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From caught to bought wild salmon direct from the fisherman Information at WildAlaskaSalmonandSeafood.com Here's to the local restaurants, to the chefs, owner operators, the staff, the ones who love being in the weeds night after night.

When we go to work each morning, that's who we have in mind.

From where we source our food to how we deliver it.

Here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service.

Proudly supporting Food is Love.

As far back as biblical times, the term breaking bread has been used to describe eating.

To some, it has religious context.

To others, it just means the act of sharing a meal.

However you might mean it, it's another example how old and ingrained in the human existence bread really is.

I mean, where would we even be without bread?

And even after thousands of years, it remains just as important to the diet and dining experience today.

Any food scene worth its salt needs a master of the flour and yeast, so to speak, a breadmaker.

Someone who knows the difference between a pane batard and a baguette classique.

Sure, a lot of restaurants can make their own bread, but there are a lot more who don't.

Those restaurants need a good baker, one that can work as a compliment to the restaurant scene.

But the question is, who is that in St. Louis?

As a chef, I need to stay curious in order to evolve.

For me, that means looking beyond a good meal to learn more about who made it and what inspires them to cook.

"La comida es amor" Every great city has great food.

I'm going on a journey around the world.

Right here in St. Louis I'm on a quest to find passionate chefs who cooks from the heart, to prove that food is love.

"And it's going to be delicious!"

Food is love.

Love your food.

When we talk about food in terms of what dishes gets the glory on Instagram, bread doesn't often get all the credit it deserves for what it does in a dish or adds to a meal.

Whether it's a warm, buttery, Connecticut style lobster roll or crusty baguette sandwich, there are some meals that can never reach their full potential without a well executed bread.

Too often, though, we fail to stop and appreciate where that bagel or chiabata actually came from.

In researching bread and St. Louis there's a lot of places I can go.

But lured by the thought of a lobster roll and a talk with Kevin Nashan, Peacemakers seems like a great place to start.

Plus, Kevin is a super nice guy.

He'll give it to me straight.

So when you make this lobster roll, is there a reasoning behind the bread?

I knew we couldn't keep up with the amount of bread we needed.

So my old neighbor at the time was Josh Allen.

He's a good, dear friend of mine.

He owns Companion.

I go, Hey, Josh, I got a bread recipe.

I'm like, can we just join forces and you make this bread for me?

But it's my bread.

I don't want you to sell it to anybody else.

And he hooked me up.

And basically it's a cross between brioche and pullman loaf.

So Pullman has that structure, but brioche has that crispy, flaky buttery.

But I wanted it so it didn't get soggy, but it just shattered and just kind of disappeared in your mouth, all you would taste is, like, the lobster.

The most important part.

So any sandwich you have in life and any pizza, it's all about the dough.

It's all about the bread.

Okay, now, I have a name, Josh Allen.

A name that is well known and respected in the food scene here for, you guessed it, bread.

With the help of his sister Jody, josh operates Companion Cafe here in Ladue.

Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.

I'm at Companion Bakery in Ladue.

It's 9:15 in the morning.

Look at this place.

There is a baked eggs here with wild mushrooms, onions and spinach, avocado, toast tomatoes, onions, fresh basil, balsamic, vinaigrette.

Everything is on bread or served with bread.

Where does the bread come from?

Before you break bread, you have to make bread.

We don't think about that.

In order to see where the bread is made, I need to visit the actual Companion Bakery location.

That's where the real magic happens.

It's real early in the morning, Monday morning, but if you want to see a baker, you better get up early.

First thing this morning, I'm meeting up with baker Josh Allen, who has been baking bread in St. Louis for the last three decades, and a lot of it.

But it's not just here in St. Louis.

Companion has become one of the foremost bakeries in the Midwest, supplying bread to well, all over the place.

So this was the first oven?

This was the first oven.

So this is a Pave oven, french oven that came over on a boat in '93, summer of the '93 that we built in South St. Louis.

So it was all cement based.

