Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, St. Louis: A Route 66 Institution Since 1929

Hi, I'm Ino.

After Bogart's Smokehouse, I needed something cold and sweet. The ribs had been excellent — smoky, rich, caramelized — and the afternoon was warm. St. Louis visitors all seem to have the same next move after barbecue, and I had heard it enough times to know where I was going.

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. On Chippewa Street. On Route 66.

Vanilla and chocolate frozen custard — two yellow cups on the window ledge of a Route 66 landmark since 1941.

A Tennis Champion Who Invented a St. Louis Tradition

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard was founded in 1929 by Ted Drewes Sr. — not primarily a food person, but a tennis player. He was the St. Louis municipal tennis champion from 1925 to 1936 and won the National Public Parks Singles title four times. Looking for a seasonal occupation that would leave his winters free to travel south for tennis, he learned the frozen custard trade while working with a carnival in Florida, opened his first stand there in 1929, and brought the business to St. Louis in 1930.

The first St. Louis location was on Natural Bridge Avenue. A second followed on South Grand Boulevard in 1931. Then in 1941, Drewes opened a stand at 6726 Chippewa Street — directly on the alignment of U.S. Route 66, the "Mother Road" that ran from Chicago all the way to Santa Monica, California. The Route 66 crowds changed everything. Chippewa became the flagship location, the one that grew and expanded and drew people from increasingly far away. It is still the one most people mean when they say "Ted Drewes."

Ted Drewes Sr. died in 1968 — fittingly, his obituary ran in the sports section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with only a brief mention of his business career. His son Ted Jr. took over, and the family has been running it ever since. The company is now in its fourth generation. Ted Jr. has declined multiple requests to franchise nationally. There are two locations: Chippewa Street and South Grand. That's it. That's all there will ever be, apparently.

The vintage neon sign at the Chippewa location — the arrow has been pointing to frozen custard since 1941.

Route 66, Harley-Davidsons, and a Fixed Stop on the Mother Road

Route 66 ran 2,448 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, passing through eight states — Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. In its peak years, from the 1930s through the 1960s, it was the main road west for millions of Americans: families relocating during the Dust Bowl, soldiers returning from the war, and later tourists chasing the romance of the open road. The Interstate Highway System gradually replaced it, and the official designation was removed in 1985 — but the road never really died. It became something different: a heritage route, a road trip destination in itself.

Today, guided Harley-Davidson tours that run the full length of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles are a significant industry. Groups of riders from around the world — particularly from Europe and the UK — make this trip as a bucket-list experience. The itineraries are remarkably consistent: Gateway Arch in the afternoon, then Ted Drewes for custard, then onward toward the Ozarks.

The parking lot at Ted Drewes reflects this. On a typical afternoon you'll find families from the neighborhood, tourists with rental cars, and a row of motorcycles — sometimes Harleys, sometimes a mixed group — parked together while their riders stand in the same line as everyone else, cups of concrete in hand, leaning against the bikes in the lot afterward. It's one of those scenes that feels completely natural and entirely American at the same time. Ted Drewes has appeared on Food Network, the History Channel, Man v. Food, and in The New York Times. In 2017, an Irish marketing firm named it the best ice cream shop in the world. None of that seems to have changed the place at all.

Good to know: The Chippewa Street location sits on the historic Route 66 alignment. A small souvenir shop and mini-museum are located next door — worth a few minutes if you're interested in the Route 66 history of the area.

The building hasn't changed much since 1941 — white clapboard, yellow neon lighting, and menu boards covering every available surface.

The Line, the Windows, and the Menu

There is almost always a line at Ted Drewes. On the afternoon I visited — a weekday, not particularly late in the day — the queue at the walk-up windows stretched well into the parking lot. The crowd was a genuine mix: local families, clearly regular customers who knew exactly what they wanted, and tourists like me who were still reading the menu boards while shuffling forward.

The good news is that the line moves faster than it looks. There are multiple service windows open, and the staff work quickly. The practical advice is to use the time in line to decide what you want — the menu is extensive, and arriving at the window undecided will slow you down and annoy the people behind you. The main categories are concretes (the signature), sundaes, malts and shakes, cones, and floats. Within each category, there are named specialty combinations and a build-your-own option.

The line at Ted Drewes — it looks long, but the multiple windows keep it moving.

Frozen Custard vs. Ice Cream: What's Actually Different

I ordered one vanilla and one chocolate — the most basic possible order — and I'll be honest about what happened: my first reaction was that it tasted like very good ice cream. Not dramatically different, not immediately revelatory. Just... really good ice cream in a yellow cup.

The distinction becomes clearer when you think about it rather than just eat it. Frozen custard contains egg yolks — standard ice cream typically doesn't, or uses very little. The egg yolks add richness and fat that changes both the flavor and the texture. It's also churned more slowly, with less air incorporated, which makes it denser and heavier than most commercial ice cream. The result is something that feels more substantial in your mouth and has a slightly warmer, richer flavor than straight dairy ice cream.

