For the past couple of years, Jason Bockman and Nathan Wright would do two things while working late nights at World's Fair Donuts: bake to ready innumerable doughnuts for the shop's storefront and delivery business, and marvel at just how many people passed through the Shaw-Vandeventer intersection in the middle of the night. For them, the graveyard shift was par for the course. As owner and employee, respectively, of the iconic south St. Louis doughnut shop, working through the middle of the night was a necessary part of making sure their wares were fresh and ready when World's Fair opened at six in the morning. However, they were shocked to see how many passersby were also out and about into the wee hours of the night, and as they wondered what they were up to, they got to thinking. Surely, those folks had to be hungry.
That theory is the raison d'etre for Up Late (1904 South Vandeventer Avenue, uplatestl.com), Bockman and Wright's Thursday through Sunday, late night to early morning venture that opened inside World's Fair Donuts this past February. For St. Louis diners, the walk-up window finally fills the void for a non-chain, middle-of-the-night eatery — a type of place that has all but vanished in the wake of the pandemic.
For Wright, who is the chef, co-owner and face of Up Late, the restaurant fills a different kind of void, one that arose within him when he realized his long-held dream of becoming a basketball coach was actually not his path. Though Wright has felt at home in the kitchen since he was a kid, he never considered it a career move and instead spent his undergraduate and graduate studies working toward a job on the coaching and management side of basketball. He seemed to be well on his way to achieving that goal; in his last year of graduate school at Saint Louis University, he was working as the Billikens' graduate assistant and was gathering all the credentials he'd need to succeed in the field.
However, Wright could not shake the feeling that something was off. Though he'd been working under the assumption that basketball was his calling, he came to the realization that he no longer wanted to move forward on that path. He decided to withdraw from his graduate program, which left him questioning who he was and what he wanted to do with his life. As he worked to figure this out, he found himself in need of a job and ended up working for Bockman at Strange Donuts. The pair instantly clicked, and Wright knew that there was something to the arrangement more than a meantime gig, an inkling that came to be one night when Bockman turned to him and said, "Why don't we open a restaurant?"
Bockman had always wanted to do something more with the World's Fair building, which he purchased from its original owners in 2020, than simply sell doughnuts from 6 a.m. until 2 p.m. Wright had come to the realization that he wanted to run his own business. Together, they decided to run with the idea of a late-night concept, and Bockman handed the reins to Wright, empowering him to come up with the ideas and menu that would become Up Late.
Wright admits that his first menu for Up Late had a little bit of everything; Bockman reined those ideas in, which resulted in a small selection of breakfast sandwiches, one taco and a few donuts that are ordered via a QR code on the side of the white cinderblock building or in advance through the restaurant's website. This makes for an efficient way of doing business, but it also leads to what's so special about Up Late: the convivial atmosphere it creates by assembling a random group of hungry, late-night folks in various states of sobriety hanging out, chatting each other up and giving life to an otherwise dark corner of the city.
Of course, Up Late would not work without good food, and to that end, the restaurant is a success. Wright may be offering easy, straightforward sandwiches, but he puts care into them and nails the small details to make them memorable. An egg sandwich might seem simple on its face — griddled sourdough, a fried egg, American cheese — but it's flawlessly toasted to a yellow-gold hue and has a satisfying, subtle crunch that yields to soft butteriness (you'll find this joy in the simple grilled cheese, too). What makes the sandwich utterly wonderful, however, is the combination of housemade blackberry jelly and habanero aioli that marry to form a complex, sweet-spicy concoction that is liberally applied so that it seeps out when you take a bite. Wright credits Bockman with the pairing, admitting he always thought it was weird when his boss would put hot sauce and jelly on his egg sandwiches. Once he tried it, and then perfected a homemade version of each for Up Late, he was convinced. It's difficult not to be.
The egg sandwich serves as the base for two other offerings. Diners can order a bacon version, which infuses the already complex combination of flavors with gentle smoke. It's delicious, but the way to go is with sausage. Wright makes his own pork patties, so you get the delightfully rustic texture that can only be achieved with a housemade product. His seasoning blend is perfect, evoking the nostalgia of the quintessential Jimmy Dean breakfast patty, but amping it up with even more sage and significant spice so it gives you a subtle, earthy heat. That he puts this level of care into a late-night walk-up counter is all you need to know to understand what's special about this place.
Wright's final savory offering is a carne asada taco, which features marinated hunks of juicy, char-kissed steak accented with cilantro, lime and white onion. On its own, it's a satisfying street taco, but it becomes a thing of absolute beauty when gilded with the accompanying side of refreshing, cilantro-forward green salsa. The stunning interplay of warm grilled meat and cool verdant sauce will wake up even the most bleary-eyed of late-night diners.
Because of its affiliation with World's Fair — and, by extension, Strange Donuts — Up Late offers a small selection of doughnuts and either chocolate or plain milk to wash them down. On the night of my visit, Wright was serving a delightfully rich chocolate cake doughnut covered in silken chocolate icing, an outstanding simple glazed one, and a gooey butter cake version that was surprisingly balanced thanks to its lemon-kissed glaze. In a decidedly Canadian fashion, you're invited to wash them down with a beer, in this case, a refreshing lager brewed only for Up Late by Four Hands.
Sipping on that delicious beer while noshing on a taco and chatting up fellow merrymakers on the lit-up parking lot of one of the city's most iconic buildings in the middle of the night, you understand that Up Late hasn't simply brought good late-night food to St. Louis. It has breathed much needed life into the city at night. That's more impressive than even the most delicious of sausage and egg sandwiches.
Open Thurs.-Sun. 8 p.m.-4 a.m. (Closed Mon. through Wed.)
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