There's a new best salad in St. Louis and its name is the Budgoni
That's Bud's Pizza and Beer in South City, a rock throw from my childhood home.
Excellent-tasting salads are a goldmine for eating maniacs like myself. They’re a prize for just about anyone who also likes the naughtier section of food, like pizza. You've done something when you can take a form of lettuce or “rabbit’s food,” as Nick Offerman eloquently put it on Parks and Recreation, and make it scrumptious enough to represent a meal. A Caesar salad can always be tasty, but something with more variety has some value.
The Budgoni salad has it all. A large, but not pasta bowl on the Hill size, gathering of eclectic toppings forms a sea of flavor that lasts until the bottom of the pile. The lettuce mix is bound by a creamy Italian dressing that tastes like ranch somehow infiltrated it. The slices of ham are so tasty you could have sworn they passed through salad customs as pepperoni, and the bacon comes in block chunks that make you adore that excellent meal catalyst all over again.
Cherry tomatoes, always fresh, form a union with black olive and red onion to give the salad the color and crunch that it needs to stand out when first being placed on the table. Don’t sleep on the banana pepper, the sour apple to the pepper clan that pairs up with the dressing like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Provel cheese, the sweetest hybrid cheese in the land, is piled all over the grouping. Every bite is a ticket to pleasure town. Sorry, Ron Burgundy.
Say what you want about Provel cheese, but it’s delicious and versatile. Pair it with a pizza, sandwich, random snack, or drop a half-pound across a salad like the Budgoni. The salad would have lost some appeal if you had swapped it out for a safer and crowd-friendly cheese. Shred some mozzarella on top, and it’s not the same salad.
Priced at $16, the Budgoni doesn’t disappoint when it comes to leaf-to-dollar ratio, because of the amount of toppings and flavor it provides the customer. Instead of checking down for the fine yet safe House Salad, upgrade your evening to something more special. When Bud’s Pizza and Beer opened up, they promoted their salads like they weren’t just another side piece for a pizza place. Narrator: They were right.
Now, you shouldn’t sleep on the pizza. The New York style comes in unique and classic editions, including a meatball version that uses giardiniera as a key ingredient and another with a spicy chile sauce and ricotta on top. The Southtown pays homage to the old bar that sat a few doors down Kingshighway, where the Golden Hoosier now sits, but I prefer buying it by the slice. Coming in only pepperoni and cheese, this is the way to go if you are taking on the Budgoni. One slice suits most people, including the animal writing this review.
I bought two cheese slices and took the second one home for a cold-food pleasure after work the next day. Foldable and carrying some of the best crust of any pizza in town, the single slice doesn’t disappoint. This isn’t a half-ass NY style place; Bud’s leaves those tanned, burned flour crumbs on your fingers after the last bite goes down the pike. If you’re going to sell by the slice, that slice must be an event, and Bud’s Pizza and Beer fulfills the task without turning something classic into an over-the-top enterprise of stomach packing.
Another delight for customers looking for a new spot is the different entertainment gracing the televisions on the walls. First, there aren’t 47 televisions packed into the building. You can count on one hand how many televisions adorn the walls, and they show movies instead of sports that people don’t care about or will be angered by as they consume their food. As my wife and I ate the pizza and divided the Budgoni, Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark was finishing and restarting behind the bar. A crisp-jawed Harrison Ford whipping bad guys and looking for treasure is similar to what I do with a fork and the Budgoni.
If you’re in town or live nearby, visit Bud’s Pizza and Beer. It has taken the best salad label from Sauce on the Side, and offers excellent pizza, along with decor and design that carries a modern touch. They also control the Golden Hoosier and will rehab Uncle Bill’s to reopen soon. They’re reviving a strip of South City that I adore and have lived near for three-quarters of my life.
Just don’t forget about the Budgoni. Tell them Buffa sent you.