Did I notice all of this while eating it? Honestly, not immediately. It was good — smooth, properly cold, noticeably creamy. It was only afterward, thinking back on the texture and comparing it to what I usually eat, that I recognized what had been different. The density. It sat heavier. It didn't melt as fast. It tasted more like milk than like sugar.

There's also a footnote worth knowing: in 1986, The New York Times reported that the Dairy Queen Blizzard — one of the most successful fast food desserts in history — originated as a franchisee's attempt to replicate the Ted Drewes Concrete. Ted Drewes invented the concept. Dairy Queen scaled it globally. The original is still on Chippewa Street.

Tip: If you're ordering basic custard, the vanilla is the better showcase of what makes frozen custard distinct — the flavor is simpler, so the texture and richness come through more clearly. The chocolate is good, but the added flavor makes it harder to notice what's different about the base.

Vanilla frozen custard — richer and denser than standard ice cream, though the difference reveals itself gradually.

The Concrete: What You Should Have Ordered

The signature item at Ted Drewes is the Concrete — and I did not order it on this visit. That is the most useful thing I can tell you, because it means you should learn from my mistake.

The Concrete was invented in 1959 by Ted Drewes Jr. The origin story involves a teenage regular named Steve Gamber who kept requesting his malts thicker and thicker, until Drewes finally left out the milk entirely, scooped hard custard directly into the cup with the mix-ins, and presented it to Steve. When handing it over, he turned it upside down to demonstrate the thickness. "What do you call it?" Steve asked. "A concrete," said Drewes, recalling a similarly dense dessert he'd eaten elsewhere years before.

The upside-down presentation became a ritual that continues today. Every Concrete is presented to the customer upside down — the staff member holds the cup inverted, custard facing the ground, and hands it across the counter. The custard doesn't move. It is too thick to move. This small theatrical gesture is now inseparable from the Ted Drewes experience, and it's part of why the place has been written about more than any other restaurant in St. Louis.

The Concrete menu is extensive. Specialty combinations include the Turtle (hot fudge, caramel, and pecans), the Strawberry Shortcake (shortcake, strawberries, and whipped cream), the Fox Treat (hot fudge, raspberries, and macadamia nuts), and dozens of others. You can also build your own with any combination of mix-ins from the full list. On my next visit to St. Louis, the Concrete is the first thing I'm ordering.

Ino's Tips for Visiting Ted Drewes

Order the Concrete, not the basic custard. The frozen custard on its own is good, but it reads as very good ice cream to most people. The Concrete — custard blended with mix-ins, served upside down — is the thing Ted Drewes invented and the reason the place is famous. If you're going to stand in line, stand in line for the Concrete. Look at the specialty combinations on the menu board while you're waiting and choose one. The Turtle and the Strawberry Shortcake are the most consistently recommended.

Use the line time wisely. The queue at Chippewa is almost always present and can look discouraging. It moves faster than it appears — multiple windows are open and the staff are practiced and efficient. Decide what you want before you reach the front. Arriving undecided slows everyone down.

Eat in the parking lot. There is no indoor seating. The experience at Ted Drewes is eating outside — standing at the window ledge, sitting on a curb, or leaning against your car in the lot. This is how it has always worked and it's part of the atmosphere. On warm evenings, the lot fills up and feels like a neighborhood gathering point, which is essentially what it is.

The Chippewa location is closed only in January. The rest of the year it operates daily. The South Grand location is seasonal, operating only in summer. If you're visiting St. Louis outside of summer months, Chippewa is the one to go to.

The souvenir shop and mini-museum are next door. Worth a few minutes if you have any interest in Route 66 history. Small but genuinely informative.

Ted Drewes fits naturally into a St. Louis afternoon that also includes the Gateway Arch — the Chippewa location is a short drive from the riverfront, and the combination of the Arch in the morning and Ted Drewes in the afternoon is, apparently, the standard St. Louis itinerary for both guided tours and independent visitors. If you've already eaten at Bogart's Smokehouse, Ted Drewes is the obvious next stop — the sweetness cuts through the smoke in exactly the way it should. And if you've tried the frozen custard at Culver's in Michigan, you already have a reference point for what this style of dessert tastes like — Ted Drewes is the original version of that tradition.

More Than Just Dessert

I came away from Ted Drewes with the slightly unsatisfied feeling that comes from ordering the wrong thing. The custard I had was fine — genuinely good, worth eating, worth the line. But I could see from the Concretes going out at the windows beside me that I had missed the point of the place, and I knew it immediately.

What Ted Drewes offers isn't really about the custard versus the ice cream distinction. It's about a place that has been here since 1941, on the same stretch of Route 66, serving the same thing to locals and travelers and motorcyclists and food television hosts and everyone else who has found their way to Chippewa Street. The yellow cups haven't changed. The building hasn't changed. The upside-down presentation of the Concrete hasn't changed. In a city with a 90-year-old frozen custard stand that still draws lines every afternoon, that consistency is the whole story.

Same yellow cups, same window ledge, same Route 66 address since 1941. Next time: the Concrete.