The latest chapter in the Sunday Best saga has been written, and the ending will be a disappointment for St. Louis fried chicken lovers, as owner John Perkins announced today that the brand will cease operations as a ghost kitchen within The Hill Food Company, effective immediately.
In an email announcing the closure, Perkins did not go into detail about the reasons for the closure. “Today is the last day of business for The Hill Food Company,” Perkins said in an email. “We have worked hard and this is not for us. We thank everyone who has supported us during this transition.”
Perkins opened Sunday Best as a ghost kitchen inside The Hill Food Co. in April. The brand offered shortened versions of the fried chicken, sides, salads and sandwiches from a brick-and-mortar restaurant of the same name that closed in the Central West End in February. At the time the ghost kitchen opened, Perkins said: Slam The arrangement made sense to Perkins: He had a contract with The Hill Foods for concession space to prepare food for Sunday Best's City Park location, so adding this element would add very little extra expense. “It's as simple and bare-bones as possible, with just a couple of employees,” Perkins said at the time.
Perkins hoped the arrangement, and the stand in City Park, would keep the Sunday Best brand in customers' minds until he could decide on his next step. He knew a large, formal restaurant space wasn't the answer. That was clear from the moment the brand launched in July 2023 in a large Central West End space formerly home to acclaimed Southern cuisine restaurant Juniper. Initially, he envisioned Sunday Best as a casual joint not much different from a fast-food restaurant. But with the space and the lease available, he decided to give it a try.
Though it was well-received and critically acclaimed, a casual, mid-priced restaurant couldn't escape the significant expenses that come with such a large, prime piece of real estate. Six months later, he decided to go a different direction, and Hill Food Co. was the logical choice in many ways. Now Perkins once again finds himself at a crossroads with a concept that showed great potential.
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Perkins has been a fixture on the St. Louis restaurant scene since opening a series of pop-ups and underground dinners more than a decade ago, which gave way to Juniper, an upscale Southern restaurant that garnered acclaim for tasty dishes like shrimp and grits, country ribs and catfish, as well as some of the best bread service the city has ever seen.
As much as those dishes were praised, it was Perkins' fried chicken that became the star of the show, something he initially rebelled against but has come to embrace over the years. Eater Perkins called Juniper one of the best fried chicken restaurants in the country. The dish accounted for about 80% of Juniper's sales. After some time and some serious soul-searching, weathering the pandemic and a personal health crisis, Perkins realized he needed to embrace what was in front of him and give people what they wanted. He closed Juniper in July 2023 and reopened it a month later as Sunday's Best. Slam It was scary, but he had to accept it. “I have no idea if this is going to work,” Perkins said. “But I think there's a real chance to build something here.”
Perkins declined to comment on the recent news, but said Sunday Best will remain open within City Park.
