at that time and they went from that down to about one thousand.
We basically had to shut down the second floor. We didn’t have enough business anymore to keep two floors open. It was devastating.

Soulard's Restaurant and Bar, 2008

The restaurant could no longer support two families. In 2011, Dan Badock made a difficult decision.

We were bleeding. I met with an attorney and an accountant ― how do I divide this thing fairly? I did my homework and presented it to Tim. I said one guy stays and one guy goes. Here’s "A" and here’s "B" ― you choose. You’re big brother. It’s your choice.
He said, I’m going to stay.
All that work and all those years and all that time. It wasn’t the best case scenario, but it allowed me to at least take some cash.

On March 17, 2017, Soulard's was heavily damaged by a fire. Tim Badock told the press, "It's a tough loss. We're going to be closed for a while, but I'm hopeful we'll bounce back again."

Soulard's never reopened.

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Tim Badock retired from the restaurant business.

Dan Badock was only 50-years-old when he parted ways with his brother. Lewis and Clark’s Restaurant in St. Charles was on the market. Dan bought the building and the business, which he still operates.

Soulard's Restaurant and Bar, 2009