1929 Pizza, C&B Boiled Bagels make Wood River a must-visit

1929 Pizza & Wine compels a visit to Wood River, where businesses new and established dot the weathered storefronts of the Metro East city’s downtown. The pizza here is also wood-fired, but 1929 doesn’t claim or aspire to be Neapolitan. From the gleaming white oven along the rear wall of the sleek, modern dining room, next to the floating shelves that display bottles of wine against exposed brick, married duo Amy and Matt Herren produce singular, destination-worthy pies.

The Herrens opened 1929 in December of last year. For each, it marked a return to the St. Louis dining scene. Amy, as Amy Zupanci, previously operated the acclaimed upscale restaurant Fond in Edwardsville. Matt founded two Edwardsville businesses, Goshen Coffee Co. and 222 Artisan Bakery, though he is no longer involved with either.

The couple sold everything they owned and traveled for a decade. They worked contract jobs and started an Australia-based business manufacturing storage for green coffee. Even upon their return to the Metro East in 2021, they continued an iconoclastic lifestyle. They lived the van life for a while, then moved into a tiny house.

The Herrens bring that spirit to 1929, where you can begin dinner with a seasonal bruschetta that — as Amy herself pointedly noted when she delivered the plate to my table — might not feature the expected tomato. Instead, she heaped green beans from the Herrens’ own garden, creamy gigantes beans and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano atop thick slices of house-baked bread rubbed with delicately cooked garlic.

1929 is a pizzeria where you shouldn’t

hesitate to order bread as an appetizer. Perfectly chewy, with a bracing sourdough note, it impresses both as the base of bruschetta or by itself with house-cultured butter or a whole head of roasted garlic.

For their pizza, the Herrens have developed a naturally leavened dough fermented over three days that delivers the airy crumb and puffy, blistered lip you expect from a Neapolitan pie, but also the defined structure and crisp bottom of the New York style. It tastes of the hearth, smoky and teasingly tangy.

That crust defines eight pizzas that find the distinction in the familiar. You expect sharp edges from a pepperoni pie, but 1929’s version is honed to surgical precision with its ripe red sauce, the bonus zip of salami and, instead of a dampening blanket of melted shredded cheese, strategically placed blobs of melting but still stretchy fresh mozzarella.

Likewise, the sausage-and-peppers pizza is no rote assemblage of meat and dour green bell peppers. Instead, each slice sparkles with the bite and subtle fruitiness of pickled goathorn peppers from Mama Lil’s Peppers in Portland, Oregon. The peppers don’t overshadow the sausage so much as distract you from the pie’s slowly building heat.

(Two diners who also ordered an appetizer and salads could share one pie, but for the average table, I would estimate one pie per person, with leftovers.)

1929’s triumph features no meat, mozzarella or red sauce. The Greens pizza tops the crust with a coarse walnut pesto, which you will struggle to see underneath the pie’s generous mound of gently wilted kale and garnishes of Parmigiano-Reggiano and toasted walnuts. Here the Herrens deploy the sort of precise, vital seasoning you would have found at Amy’s late Fond: sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil, a sprinkling of red chile flakes and an energizing spritz of lemon.

Each bite is a reminder. Any pizzeria on the map can arrange a striking array of toppings. Few can really cook.

Where 1929 Pizza & Wine, 7 North Wood River Avenue, Wood River • More info 618-216-2258; 1929pizzaandwine.com • Menu Wood-fired pizza • Hours Dinner Thursday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Wednesday)

The Herrens debuted C&B Boiled Bagels in early May around the corner and down the street from 1929 Pizza & Wine. If you weren’t already planning a trip to Wood River for pizza, C&B would offer reason enough for the drive.

(Obviously, if you’re reading this in or near Wood River, you’re doubly fortunate.)

That remains true even as the metro area is celebrating its Year of Bagels. Already, 2023 has seen the opening of Bagel Union in Webster Groves and Lefty’s Bagels in Chesterfield, as well as bagel-featuring Deli Divine in the West End. Just last month, the pop-up vendor Baked & Boiled Bagels opened a brick-and-mortar location in Soulard.

Like many other bagel aficionados, the Herrens saw a “giant void” in St. Louis for properly boiled, then baked bagels. They drew inspiration from New York bagels, of course, though they found inspiration across their travels, and their main influence was a Humbolt County, California, shop called Los Bagels.

By design, C&B is a no-frills experience. Most of the spacious storefront is dedicated to production for retail and wholesale. There is no seating inside. Customers venture no further than the counter where you place your order.

“A bagel bakery needs to be a bagel bakery,” Matt said in my April article about St. Louis’ bagel boom. “It’s not an artisan cafe. It is not an espresso shop. It’s none of that. You’re there to make bagels.”

And the Herrens are making terrific bagels here: glossy and chewy, the flavor popping with the exactly right amount of the signature ingredient or seasoning. Of the many — many — bagels I’ve eaten this year, C&B’s sea-salt bagel is the best savory version, its cranberry-walnut the best sweet. Its selection of cream cheeses ranges from expected (plain, vegetable-herb, the verdant scallion) to cheeky (ranch) to sharp and spicy (those Mama Lil’s Peppers again).

If Wood River is an inconvenient destination for you, I wouldn’t worry. Between C&B’s quality and its wholesale capacity, I suspect these bagels will be coming somewhere near you sooner rather than later.

Where C&B Boiled Bagels, 62 East Ferguson Avenue, Wood River • More info 618-216-2269; cbboiledbagels.com • Menu Bagels by themselves, with cream cheese or as sandwiches • Hours 6 a.m.-1 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 7 a.m.-noon Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)