St Paul from St Louis?

Read Time: 14 minutes

What is this sandwich?

The sandwich this blog post is focused on today is the Saint Paul sandwich—which I will be referring to as the St Paul sandwich—which you can really only find on menus in Chinese restaurants in the Saint Louis area of Missouri. Read that sentence again if you need to, or just keep plundering along. I’ll explain a bit more.

A St Paul sandwich is made with a base of an egg foo young patty that could include chopped up protein like ham, chicken, or seafood. Then that fried egg, veggie, and protein patty is layered inside of cheap white bread with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayonnaise. Sometimes onion is added, but typically the onion is mixed into the egg foo young patty along with other veggies like mung beans, cabbage, and/or carrots.

I painted a St Paul sandwich. I used the base sandwich graphic again just down below, but because I spent most of the week sick with COVID, I ended up painting another St Paul sandwich painting that you’ll see later.

But why is a sandwich named St Paul only located in St Louis? And why is it almost only found in Chinese restaurants? First, we need to get into some history.

Who or what is Saint Paul?

Saint Paul, the person, is the name of both a Christian saint and the capital city of Minnesota. Paul, who was born with the name Saul, was a Christian apostle who is traditionally credited with writing a large portion of the New Testament of the Bible. Paul is considered to be an apostle, but he was not one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, and while they both lived during the same time period, they are thought to have never physically met.

There is a lot more that could be said about Paul the apostle and his impact on Christianity, but I am not the sandwich blogger to cover that. What I can say definitively is that Paul never consumed an egg foo young patty or the sandwich that was possibly named for him, and he certainly did not visit the capital city of Minnesota that took on his name either.

St. Paul, the city, was originally called Pig’s Eye or Pig’s Eye Landing after a nearby popular tavern. It wasn’t until 1841 that a Catholic missionary named Lucien Galtier commissioned a chapel to be built on a hill above the settlement that he named for Paul the Apostle, otherwise known as Saint Paul. Galtier then encouraged the use of St. Paul to denote the settlement and encouraged citizens to stop calling it Pig’s Eye.

St Paul sandwich history

But why is a sandwich from St Louis named after St Paul? Is it named after a town or after the Christian saint? To make any attempt to figure that out, we really need to dig into some history.

This is a well-produced and entertaining video, but it’s not really finding the origin of the original St. Paul sandwich. The name of the sandwich goes way further back than they claim, but this might be pointing to one of the original Chinese versions of the sandwich.

I’ve whipped up a bit of Marketing for the St. Louis City Council to use. They just need to find space for my $5000 dollar fee in their 2027 budget, and it’s all theirs to use.

As usual, when it comes to sandwich lore and history, we can often fall back on Jim at the Sandwich Tribunal, who has done pretty thorough research into the St Paul sandwich. Jim’s research found a great snippet from a book called Devil at the Confluence: The Pre-war Blues Music of Saint Louis Missouri that was written by Kevin Belford. That quote from a book that’s extremely expensive on the second-hand market goes on to cover a bit of the history of the St Paul sandwich.

…the history of the St. Paul sandwich has been an established St. Louis restaurant item now for at least one hundred years. It seems very likely that the various Asian, African and European immigrants in the densely populated city was the unique combination of factors that contributed to the creation of the Americanized Egg Foo Yung sandwich with the Catholic name – the Saint Louis Saint Paul.

Kevin Belford, Devil at the Confluence, 2011

This led Jim to investigate and get a bit of documentation for himself, so I tried to see if I could find anything that he might have missed or anything that was scanned into online archives after he covered his own blog post about the St Paul sandwich.

Many sources cite that a person named Steven Yuen, who owned a restaurant called Park Chop Suey, invented the St Paul sandwich. Some say he invented it in the 1970s, and some have even claimed that he invented the sandwich in the 1940s. Park Chop Suey wasn’t even around in the 1940s, so I’m not sure where all of that came from, but there are many sources available online that show that this sandwich, or a sandwich similarly named, existed well before the 70s or the 40s.

Jim from the Sandwich Tribunal found this listing from The Appeal, an African American newspaper from Minnesota. This was from 1903! This proves that something called a St Paul sandwich was actually available at some point in Minnesota, and the sandwich is at least 120 years old.

This listing is from a cookbook titled “Salads and Sandwiches and Specialty Dishes for Restaurants and Tea Rooms” published in 1928. The St. Paul sandwich was definitely more of an omelet sandwich with ham, onion, green pepper, and sweet pickles.

In cookbooks going back almost 80 to 100 years, you’ll see St Paul sandwiches listed right beside a Western sandwich or, the more modernly named, Denver sandwich, which is typically an omelet sandwich that contains meat, onion, and green pepper. If you’ve been reading along, you’ll note that this is also very, very similar to the old versions of the St Paul sandwich. The Denver sandwich is thought to have been invented in 1907.

