There is an indisputable charm about this sophisticated pub house. It is primarily a cool place for cocktails—among the best and most creative in a city where there’s no dearth of amazing drinks. It’s named for an elegant old hotel that inhabited a key block of old St. Louis for more than 100 years (4th Street between Chestnut and Pine).
Co-owner Ted Kilgore has some serious mixology chops and was among the first in town to use fresh juices and infusions in craft cocktails. The first floor has a long, dark-wood bar that, given the Lafayette Square building’s vintage, makes you feel like you’re in a saloon. Up a level is the positively posh Bullock Room, named for longtime St. Louis Country Club bartender Tom Bullock, who wrote a cocktail book in 1917.
With such a glowing spirits pedigree, patrons have a right to expect food to match, although the food menu here is fairly limited. It’s recently revamped (as of last fall), thanks to veteran chef Sam Boettler, who helmed the kitchen at The Vine in St. Charles and was a member of the stellar starting team at Element.
The food concept is nibbles and other edibles that work well with craft cocktails. All the food is billed as ‘comfort,’ and the dishes incorporate familiar elements like mac and cheese, burgers, roasted chicken and pork belly, but with atypical touches.
Several small plates ranged from very good to ho-hum. One well-conceived dish was the Ricotta Potato Pancakes ($8), three nice-sized and fluffy disks. Rather than true pancakes, these had soft centers, like mashed potatoes mixed with ricotta, which gave them an intriguing texture. They came with a six-minute egg, nice and oozy, and ‘roasted mushrooms’ (although they tasted more sauteed to me).
The Kale Salad ($7) struck me as an example of trying to throw too many elements into a dish. The chopped kale was tossed with farro, pickled celery root, zucchini bread crumbs, beet chips and butternut squash vinaigrette. There also was some creamy yogurt spread on the platter. It was fine, but many ingredients simply got lost.
Planter’s House Fries ($7) were good, visibly coated with a secret ‘red salt’ that I was told had five ingredients. I know three of them are salt, sugar and some kind of pepper, since they had a pleasant bite. They were tasty and came with a tangy-sweet house ketchup. The Gougères ($10) were very well-conceived as puffy, egg-based popovers filled with arugula, pickled radish, garlic aioli and a slab of pork belly. Hearty and satisfying, the two sandwiches were bold in flavor thanks to the pork’s strong smokiness.
There is only a handful of bigger plates, and we sampled three of them. Roasted Celery Root ($14) was my favorite, with a few large rounds of the roasted root vegetable well-prepared to a dry and starchy texture that yielded a satisfying sense of fullness. These sat on sauteed Swiss chard, roasted beets and beet puree, all of which worked well together.
Another star was the Tagliatelle Pasta ($15), which came with very well-prepared slices of roast chicken, complete with beautifully browned and crisped skin. These topped a platter of flat noodles tossed with arugula salsa verde. The pasta itself didn’t have tons of flavor; the chicken made the dish, which also had touches of cauliflower and radicchio in it.
Excellent on all counts was the Sweet Potato Gooey Butter Cake ($8), beautifully spiced with nutmeg and other cold-weather flavors. It had the texture of dense cheesecake with the thinnest crisp crust on the bottom. It was different, yet familiar, which is perhaps the highest compliment you can pay to ‘creative comfort food.’
amuse bouche
the scene | Elegant and funky drinking establishment
the chef | Sam Boettler
the prices | $7 – $12 small plates, $14 – $17 entrees, $10 – $12 cocktails
the favorites | Roasted Celery Root, Tagliatelle Pasta, Ricotta Potato Pancakes, Sweet Potato Gooey Butter Cake
chef chat » sam boettler
pedigree | Self-taught
favorite ingredient | Pork
favorite restaurant | Guerrilla Street Food
favorite cookbook | The Whole Beast by Fergus Henderson
most memorable dining experience | Tadich Grill in San Francisco
guilty pleasure food | Cheese
1000 mississippi ave. | 314.696.2603
Photos: Bill Barrett