So from the table down and all the way back, it was basically cement.

I figured if people, like, cut the front of their 57 Chevy off and put it in their living room, that we could do the same thing with this.

Well, you obviously have a love hate relationship with this oven.

No matter how old I get, walking into a bakery early in the morning will always bring me back to my childhood working with my dad.

Fresh yeast.

This is a rye bread.

So we've got some rye flower, caraway.

We're producing about 1500 puonds, 1200 to 1500 pounds per hour.

If I'm a restauranteur and I say, okay, well, I want this type of bread with these ingredients in it, and that's something you can do?

That's really what we do.

We don't so much have a book of products that we go out and try to sell.

We're trying to find a customer and then build that relationship.

We really want to help the chef tell their story on the plate.

We don't believe it's our story to tell.

We believe it's theirs.

And so the development of those products is very much is to help them articulate whatever vision they have for that dish, for that restaurant, for that experience, or whatever it is.

This is a big rosemary sourdough that we do for a restaurant concept out of Champagne.

They've got about 30 restaurants in Illinois.

They use this for an appetizer.

But, I mean, me looking at all this equipment, I mean, it's an incredible investment you've made, but you started on a conventional platform, basically, and it must have taken years to work up to this .

We were in south city for 22 years before we moved here.

And the little oven that you saw in the lobby there, that was the first oven that we baked on.

But this is quite the operation.

Everything is consistently cut and measured.

Everyone is working at a rhythm here.

To build a team like this, Josh has assembled some of the best in the city.

Chef,have you ever met Josh Galliano?

You get a strong sense of family here.

That says a lot about this place.

You got your hair cut.

Yeah.

We're still very much a small batch bakery, or at least what we like to refer to as small batch.

Everything we mix is between 450 and 550 pounds per batch.

Okay.

So given that we're doing 30,000 pounds a day those are pretty small size batches.

So because we're doing so many custom products and exclusive products for people, it's a lot of different stuff throughout the day.

What time do they start in the morning?

So we're mixing 24 hours a day.

You're also doing some kind of gooey butter cake, right?

Yes.

Well, everybody has to do gooey butter cake.

I see.

I never had one of those.

But that's a St. Louis thing?

It is a St. Louis thing.

The legend goes in the 40s somewhere in the bakeries in St. Louis.

They all fight over which one actually created it.

But I believe they inverted the sugar and the flour in the mixer.

So it came out super gooey, right?

Like, it came out and it sort of sold really well and has become stuff of legends.

But there's all kinds of different recipes for gooey butter cake.

Some use, like, yellow cake mix and cream cheese.

Some do it more traditionally just with high butter, high sugar, and just a little bit of flour.

Really, a St. Louis thing, and one that hasnt translated very well outside of St. Louis.

We just talked about you have to be a Cardinals fan and a Blues fan to really appreciate this.

And I am a Cardinals fan and a Blues fan.

I should fall under that category.

Delicious.

Little sweet.

How many different breads do you make here?

We make about 150 different products.

Do you have a favorite?

The baguette.

I mean, it's one of those things.

It's the hardest thing to do right.

Like, it's the most simple thing to do.

I mean, the crust is so important on the baguette.

The whole thing, the shaping, the crust, the taste and everything.

If you really enjoy what you do, you always want to make it a little better.

And it's been 28 years, and it's still not right.

Like, we still come in every day trying to make the perfect baguette.

You're going to grab this guy right here, come up.

You're going to go on the other side of this right here.

You see that?

Yeah.

And then just pull it back, and then right back on there.

And we're just checking length and straightening.

Oh, I see.

It has to be that long.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm already screwing it up.

Oh, that's all right.

And you'll grab a knife.

Okay.

And you're going six cuts We are hiring chef.

Let me know.

Okay.

I need something to do instead of sleeping.

This is what might be perfect.

Only 1000 more to go.

I can't tell you how happy this makes me.

I'd be satisfied hanging out here for the rest of the day.

I love it.

reminds me of the good old days.