There are many claims about the origin of the Denver sandwich, but famous food writer James Beard has claimed the Western/Denver sandwich might have been invented by Chinese cooks who were feeding railroad gangs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. So the Denver/Western sandwich and the St Louis sandwich could have a very similar origin story.

From The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches by Susan Russo, published in 2013. Did Chinese cooks invent the Denver sandwich?

From America Cooks: Favorite Recipes from 48 States, published in 1940. I combined screenshots from two pages to create this image and also note how similar this recipe is to the one from Salads and Sandwiches and Specialty Dishes for Restaurants and Tea Rooms that I shared just above.

This ad for Remley Market in St. Louis appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1917. For just 10 cents, you could get yourself a St. Paul sandwich and a bottle of Nearbeer (bottom left of the image).

All of this proves to me without a doubt that the owners of Park Chop Suey did not create or invent the St Paul sandwich. There’s a very good chance that Steven Yuen of Park Chop Suey was able to give the sandwich a lot more life and popularity throughout the city, but they definitely did not invent the sandwich or even give it the name of St Paul. They possibly did give the St Paul sandwich its more modern interpretation with more egg foo young components.

If you want to read more about St Paul sandwiches, check out The puzzling St. Paul sandwich from Restaurant-ing through history, and you can also read what some of the Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me writers thought about the sandwich way back in 2013.

St. Paul, Missouri?

One angle that I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that the sandwich could be named after a town, but maybe not the Saint Paul in Minnesota. A quick Google search lets me know that there are at least 12 incorporated cities named Saint Paul or St Paul in the United States. In fact, there is a St. Paul, Missouri, that’s just 20 or 30 miles away from the edge of St. Louis. Could the sandwich have come from there?

The Catholic church in what is now known as St. Paul, Missouri, was given its name in 1859, which then led the town to accept that as its name as well. Before that, it was called Dog Prairie. There’s still a Dog Prairie Tavern in town that lists all of this as part of its history. Unfortunately, that tavern does not have a St Paul sandwich on the menu.

The closest St Paul sandwich that I could find to the town of St Paul was in O’Fallon at No. 1 Chinese Restaurant.

None of this rules out that the person who possibly created the original St Paul sandwich might have simply been from or located in a town known as St Paul and named it after that. We simply do not know.

I found a photo of the menu at the Dog Prairie Tavern from St. Paul, Minnesota, that recaps some of the small town’s history. Click for a bigger version (Source here).

It seems to me that the St Paul sandwich could have been invented when the Western/Denver sandwich was invented, by Chinese cooks who were basically making egg foo young into a sandwich. And then it was seen and cooked by non-Chinese cooks and restaurants and basically cooked with American-style ingredients plus egg until sometime around the time that Park Chop Suey opened in 1974. At that point, I’m guessing that Steven Yuen realized that the St Paul sandwich was almost the same thing as the egg foo young that they were currently selling and adopted it and firmed it into St Louis history and culture.

Here’s a graphic I created to explain what a St Paul sandwich might be if you ordered it in St Louis in 2026.

And then I altered the graphic to explain what the St Paul sandwich might have been prior to the 1970s, when it was more readily available across the United States.

So there’s a good chance that the St Paul sandwich has come full circle. It was likely invented by Chinese cooks in the late 1800s while cooking for railroad workers. Then the Western/Denver sandwich and the St Paul sandwich both shifted slightly from each other for a few decades while using fairly American ingredients. The St Paul sandwich faded a bit from interest until the mid 1970s where a St Louis restaurateur decided that it could be featured as an offering on their Chinese restaurant menu, and now it’s exclusively produced by cooks who are cooking Americanized Chinese cuisine.

Park Chop Suey

My wife and I caught the Amtrak to St Louis last year, and we tried to visit Park Chop Suey, but they ghosted us. We were only there a couple of days; they do not open up on Sunday, so we ended up missing our window.

We were walking around from place to place (St. Louis is not really a very walkable place), and we walked up to Park Chop Suey at 12:35 on a Saturday to see an empty parking lot (front and back) and no sign of any life. According to Google Maps, they were supposed to be open that day by 12:30, so even if they were just delayed in unlocking the doors, I would have expected to see some life inside.

This is the exterior of Park Chop Suey. I took this photo on the Uber ride to the train station at 8 am or so, but this is what the parking lot looked like when we walked up two days before.

Maybe they were closed for some sort of event, but without a social media presence and without any mention on their website, they simply weren’t open. Guess I’ll catch Park Chop Suey on my next trip to St Louis.

We ended up walking another 3/4 of a mile and visited a nearby craft brewery for lunch and pivoted to eating a St Paul sandwich the next day instead.

One day later

I’m an early riser, so I got up and did some research into who in the St Louis area might have a good authentic St Paul sandwich. There were a lot of opinions online, but there were also a lot of people on Reddit who said things like, “go to any restaurant with Chop Suey in their name.”

