The American dream is alive and well in Bevo Mill.
What was originally a German-centered neighborhood has over the decades become home to immigrants from Iran, Mexico, Syria and more. In the late 1990s, the dense, walkable neighborhood housed so many refugees from Bosnia that it took on the nickname "Little Bosnia."
But as many Bosnians have moved to the leafier suburbs of south county, the businesses they opened have been replaced by ones started by newer immigrants. These entrepreneurs are seeking the American dream in St. Louis for themselves and their families by opening bakeries, cafés, taverns, nightclubs, restaurants, grocery stores and butcher shops.
One of these entrepreneurs is Hadi Ehsani.
Born in Iran, Ehsani immigrated to the United States in 2016 after spending five years as a refugee in Turkey. After a few years in St. Louis, Ehsani decided to follow his dream of cooking wholesome food for his community. In March of 2023, Ehsani opened Ehsani's Hot Kabob (4561 Gravois Avenue).
"This is the first time opening a restaurant," says Ehsani. "I never had a restaurant anywhere. I just like making food for family and friends or parties, but I never had a restaurant before."
Ehsani says he has a lot of friends in the restaurant business whom he helped before opening a place of his own.
"And since starting, I'm really happy, a lot of customers come in here," he says. "I'm really happy."
Though Ehsani eventually found the perfect spot for his restaurant in the building that was previously home to Mariscos El Gato, Bevo Mill wasn't his first choice in neighborhoods.
"At first I tried for the west county, Manchester, Ballwin and the Delmar Loop close to the university," he explains. "But I didn't have any recipe for the restaurant, so nobody gave me the location. I would say, 'I will pay money for three or four months' rent,' but it didn't matter. It took me more than two years to find a space. I would go and talk to the owner and tell them I have experience from my country, but they would say no. My last shot was coming to this area. The first landlord said no, but I have a couple friends who talked to him and said I have the experience of making the food so he accepted."
Despite growing up in Iran, Ehsani considers himself Afghan.
"Because my mom, dad and grandmother, grandfather are all from Afghanistan, we all say that," he says. "But I'm really happy for my U.S. citizenship, but I'm also really happy to be from Afghanistan."
As a self-taught cook, Ehsani developed an interest in cooking at an early age while grilling with his uncle and dad during family gatherings back in Iran.
"I was making food for more than 100 people by myself by the time I was 20 years old," Ehsani says. "Everybody would come and say everything is so delicious and so good."
To ensure the freshness and quality of the food, Ehsani marinates the meat every Monday to prepare for the busy week ahead.
"Because we are selling fresh meat, we don't have it frozen for more than a couple of days," he explains. "Everybody is happy because they're given it fresh. Every day we are busy with customers."
When dining in, guests are presented with large silver platters filled with basmati rice, veggies and kabobs.
The menu features a robust blend of dishes from Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan as well as some dishes created by Ehsani himself.
"The kabob is a healthy food," Ehsani says. "All the meat is fresh and everything is organic. We use top organic saffron from Afghanistan. We don't use a fryer, and cook all the foods on the gas grill over lava stone."
The KhoshBash Kabob, a dish of his own creation, features marinated boneless back strap butchered from a whole lamb. The Koobideh Kabob, a top-seller, is made of marinated lean ground beef and lamb.
"Everybody who comes to my restaurant loves the fresh and healthy taste of the kabobs," Ehsani says. "Once you come try it once, you'll want to come back."
Looking toward the future, Ehsani is eyeing the Ballwin area for a potential space now that he has the experience, customer reviews and favorable articles in several publications.
Down the road from Ehsani's is Majeed Mediterranean Restaurant (4601 Gravois Avenue, 314-282-0981) run by Abdulhak and Ibrahim Majeed, brothers who originally opened the restaurant with their father Mamdouh.
Unlike Ehsani, Majeed's owners do not see Bevo Mill as a mere starting point. In fact, the restaurant is now in its second location on Gravois. Before settling in its current location, Majeed was in a smaller storefront previously occupied by a Honduran restaurant.
"I like this area," Abdulhak says about Bevo Mill. "I've been here for six years, I've never had any issues."
Majeed's newer location offers off-street parking, patio space and an overall enjoyable environment with contemporary Arabic-language music playing, similar to what would have been playing at the restaurant the family once ran in Syria.
The Majeed family owned two businesses of their own back in Hama — a construction design company and a restaurant. Determined to reclaim some of their identity and strike out on their own in their new home, Abdulhak and Ibrahim decided to follow in their father's entrepreneurial footsteps. They just didn't think it would be in the U.S.
