A relatively new but already celebrated St. Louis restaurant has temporarily closed its doors, citing an environmental hazard.
Brew Tulum (5090 Delmar Boulevard), a coffee roastery and restaurant serving Yucatán cuisine, has been closed since early September because of what its co-owner says is lead contamination in its space in the Delmar Maker District. The eatery was the RFT’s choice for Best Mexican earlier this year.
Co-owner Laura McNamara says that the events that led to Brew Tulum’s temporary closure began with a lead test. She had her one-year-old son’s blood lead levels tested after hearing that lead contamination was a problem in St. Louis city and the substance could be present in baby food.
“I thought I was going to check off a box, like, ‘OK, parenting box checked,’” she says. “We were really shocked to discover when the results came back that he was high.”
His lead levels were high enough that their pediatrician had to report it to the city and state, McNamara says. She started doing a deep dive on the possible effects of high lead levels — everything from slowed growth to lQ implications — and got her own lead levels tested, only to find they were also very high, she says.
That knowledge in hand, she and her husband, Brew Tulum co-owner Alberto Juarez, began looking for the source. They considered their house — a historic home that had been totally gutted and rehabbed — and then the commercial space that was home to their year-old eatery.
“When it was handed over to us, it was handed over full of dust,” McNamara says. “There was no final cleanup.”
McNamara and her husband cleaned it themselves, and without childcare, their son had spent a lot of time crawling around that space. She wondered if the dust had been full of lead.
She says she asked the building’s landlord to get the space tested and then decided to pay out of pocket herself. When her dust swab came back positive for lead, the landlord paid for an assessment, which also came back positive, and then paid for a cleaning crew.
“But when I arrived on the day that the cleaning company was supposed to come, I saw that they were not certified for lead abatement,” she says. “Afterward, there was another lead assessment performed to determine if that cleaning did the proper job, and the numbers came back even more shockingly high.”
The Delmar Maker District, including co-owner Doug Auer, did not respond to requests seeking comment.
McNamara says that Brew Tulum and the landlord have not since been able to come to an agreement about what next steps should be done, and so the restaurant remains closed.
She says nearly two months of closure have wreaked havoc on the couple’s finances.
“This was our sole source of income,” she says. “And we were brand new. We invested everything we had in the business, and we were coming off of the pandemic, so we don't have any more nest eggs or catch-alls to rely upon.”
That financial situation has meant that relocating to a different space is a difficult proposition. But more than that, McNamara says they don’t want to leave because of the strong community support they’ve received at their current spot.
In late September, McNamara launched a GoFundMe with the hopes of raising enough to do the lead abatement work themselves, a window that has since closed since a company that had offered to do the work at a reduced rate has since filled its schedule. The funds have also supported McNamara’s family while Brew Tulum has been closed.
Until now, Brew Tulum had been quiet on what was happening. This week, McNamara posted on Instagram about the reasons behind the closure along with a plea for further help.
“At first, it seemed like we all were on the same page,” she says. “It's just important to get this properly fixed. But then things haven't moved forward.”
The Delmar Maker District is located on the south side of Delmar Boulevard, just west of its intersection with South Kingshighway Boulevard. In 2018, Auer and co-founder Jim McKelvey, who is also a co-founder of Square, launched it with a vision to provide a home for St. Louis artisans and makers. It currently houses not only Brew Tulum but also Third Degree Glass Factory, Craft Alliance, Maker Hill and Made Makerspace.
In February, the district announced a new concept, Makers Locale, would open in the fall and include outpostings of Steve’s Hot Dogs and the Fountain on Locust. They’re not the only food concepts slated to join the space: In August, Ben Poremba said that he’d be moving Elaia, Olio and Nixta to the Delmar Maker District from their current location in Botanical Heights. Sauce Magazine reports that Beyond Sweet Kitchen + Bar is also slated to open a new location in the district.
Email the author at [email protected] Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
