Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.

Spencer 8/10/16 Spencer 8/10/16

Taste

Hello Wildcats! It's been too long since I've written about Taste, Gerard Craft's CWE bar. A lot has changed since my first post: Matt Daughaday departed to open Reeds American Table, Heather Stone took over as executive chef, and my buddy Russ became the sous chef. What hasn't changed: the food and drinks are still top notch.

We came in on the Monday following one of their Tiki nights—FOMO was in full effect. I was sad I missed all the festive tiki food and drink, but the bartenders wanted to turn that frown upside down. Two tropical(ish) drinks arrived at the table, their names since forgotten [edit: Poison Cup/Lucy in Bolivia], and down the hatch they went. Two thumbs up.

Feeling guilty about not visiting Heather and Russ sooner, I ordered...well, way too much food, but that's pretty much par for the course these days. The fried cheese curds with jalapeno aioli hit the table first and damn, they were good. You might be thinking, "they're just fried cheese curds..." but believe me: I've had some truly heinous curds at restaurants in town lately.

To counteract the fried cheese dipped in mayo, I got the tomatoes and charred corn dish, pretending that I didn't see that it also had pancetta and buttermilk dressing on it. In my head, it was healthy.

I would consider Heather's beet ravioli a new Taste classic. Sliced and blanched beets are filled with an asparagus ricotta, garnished with toasted pistachios, golden beet puree, orange zest, and finished with a white balsamic gastrique. It's beautiful in every way.

Broccoli salad with bacon, roasted grapes, shiitakes, and pine nuts finished up the last of the 'healthy' dishes—vegetables are still healthy, even when they're paired with bacon/buttermilk/ricotta!

The rest of the mains were specials from the tiki night, though I wouldn't be surprised to see them end up on the regular menu. The jerk chicken was as juicy and flavorful as chicken gets, but the almost-Filipino pork belly dish was another standout: ultra tender belly, cantaloupe, and a sweet, funky sauce.

Lamb sweetbreads buffalo-style finished things off, and even being as full as I was, I crushed this dish. If they were on the regular menu, I'd get them every time.

Dessert was the Taste classic: churros with a velvet almond panna cotta. Solid, as expected. The other dessert, a goat cheesecake, was my favorite of the two. The tangy goat cheese paired with the bright lemon zest and sugar-coated blueberries gets two thumbs up from this guy.

I expect great meals from Craft's crew, and it seems like every time they deliver. Taste is just a fantastic restaurant, plain and simple, and I'm glad to see Chef Stone making it her own.

Spencer 12/8/15 Spencer 12/8/15

Niche's 10th Anniversary Dinner

I find myself in Niche’s kitchen, perched between the pastry station and the pass, surrounded by some of St. Louis’ greatest culinary talent. I wasn’t expecting this, mind you, so I’m not dressed for the occasion—I’m wearing a wool sweater in a very hot kitchen. Even as I slowly roast, I can feel the excitement in the air, the electric buzz of old friends getting to work together again, the nervous energy of putting on what will be one of the year’s best dinners. This evening, Niche is celebrating their 10th anniversary.

You can view the photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/spencerp/albums/72157660494148410

The dinner, a small affair attended by a who’s who of St. Louis chefs, bon vivants, and family, is a celebration of Niche, past and present. Ten years ago, a 25-year old Gerard Craft opened Niche in a small Benton Park space (which has since been remodeled and expanded, home to Peacemaker), a restaurant that gave way to some of St. Louis’ best restaurants in Brasserie, Pastaria (now expanding to Nashville), Taste, and Porano Pasta.

The dinner is a mostly hands off affair for Craft himself. After passing on Niche’s executive chef title to Nate Hereford last year, he’s taken on a Yoda-type role somewhere between a life coach and mentor for the chefs.

The always impeccably dressed Chris Kelling, Niche’s general manager, beckons the chefs and servers to the restaurant floor for a pre-service meeting. Each of the Niche Food Group’s executive chefs will be in charge of one course this evening (that’s 7 courses, plus one from Craft himself), and they describe it in great detail for the servers. Questions are asked, notes are taken. Craft steps up and gives a speech, praising the greater Niche family for all their hard work and giving thanks to his childhood nanny, Dia, for helping to inspire his love for food. I too thank Dia, for without her, there'd be no cheese bread.

With diners set to arrive soon, the evening’s starters make their way out front. Cacio e pepe popcorn to one side, an upsized version of the Dia’s Cheese Bread dish—charcuterie, pickled vegetables, and, of course, Dia’s cheese bread—cover the bar. I manage to grab a couple of the cheese bread balls that were leftover. God, it's good.