Back in 2009, not long after the Syrian civil war began, the family felt that they couldn't recognize their hometown anymore. Mamdouh had enough when a school was bombed. He sent his wife and youngest son to Turkey, but Abdulhak and Ibrahim chose to stay behind to help maintain the family's land, business and extended family ties.
On the evening of Eid al-Adha in 2011, the Majeed men heard the explosion of a neighboring school, which shook their house as well as their confidence in their hometown. They left everything behind to create a more stable life in Turkey.
At the urging of an international refugee nonprofit in Turkey, the elder Majeed was persuaded to apply for refugee status in the U.S. Upon approval, the family was placed in St. Louis.
Abdulhak and Ibrahim opened Majeed in 2018 along with their father, who has since retired from the restaurant business. It wasn't easy. They didn't speak English, didn't have a car and didn't have much money.
"If you're going to start doing some business, if you're going to open a business," Abdulhak explains, "it's not easy for you to start in business because everything is expensive."
The restaurant serves a wide variety of Syrian specialties, including beef fatayer, a half-moon-shaped pastry filled with ground meat, onions and spices. The RFT's then-critic, Cheryl Baehr, wrote in 2018 that the flaky, samosa-like shell soaks up the beef jus, leaving no sauce necessary, while grape leaves, rolled with a mixture of ground lamb, beef and rice, were rich and bright. But the highlight for Baehr was the Syria chicken. "[It's] a leg and thigh quarter that is seared to crisp the outside skin, then slow-cooked with potatoes, olive oil and spices," she wrote. "The fat from the chicken forms a deep, schmaltzy gravy that caramelizes like brown butter. It soaks into the softened potato slices, giving the same rich effect you get from cooking potatoes in duck fat."
For Abdulhak, Bevo Mill isn't just a place to do business. It's a place to build a community — one that draws people from across the metro. He notes, "Some people come from Illinois, some come from Ballwin, from south county, everywhere."
Many of them still come to Bevo Mill seeking Bosnian food, even though some of the area's original Bosnian destinations have closed, including Grbic Restaurant. But some Bosnian immigrants are keeping the neighborhood's identity alive even while welcoming an influx of newcomers from other parts of the world.
One of them is Bedita Rizvanovic, who owns Zlatne Kapi (5415 Gravois Avenue), a Bosnian cafe and deli. Rizvanovic, who was born in Teslic, Bosnia, and her family moved to St. Louis from Germany in 2000 after war broke out in what had been Yugoslavia.
"It was two years into the war," she says. "In '94, we moved to Germany. I lived in Germany for five or six years. I got married, I got my kids. My mom, my dad and my uncle moved here to St. Louis, so they are the reason why I'm here."
Once in St. Louis, Rizvanovic continued her education.
"I learned English for eight years in middle school and in high school," Rizvanovic explains. "When I came here, I went to the International Institute, and I was already at a 2500 level of English so I just learned English and went to Forest Park Community College."
She then took a job at a law firm in Clayton where she worked in the collections department for seven years. It wasn't until 2008 when she decided to open her own business.
"My dad and my brother got this building 20 years ago," she says. "They remodeled it and it was a nasty thing. They decided to open the butcher shop next door, but my passion was cakes. When I was a kid, I was like in seventh grade. I made cakes for my brothers, my mom or my dad. I just love it."
Zlatne Kapi's menu offers traditional Bosian food including ćevap, pljeskavica (a flavorful minced meat burger), sudžukice (a traditional skinless beef sausage), doner, tufahije (a stuffed apple dessert), hurmašice (a syrup-drenched pastry), baklava, rolade, voćni kolač (a fruit cake), tulumbe (a deep-fried dessert) and oblatne (a wafer cake), as well as grilled chicken sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, classic cheeseburgers, a house salad, chicken salad, pasta salad and steaks.
Rizvanovic also makes and decorates specialty cakes for different occasions.
"I make maybe 50 cakes a week, not counting the small cakes," she says. "I do birthdays. Christmas is the busiest."
Sharing her culture in Bevo Mill has given Rizvanovic the opportunity to meet many different people.
"I love everybody," Rizvanovic says. "I have a lot of Albanians who come in and I've met some Irish people. I have so many people coming in who visit from some other state like New York and they will stop here and they love the Turkish coffee. I like meeting new people."
Though things have been tough since COVID-19, Rizvanovic is thankful she still has her business.
"The best opportunity and the best life is in the USA," she says. "You can go everywhere, you have so much, you can go to the school wherever you want and nobody cares who you are. Missouri is a place for families."
Ehsani's Hot Kabob is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 3:30 to 9 p.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 9 p.m. Majeed Mediterranean Restaurant is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. To order online, visit Majeed's website. Zlatne Kapi is open Wednesday through Monday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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