The first restaurant I dined in as an adult was the Sunshine Inn, a vegetarian cafe in St. Louis’ Central West End. It was 1990, and I’d been adopted by a group of lefty activists that coalesced in and around the organization MoPIRG. As I’d recently converted to vegetarianism, they were thrilled to introduce me to the Sunshine Inn.
The Sunshine Inn was rustic wood tables and art by local artists and an entranceway crammed with leftist newspapers, pamphlets, and notices. The group of us sat at a large, round oak table. There was a basket overflowing with bread from a local bakery—whole wheat rolls studded with sunflower seeds. Tremendous bowls of salad with chunks of tofu, broccoli, and cauliflower were passed, as was crusty pizza and something called a mushroom curry pocket. I’d never before seen vegetables featured as the main dish. I’d never eaten anything made with tahini, as the salad dressing was. I’d never tasted spices used in such eclectic abundance. These activists were the happy sort, not doomsayers; there were moments of hilarity and great belly laughs. The women ate as heartily as the men, and one woman, Alexandria, a hearty Greek, turned to me at the end of the evening and, clasping her supposedly expanded waistline, pronounced that she was sporting a “food baby.”
The Sunshine Inn used to be on Euclid Avenue in the Central West End, a very old neighborhood in St. Louis with gaslight-era griffin streetlights, the roads still showing cobblestones in patches under the asphalt. There are rainbow bumper stickers on the cars, Tibetan prayer flags on the apartment entrances. In recent years, the neighborhood has slipped toward the upscale end of the spectrum, and sadly, the Sunshine Inn has closed. But for the 12 years I lived in St. Louis, the Sunshine Inn was a culinary sanctuary. We held political meetings at Sunshine; I’ve had important discussions with friends there, over a bowl of chick pea stew or veggie lasagna. I remember eating cauliflower-cheese soup while struggling to tell a friend about my mother wasting slowly away from anorexia, to find words for that which is unspeakable. I used to eat lunch alone there so that I could write. My husband took a birthday lunch there, also alone, during a period we still call ‘the waiting,’ when he’d ended his relationship with his girlfriend and was waiting to know if he and I would get together. It was a good place to eat alone. The wait staff wasn’t overly attentive, and the tables were arranged such that one doesn’t feel conspicuous without dinner companions. There was a little elevated section up a short flight of wooden stairs. It creaked as diners walked by, but the booths were comfy, and there was always a feeling of solidarity in an entire restaurant full of people who’d chosen, for this meal anyway, not to eat meat.
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