As the first course begins to go out, I take my seat at the end of the long table, right next to Sarah Osborn’s hilarious parents. The meal kicks off with Craft’s signature dish, The Egg. Like Dia’s cheese bread, I’ll never tire of it. An eggshell, top removed, is placed on a bed of moss and filled with a maple custard, crisp roasted shiitakes, then topped with Missouri trout dashi ‘caviar’.

I return to the kitchen just as Brasserie’s Nick Blue begins plating his course, a roasted winter vegetable salad. I’m surprised that the chef responsible for some of the richest and heaviest food in St. Louis has chosen a salad in lieu of something with bacon and/or cream, but as he plates up the first salad, I see my doubts are unwarranted. It’s a beautiful mix of whipped goat cheese, roasted butternut squash, carrots, and beets, watermelon radish, pickled radish gel, chestnut chips, and a lemon vin.

Pastaria’s Ashley Shelton follows with her cannellini bean and tuscan kale fagottini, a delicately made pasta with a parmesan brodo. The whole kitchen takes turns trying the brodo, everyone oohing and ahhing as they sip, so I join in too. My eyes roll into my head.

Having already tasted the broth, I rush to my seat at the table and let Sarah’s parents know that we’re in for a treat. Our plates arrive sans-brodo, which is then poured in slowly, its smell permeating the air. The dish hammers home the notion that simple food can be absolutely sublime. As I make my way back to the kitchen, I consider asking for a cup of brodo and some more bread. I decide against it—I still have 5 courses to go, after all.

Michael Petres, a chef with pirate tattoos who I may or may not be intimidated by, begins his dish. Every plate is given a swoop of sauce gribiche, which is like a chunkier, more flavorful mayo, and a bit of herbs, fresh radish, and pickled radish. I ask Matt McGuire, director of service, what the main component of the dish is, to which he replies with a grin, “a crispy pig’s head rillette.” I scurry back to my seat and patiently wait.

Things go dark as I cut open the crunchy rillette and get hit with the smell of pork. I devour the dish in seconds and think to myself, this is one of the best things I’ve eaten this year.

Without asking, I can tell Taste’s Heather Stone is up next because Josh Poletti just brought her a mountain of duck kielbasa. The kitchen temperature seems to rise as Stone gets a massive pot of spaetzle going, Poletti sears off kielbasa, and all of us around them are narrowly avoiding streams of duck jus exploding from said sausages. In rapid succession, the kielbasas come off the heat and are sliced, their juices and emmentaler cheese go in with the spaetzle, and plating begins.

This dish is why I love Taste. All the comforts you look for in food—it’s cheesy, smoky, fatty—taken to another level.

Nate Hereford, the man running the show for the evening, pulls his lamb out of the oven and the kitchen fills with the sweet, sweet smell of roasted meat. I’m shocked at the sheer quantity of lamb, but Nate’s clearly going big on this dish. The cooks begin pulling the shoulders and legs apart, then stacking the meat high on serving platters. For the first time in my life, I’ll be eating communal-style at Niche. I’m excited. I’m scared.

The pass is quickly covered in plates. Lamb, sourdough crepes, and little platters with yogurt, herbs, peppers, and hot sauces begin to head to the tables. Build your own epic lamb tacos! I’ve always dreamed of having an all-you-can eat feast at Niche and it’s finally happening. Sarah’s dad tries to keep the lamb from me, but I manage to get my hands on it. It is everything I thought it would be. I tell Nate’s wife that I love her husband.

I disgust myself at the amount of lamb I consume, knowing full well that I still have treats from Anne Croy, Elise Mensing, and Sarah Osborn left. As the meal starts to dwindle down, I go and sit with Mai Lee’s Qui Tran for a few minutes, during which I realize that I’ve missed Anne’s popsicle course! I dart back to the kitchen where she has dozens more, luckily. It tastes exactly like prosecco and pears. I don’t know how Anne extracts flavors so adeptly, but I tip my hat off to her.

As everything’s coming to a close, I get swept up in kitchen conversations, only to realize that Sarah’s caramel lava cake has already been served. Fearful that her dad has eaten my dessert, I quickly head back to the table. I scarf down the wonderful cake, complete with hubbard squash, honey, apples, and buckwheat, only to realize I’ve forgotten to take a picture of the plated dish. I go back to the kitchen to see if there are any extras, but get caught up along the way by everyone wanting pictures of Gerard and the crew.

People start leaving and I notice that Qui’s eating a macaron. During the chef photoshoot, I missed Elise Mensing’s mignardises, but manage to grab some in the kitchen before Poletti eats them all. The cornmeal macaroon with beet and lemon buttercream feels like an ode to summer, the brown butter sage marshmallows with pecan brittle a perfect expression of fall.

