Am…musings

When I was a kid, my folks would occasionally buy a plain brown lunch sack filled with freshly baked soft pretzel sticks from “vendors” walking car to car at a few busy St. Louis intersections (is this intersection-vendor thing something that happened or happens at other cities?). Back then I had no idea where the rods of doughy goodness came from … the pretzel fairy I guess.

Gone are the days when I’d feel safe buying food from a stranger at an intersection, but luckily two former coworkers clued me into the pretzel fairy’s true identity … Gus of Gus’ Pretzels on Arsenal just a block west of Highway 55. And I not only discovered that Gus existed, but also that he offers a lot more than plain old pretzels. When I worked downtown, we’d head to lunch there every few weeks for unbelievably yummy pretzel hotdogs … a large hotdog wrapped in pretzel dough. There’s also bratwurst and salsiccia, as well as deli sandwiches made on a twisted pretzel.

Anytime I’m near downtown at lunchtime except on Monday (when Gus’ is closed), I stop in for a pretzel hotdog fix, which was the case today. I also get a stick or two … I prefer them over the twists because I find the slightly crunchy ends dee-lightful. And I love that everything is still “served” in brown lunch sacks, although these days they are printed with Gus’ logo.

And I would haven take a picture … but I was so hungry and in such a hurry for my fix that they were gone before it even occurred to me. I guess you’ll just have to visit the pretzel fairly and see for yourself.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 12:31 pm and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.