But even with the craziness of the baking schedule, josh manages to make time for other things too, like running and bike riding, iron man and marathon kind of stuff.

Today we're headed just outside the city at Castlewood State Park for what I've been told will be an easy little hike through the woods.

This is a place that I come run every week, usually on the weekends, try to do a long trail run.

And this is a super easy place to come.

It's not too far from home and a little more crowded here than usual.

You can tell you run and I eat.

I need to do what you're doing.

So I'm happy that you're motivating me today.

So this is part of your exercise routine, I guess, hiking, biking?

That keeps your sanity from all the baking.

I think it's the solitude piece.

With five kids and 75 bakers, it's nice to have a few minutes to myself.

So is that really 80 kids, then?

Yeah.

Growing up, Josh's family was in the food supply business started by his great grandfather.

How did you really get into this in the first place?

I think the intention was always to go into the family business when I went to school But then I started racing my bike and racing triathlon.

When did you go to school?

I went to Stanford, out in the Bay area.

Okay.

So I ended up getting a job at a restaurant cooked in a little place called Pearl's Oyster Bar, shucking oysters and grilling fish, and then ended up getting a job in a bakery and just loved it.

This would prove to be a turning point in Josh's life.

Once the flower took root in his veins, any plans to step into the family business was gone on the California wind.

The craft bread business started out there, so it was all sort of happening.

So I was right in the middle of it there.

Holy moly!

Yeah.

The ribeyes and the bottle of wine from last night is taking its toll.

We're almost there, guys.

Okay, this is it.

It's just straight into the hike, and then it's straight out.

Yes.

I'm trying to pretend like it's not bothering me.

It's definitely straight up.

I think you're trying to kill me.

No, we're there.

That's it.

Ok insert old jokes here, but my lethargy has been proudly bought, one foie gras and a sip of Chardonay at a time.

I've earned this disposition, if you know what I mean, and it wasn't cheap.

But despite my heavy breathing and labored movements, it's nice to be outdoors.

It's amazing to think that we're 20 minutes outside of town now.

Yeah.

Wow, look at this view.

The Allen family is still a big part of St. Louis and in the food business too.

It might have changed.

Now, now you're on the bread side of it.

Yeah.

You still deal with all the restaurants, just like the food company did, right?

Yeah.

Look, my family was incredibly supportive.

My grandfather, who I know would have loved for me to come into the family business, was the one who loaned me the money to buy the oven.

And he and I bantered back and forth about the price of wheat up until the day that he passed away three or four years into the bakery being open.

And so, yes, my family is incredibly supportive.

It's great to have my sister on board.

There's no harder working person in the world than my sister.

And you grew up in a family business.

You know that you can trust your family to get it done.

Like you say, the trust, that's priceless.

I like the fact that chefs up here do sports together, and then you can use that for charitable things to help each other in that way.

Yeah.

We've been involved with no Kid Hungry with Chef Cycle for a number of years.

Kevin Nashan got us started with that, and he's done a great job.

And we're raising money for no Kid Hungry, which is a terrific organization.

I'm really involved and the bakery's, really involved with Pedal the Cause, which is the local cancer organization that raises money for Siteman but it does it through a weekend cycling in September, and we've raised a ton of money for that.

I know Gerard is really involved in that with the niche food group.

So obviously it's an incredibly generous community and a lot of folks tend to funnel that generosity through some kind of athletic pursuit, which is great.

Yeah.

No, I feel good now.

I mean, my lungs are rejuvenated.

I can feel that there is, like, pockets of the lungs that hasn't been filled for a long time.

They were all working, going up the hill.

It's all downhill from here, literally and figuratively.

I don't know, maybe I can get into this.

Start bike riding with Josh and Kevin Nashan make friends with Gerard Craft, be the fourth leg in the next triathlon they do but that's probably not going to happen.

I would end up being the pan batard of the group anyway.

Plus, old habits die hard.

Is this the one I was involved in?

That's the one you made.

