Sassafras Cafe (Missouri Botanical Garden)

Take Me Here Using Metro Transit

Missouri Botanical Garden’s Sassafras Café is located in the east wing of the new Jack C Taylor Visitor Center. Aiming for a LEED GOLD building certification, the café features high efficiency HVAC, fully phased in LEDs and Energy Star equipment, Water Sense features in bathrooms, LED screens for menus, smart thermostats, and utilizes a ton of natural light. The parking lot features rain gardens and bioswales, and landscaping techniques designed to filter pollution and reduce run-off of storm water. As you walk through the Jack C Taylor Visitor Center and into Sassafras be prepared for a biophilic immersion you won’t soon forget!

Food is served on reusable plates and flatware instead of disposables. If you choose to get your food to-go it comes in compostable containers with compostable cutlery, and compostable to-go cups for soft drinks and coffee. Although the garden will thank you if you bring your own reusable drink cups and reusable cutlery! The sky-lit interior is designed for energy efficiency, and the patio is lined with trees – both provide a stunning view of Garden grounds. Sassafras Café supplements the menu seasonally with heirloom tomatoes, radishes and fennel grown on the farm owned by Catering St. Louis, the Garden’s food service contractor. They use What Chefs Want for some of their produce, Marcoot Jersey Creamery cheese curds, and mushrooms from Ozark Forest, a Known & Grown member, which all help to support our local food system and our local economy. Sassafras Cafe serves organic milk (regular AND chocolate) for kids who visit the Garden. Vegetarians always have options at the café, both on their daily menu and on the specials, which the chef specially designs to include delicious veggie options.

Sassafras Café sells reusable water bottles and coffee mugs to encourage guests to avoid single use disposables when possible. Single-use bottled water takes an enormous amount of resources to create, fill, and ship, so finding an alternative to them is an important step in reducing your personal environmental impact. Single-stream recycling and food waste composting are the norm for guests and employees.

Sassafras’s new space features stunning biophilic designs including the  50-foot-tall glass “lantern” in the center above the main hall when you walk through the front entrance. It’s fashioned with punctured aluminum screens that cast shadows mimicking a ginkgo tree canopy. Once you’ve looked down you’ll see the terrazzo floor, which is inlaid with smoothed river stone as well as hundreds of brass outlines of leaves from Missouri native trees: bitternut hickory, pawpaw, black walnut, and hackberry. Sassafras also features cloud lighting in the shape of a large rose. As you walk past Sassafras Café and into the restaurant you’ll see the large carved tree bench from a Shumard Oak that came down in 2021. Slabs from the same tree were used to create the communal table in the restaurant. Both pieces were created by David Stein and the Tao + Lee team.

Sustainability at Sassafras is supported by the café staff’s partnership with the EarthWays Center, the Garden’s sustainability division and one of St. Louis’s best resources for environmental education and action. EarthWays Center cross-promotes efforts of the Green Dining Alliance, especially through programs like the St. Louis  Green Business Challenge and popular events like the annual Green Living Festival.

Getting to Sassafras Café is green too. Ride your bike, take a Metro bus, or plan to recharge your EV as you enjoy breakfast or lunch with a local beer, then take a stroll around a St. Louis living treasure, the beautiful Missouri Botanical Garden!