21 likes on this suggestion? Worked out pretty well for us. Here’s the full Reddit thread with other replies.

I settled on visiting the closest Old St. Louis Chop Suey location that also had a small brewery within a fairly short walk—because I know my priorities. This was based on the top reply in a Reddit thread from a couple of years prior.

We Ubered over and hit the counter service to order a St Paul sandwich.

Old St. Louis Chop Suey is deeply embedded in a suburban-style shopping center with a Harbor Freight, Subway, and even a Planet Fitness all sharing the same parking area. It’s definitely an unassuming place where you walk in and place your order at the counter, and then they bring your food when it’s ready.

Old St Louis Chop Suey is deeply embedded in a shopping center.

The crab rangoon was pretty good, but not better than the rangoon you’ll find at most delivery Chinese places.

Got a beautiful St Paul sandwich wrapped up here.

I asked the person taking our order which egg foo young option I should choose, and she said I should try the one with a few different meats mixed in with the egg. I also ordered some crab rangoon, and my wife had what she will tell you was a very good order of ramen.

The St Paul sandwich was about what you could imagine if you’ve ever ordered egg foo young from a delivery-style American Chinese restaurant. The bread was super simple and soft white bread that had a nice, thin layer of mayonnaise. There was some crunch from the lettuce, and you noticed the mung beans and other veggies inside of the foo young patty. Everything was savory with just a touch of pickly acid, which was very helpful.

This sandwich is one of those sandwiches that will remind you of the bologna or ham sandwiches you might have eaten as a kid, where the soft bread just sort of sticks all over the inside of your mouth while you’re taking a bite.

A St Paul sandwich isn’t a very pretty sight.

The top slice didn’t have any mayonnaise, but the bottom slice did. There’s also no tomato in this version.

The rest of the ingredients are lettuce and pickles. I ordered the special version of the St Paul sandwich, which meant it had all of the different meat options in the patty.

Was this a great sandwich? I would not call it great. It was good. I enjoyed the sandwich, but since it’s not something I have any nostalgia for, it’s a little bit lost on me. I wonder if toasting the bread just a little might help because everything gets a bit soft and texturally similar. I probably should have tested this in my versions, but instead, I made them exactly as they’re supposed to be.

Now that we finally know what sandwich we’re making, we’ll need some bread.

Slices of soft white bread

The St Paul sandwich requires some soft white bread slices. I used my Pullman pan with lid to create a large rectangular loaf, which would create quite a few soft slices to be used in a few St. Paul sandwiches.

This loaf of bread recipe makes a 13-inch-long loaf, which will end up making 8 or more sandwiches if you slice the bread around 1/2 inch thick. The slices will be soft, and they’ll probably be best in a sandwich if you toast them, but for some reason this sandwich uses untoasted bread. Shaping the loaf is very easy, and I’ve covered this recipe quite a few times, which you can check out if you’d like to make a loaf of your own.

A Pullman loaf pan produces a large brick of bread.

When the loaf is finished baking, it’s fairly important to rest it upside down so that the top of the loaf does not sink too much while resting and cooling.

Here’s my large Pullman loaf recipe that makes a mean, soft white bread slice. You can just buy some Wonder Bread if you don’t want to make your own. But my recipe is one of the easier breads you can make, so give it a shot if you need some good grilled cheeses or a more interesting PB&J.

Egg Foo Yung patty

I had never made egg foo young before starting this blog post, but if you can cook an egg and chop some veggies, it’s very easy. I had also never really ordered egg foo young before trying my first St Paul sandwich in St Louis last year. I have since ordered it from our favorite local Chinese delivery spot, but it’s still not really one of my favorite dishes that I order often.

The gist of egg foo young is that it’s a whisked egg that is packed with a lot of accompanying ingredients. The mixture will seem like there’s way more protein or veggies than egg, but during the cooking process the egg expands and fills in all the spaces between fillings.

Chop up all of your egg foo young fillings to make sure you don’t have too much of any one thing in each bite.

The amount of filling will start to look like it’s more than 1 egg can handle, but the egg expands during cooking.

If you’ve cooked eggs before, you’ll have no trouble with egg foo young.

One egg per patty doesn’t seem like it would be enough, but when it’s mixed in with the ham and vegetables, it fills out and turns into a pretty substantial patty. For my egg foo young patties, I added some chopped up ham steak, shredded carrots, mung bean sprouts, and green onion. As I’ve said in a couple of places, it will look like you have too many ingredients for just one egg, but it will all work out; I promise.

I try to pour the egg mixture into a circular shape, but while the first side of the egg foo young patty fries, you can use your spatula to tighten the exterior into a patty that’s about the same size as your slice of bread.

While the first side cooks, you should use your spatula to keep the patty somewhat bread-slice-sized.