America’s next great restaurants are in the suburbs

Still, as areas gain popularity, new business can drive out independent entrepreneurs

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — The flavors at the Peruvian restaurant Jalea are electric. The location? A bit more unassuming.

The nearest major city, St. Louis, is 23 miles away. But on a quiet cobblestone street, sandwiched between a Pilates studio and a financial services consultancy, you’ll find ceviche with delicate slices of grouper and plump corn kernels, all swimming in a tart, gingerheavy leche de tigre; and lomo saltado whose soyand vinegar-laden sauce arrives lacquered onto chunks of rib-eye.

Jalea’s owners, siblings Mimi and Andrew Cisneros, recognized the risk in choosing this quaint street over a city known for its vibrant restaurant scene. But they saw opportunities in the suburbs that they wouldn’t find in St. Louis. Yes, the rent was lower. And St. Charles, where the Cisneroses spent their teenage years, is also one of the fastest-growing counties in Missouri.

“St. Charles is not just the white suburbs where we grew up,” Mimi Cisneros said. “It is becoming globalized like everywhere else.”

There is also less competition than in the city, they said. Because St. Charles is a small community, the two believe they can make a bigger impact here. With the lower overhead costs, Andrew Cisneros, 29, said he felt much freer to experiment with flavors. (He runs the kitchen, and Mimi Cisneros, 30, oversees operations.)

Since the restaurant opened in December, they have been encouraged to see that locals are eager to try Peruvian food.

Jalea is one of many independent restaurants — including Roots Southern Table in Farmers Branch, Texas; Travail Kitchen and Amusements in Robbinsdale, Minnesota.; and Noto in St. Peters, Missouri — that are raising the collective aspirations of the local culinary culture and turning suburbs into dining destinations.

Established big-city restaurateurs have taken note, and in recent years have expanded their empires deep into the suburbs. But many of the most exciting suburban restaurants have been opened by smaller-scale entrepreneurs taking a considerable risk.

“You don’t need to make it in New York to be somebody,” said Alen Ramos, who with his wife, Carolyn Nugent, sells European-style confections at Poulette Bakeshop in Parker, Colorado. A chef can succeed in the suburbs “as long as you are smart and you execute well and you take care of your guests.”

This was the hope of Edo and Loryn Nalic when, in 2019, they opened Balkan Treat Box, a restaurant in Webster Groves, Missouri, specializing in the foods of the Balkan Peninsula. But they worried that the flavors would feel too unfamiliar to locals.

“For a good half a year we both were looking at each other like, ‘Do we water this down?’ ” said Loryn Nalic, 42. But she said customers were thrilled to discover an independent restaurant serving food that felt new to them.

Other owners have had to make a few adjustments to their menus. A decade ago, chef Peter Chang began building a collection of acclaimed and successful Chinese restaurants that has grown to a dozen, all except one in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Still, Chang, 58, said he was hesitant to put dishes with intestines on the menu, for instance.

Alex Au-Yeung opened his two businesses — the Malaysian restaurant Phat Eatery in 2018 and Yelo, a Vietnamese diner, last March — in Katy Asian Town, a shopping center in a Houston suburb, aimed at the area’s large Asian American population. Yet “80% or so” of his diners are white, he said.

“We have to adapt quite a bit with the flavor sometimes,” said Au-Yeung, 50. “Like shrimp paste — we have to back it off a little bit, not make it too funky.”

From 2010-20, the number of Americans living in suburbs grew by 10.5%, according to census data.

Suburban residents have also become more affluent; their average household income grew by 2.3% from 2009-19, to $83,000 a year, according to the 2019 American Community Survey.

While this growth predated the pandemic, the past two years and the expansion of workfrom-home culture have accelerated the once-gradual shift, said Hyojung

Lee, an assistant professor of housing and property management at Virginia Tech University.

Millennials, the generation driving this growth, have brought an increasingly urban feel to many suburbs, Lee added — a change that often manifests in independent restaurants.

Still, this seemingly symbiotic relationship between restaurants and diners has its complications.

As suburbs accommodate more diverse businesses that enrich the community, that success can attract the attention of developers, said Willow Lung-Amam, an associate professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Maryland. The resulting developments can drive up costs, forcing out the same entrepreneurs who helped make the area more enticing in the first place.

While not all suburbs are alike, in general, suburban planners are not well versed in how best to support independent restaurants, said Dr. Samina Raja, a professor of urban planning at the University at Buffalo. Because they don’t understand that these businesses often have a shorter financial runway than large restaurant groups or chains, the planners are less likely to provide economic development grants or loosen zoning restrictions.

Creating a robust dining scene can require a significant commitment from the local government.

But Kristen Jeffers, the founder of the Black Urbanist, said some suburbs still perpetuate exclusionary practices. Informal redlining continues to occur, making it hard for Black entrepreneurs to get loans, she said. At the same time, she is reassured to see some suburbs’ growing cadre of younger residents speaking out against such practices and supporting nonwhite business owners.

In fact, Chang, who runs Chinese restaurants in the Washington suburbs, has been so encouraged by their success that he was skeptical when a few years ago, his daughter suggested opening a restaurant, Nihao, in Baltimore — a city with a population of more than half a million.

He had all kinds of worries: that the operating costs would be too high, that it would be harder to find staff, that there were so many restaurants in Baltimore already. Yet in the year or so since Nihao opened, sales have been steady, he said, and the business has been running smoothly.

It was a big surprise for Chang: that a restaurant could succeed in — of all places — a city.