Okay.

You see how beautiful that looks, the scoring here?

Wow.

I still have it in me.

I think I've earned this piece of bread today.

It was an early morning, but now when you have the bread, you really appreciate where it came from.

Absolutely.

With Thanksgiving only a day away, Josh has invited me to the cafe for dinner with his family.

And of course, I'm honored to accept.

A lot of Josh's family are here.

His kids, his mom and dad, his sister and her husband, his aunt and uncle and his two cousins, one of which has a face you'll probably find familiar.

And this is Andy.

That's right, Andy Cohen and Josh Allen are cousins.

Yes, I did.

Well, thank you.

Together with their sisters, they all grew up working in the family business.

And Andy and I worked as kids in customer service and driving the van, making deliveries in high school.

And then Andy escaped to another business.

There is always one kid that escapes.

It's no secret that Andy is a big cheerleader for Companion, but what does he have when he's in town?

It's right here.

It's the New Yorker.

I mean, it should be on a revolving thing right here.

It is a gorgeous everything bagel.

Smoked salmon, tomato, capers, onion, cream cheese on a delicious, by the way, made at Companion Bagel.

And this is it.

People in St. Louis are lucky to have this.

Are we going to share it or you're going to eat it by yourself?

I'm going to eat it by myself, but I appreciate the gesture.

He's in town with his son to spend time with his family.

Hi, what's your name?

Ben.

Ben?

Ben.

Okay.

What's your last name?

Cohen.

Yes.

So, Ben, the doll house you were playing with yesterday yeah.

Do you know whose doll house that was?

That was Jody's dollhouse.

And you know who used to play in that dollhouse with me?

I did.

Yeah, it was playing with the.. You had nothing to do with it.

I did it.

That's how long the family dinner turned into a blame game.

Who made Andy gay?!

Did you all socialize also?

All cousins growing up?

Growing up, yes.

Oh, yeah.

We were always together.

We were together a lot.

Family vacations.

Yeah.

It wasn't just in St. Louis.

It was all outside of here, we traveled together.

We're very close in age.

Jodie and Andy are the same age.

Graduated the same year.

In high school, I was a year behind.

Emily was three years ahead, two years ahead of them, three years ahead of me.

So we were all very close in age The four of us, as kids grew up working for the company every summer, and many times not in the summer, through the years.

And when I think about how horrible the idea that you and I drove forklifts in the freezer warehouse all day, I mean, I'm kind of amazed that I could do it like that and that I was good at it.

We would pick up the pallets.

We are going to end today with some kind of fork lift race between the two of you.

Oh, yeah.

And then a pallet stacking competition.

From the time they were young, they worked.

And it's just in their blood, in their genes that they just worked.

But they worked and had fun while they worked together.

We did.

And that was one of the wonderful parts about having a family business, I think.

So do I.

We grew up learning to support independent businesses because that's what we supported.

And so it's nice to be in an independent family business again, thats sort of come full circle.

And Andy?

Youve got nothing to add to that?

Well, I am sitting here silently, vigorously nodding my head I know you always speak very highly of St. Louis.

Is there something you like people to cook for you when you're home that reminds you of St. Louis?

I like provel cheese.

Okay.

Okay.

Which some would consider very gross, but if you've grown up on it, it might be an acquired taste.

Right.

You don't like that, provel?

I had it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and I actually thought it was good.

Very creamy, right?

Yeah.

It's a mixture of cheeses, but when it melts, is it really unique Is it real cheese, or is it fake cheese?

Is it fake cheese?

It's real cheese, right?

It's just what, like, five cheeses?

Its a blend, that sounds not real to me.

I love Ted Drews.

I love everything at companion.

That's kind of what I love here.

Toasted ravioli.

Of course.

What about family wise?

What did you eat as a family?

What did we eat as a family?

With all due to this family, I think that we are more homey food than culinary.

Absolutely.

Would that be fair to say?

Absolutely.

Yes.

And what do you mean by that?

