Just up the street is Gus', St. Louis legendary pretzel-maker. A few blocks over is one of the most famous haunted restaurants in the country, the Lemp Mansion. And across Interstate 55 is a world-famous brewery.
And at 3345 Lemp Avenue in the Benton Park neighborhood is Miller Ham. They produce about 1,000 hams a week — not a big number in comparison with large commercial producers, but enough to satisfy the demand from a cult following in the St. Louis area.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing," says a sign in the tiny front office. "It wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
If you've never heard of Miller Ham, that means you probably don't know the right people — or you don't shop at independent grocers and butcher shops.
"We're very much a word-of-mouth thing," says Brenda Eckard, one of the family members who run the company. "We sell primarily to smaller local meat markets and grocers."
Miller Ham also packages its products under private label for a few local stores, most notably Straub's, which sells whole, half and quarter Miller hams in Straub's packaging.
The late Warren Miller, whose own father had been a sausage maker in Chicago, started making ham here in 1970 according to the family recipe that's still in use today.
Warren's son Ron Miller and daughters Brenda Eckard and Sherry Noonan now handle the business side of Miller Ham; Sherry's husband, Jim, makes deliveries. The six employees who make the hams are managed by Mark Shinault.
"Our goal has always been simply to produce a great ham," Eckard says. "When Dad retired in 1986, Ron took over the business and decided just to stay with what works."
"We get the fresh pork in and run it through a pumping machine that injects the cure," Shinault says. "Depending on whether it's a bone-in or boneless, we take the bones out. Then it goes into the smokehouse."
One of Miller Ham's products, a "junior handy," combines bone-in and boneless, leaving the bone in around the shank portion but taking it out higher up for easy slicing. The whole process of making a ham, Shinault says, takes about three days.
Miller Ham plans to enter the e-commerce age within the next few months with a website.
"Meanwhile, we've always been happy to sell a ham to anyone who walks through the door," Eckard says. This week — with the increased demand that comes at Easter — Eckard recommends calling ahead at 314-776-0190. "If we don't have enough here, we're always happy to share which stores are carrying our ham right now."