Homey.

What do I mean by homey?

Mom, we're shooting a show.

What do I mean by homie?

More like a lot of pasta, A great filet.

I mean, listen, my aunt and uncle, Josh and Jodi's parents are two of the only people to this day that I know who had a deep fryer in their house literally a double deep fryer so that they could make us French fries cooked to perfection in the home.

You don't see that very often.

No.

They also had a fully operational what?

Ice cream parlor, literally, with soda fountains and a jukebox and I mean, really an incredible experience.

So it was a food experience, but it was more like going to just a great diner than to Tony's, so to speak.

The bond you have that you'll be able to grow up and everybody's kind of doing the same thing, it's very unique.

And then obviously Andy told me that he escaped, but.. he got out.

But he got out.

It wasn't an escape, it was a right turn.

I made an opportunity for myself.

There was no TV network affiliated with food business, so I felt like I wanted to go make that happen.

A little time here tonight, it's pretty obvious where the family atmosphere and justice bakery comes from.

My father died right after Josh started his business.

All I can say is he would be so proud to see this company now, this Companion Bakery He would be, yeah.

We have the luxury, I think Evelyn mentioned it, of starting and doing some really what you would look at now is kind of horrible jobs.

I remember moving a pallet out of the freezer and sweeping it out and putting the pallet back and going as far down the road in the freezer as I could until I got cold and I had to go out and warm up.

And then going back and doing it.

It's a hard thing to sell to the kids today, but, boy, it teaches you so much, and it teaches you that if we have folks that are in sanitation or folks that are packing bread, it doesn't matter.

Like, if that work doesn't happen, the customer doesn't get the product.

So Jodi is doing anything and everything in the cafes, and I'm doing those same things here.

And the girls have worked here packing bread, and these little dudes are going to have to start packing bread pretty soon.

It's what has to happen.

So the Latin root of companion is compane, which means with bread.

So a friend or a companion was someone with whom you broke bread or shared bread.

So that's where the name came from.

And obviously that's what we're trying to do, is get more people back to the table.

And we're doing a lot of custom products now and exclusive things.

And really, for us, it's helping the chefs tell their story.

It's their story to tell, and we're excited to be a part of that journey for them and figure out what that is.

So whether it's Kevin at Peacemaker, who has a very specific idea of what he wants that po'boy to be for the sandwiches that he does, we really want to be able to help those chefs tell that story.

Maybe it isn't just a master dough every city needs, but someone with passion for the process.

Someone who breathes flour daily.

From the outside looking in, it's clear what Josh has done with baking in St. Louis is a direct reflection of what he learned in his family's business when he was growing up.

Methodology, the logistics and the service is all an echo what he experienced as a kid.

But the passion for bread is all Josh and today he's the one that provides bread to restaurants and store shelves.

After getting to know his family, I understand why they've made such a positive impact on his career.

Having lived away from my family in Denmark for so long has taught me the value of nights like tonight.

Nights with family.

Breaking bread.

There's that term again, breaking bread.

If you need a religious context, then think of it this way is there any higher calling than feeding others?

Personally, I don't think so.

And the bread from Companion is doing just that every day.

Cheers!

Im happy to see you all together.

Thank you for getting us to all together.

We're happy to be all together.

How special is that?

Food is Love!

Andy wouldn't share this with me, so I had to order the New Yorker so I can try it for myself.

It's not just bread.

It's more than that.

It's love.

Here's to the local restaurants, to the chefs, owner operators, the staff, the ones who love being in the weeds night after night.

When we go to work each morning.

That's who we have in mind.

From where we source our food to how we deliver it.

Here's to them, the ones who are out there cooking for us every day.

Restaurants are the heart of everything we do.

We are Performance Food Service.

Proudly supporting Food is Love.

Support for Food is Love comes from Natural Tableware, supplier of sustainable green alternatives to plastic tableware.

Support also comes from Moonrise Hotel, a boutique hotel located on the Del Mar Loop in St. Louis.