When you think of eating a 10 year anniversary dinner at what is arguably St. Louis' best restaurant, it's easy to imagine a group of pretentious chefs serving an even more pretentious group of diners. No truffles were shaved, no foie gras was seared, no foams were foamed. The meal was as much a reflection of Craft as it was an homage to him. Every one of his chefs rose to the occasion, creating Niche-level French brasserie, casual Italian, bar friendly, Modern American dishes, all of which highlighted simple ingredients being made into something special.

Craft would be the first to tell you it wasn't about him, it was about the team, the Niche Food Group family, and he's not bullshitting. I've never met a business owner who so clearly understands that the better the team, the better the organization. Yet, at the same time, it was very much about him. For us diners, the dinner was a way to celebrate not just the restaurant, but the man himself. He was a major catalyst in the St. Louis food scene not just moving forward, but leaping forward. Without him, we wouldn't have Niche, Brasserie, Taste, and Pastaria and all the great chefs that have worked in those kitchens. Without him, all the great experiences we've all had at his restaurants wouldn't have taken place. He's our first James Beard winning chef, and he certainly won't be our last.

Here's to another 10 years of not just Niche the restaurant, but the whole Niche Food Group, setting the bar for what St. Louis restaurants can and should be.

Spencer 4/23/15 Spencer 4/23/15

Avec/Pastaria Collaboration

Pastaria doing a collaboration dinner with chef Perry Hendrix of famed Chicago restaurant Avec was bound to be a success. If you combine two great things, you're bound to create something extraordinary. Everyone knows that so well, in fact, that by 5:15 on a Wednesday, Pastaria already had a 30+ minute wait. I had expected that, so I was there early and ready to eat. I take no risks when it comes to pizza. The avec menu was available in addition to Pastaria's standard menu. I noticed a number of people around me eating only the regular items, which was surprising; you can have that any day! Get the specials!

After I finished yelling at them in my head, I checked out the avec options. The menu was 3 courses for $30, including an appetizer, pizza, and gelato.

The first of our starters was the Charred Sugar Snap Pea Tabbouleh, which was a lot like the grains you make yourself at home, except with flavor. The freekah was cooked perfectly, and the combination of the peas, radishes, olives, and oranges gave it a fresh flavor. I loved the tahini drizzled over it, adding a tang and almost bitter note. I will definitely be copying this in the future.

Farro at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration Dinner

Baked Squid at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration Dinner

This was a wild dish: Wood oven baked squid. I actually thought we were given the wrong dish when it was set down on our table, but what they did is mix thinly sliced pieces of squid and small fideo noodles with a tomato sauce, making it hard to discern noodle from squid. That was topped with aioli and morcilla - blood - sausage and all baked together. The bottom and edges of the pasta and squid mix got nice and crunchy. I'd love it if this showed up on the Pastaria menu from time to time.

Honestly, I just came for the pizzas. If I hadn't been required to do the 3-course ordering, I would have just gotten all three pizzas. The pizza that didn't make the cut was the Deluxe, topped with taleggio cheese (wonderfully stinky), ricotta, truffle, and fresh herbs. Instead, I went for the Salt Cod Brandade pizza. I've seen a lot of unique pizzas around the world, but I have never seen a salt cod pizza.

It was so out there that I knew it was going to be good. God, the flavor of this thing. I don't know exactly what they did, but it seems like they mixed salt cod, roasted garlic, olive oil, and cheese together and spread it onto the dough. After it was baked, artichoke hearts, red onion, and arugula were put on top. This knocked my socks off. The texture of the toppings was perfect - very similar to your standard white pizza - and the flavor was a subtle mix of fish and garlic. It reminded me of something I'd see Anthony Bourdain eating in Spain and enviously lust after.

Brandade Pizza at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration Dinner

Salt Cod Brandade pizza at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration Dinner

As good as the brandade was (and, in case you already forgot, it was really, really good), this Chorizo-stuffed Medjool Date Pizza was better. If this was a full time menu item, I think it might even knock the Salume Beddu Nduja pizza out of the top position. Let's talk about the dates first. You can look at the pictures and see it's really hard to tell where the chorizo ends and the date begins. It's like avec has some been able to grow dates filled with chorizo (Monsanto can probably get that done for us here, Gerard!). When you bit into them, you got the sweetness of the date then the spice of the chorizo all at once. I'd marry that pizza.

If you still don't believe me, you should also know that it had bacon and a sweet & smokey piquillo pepper-tomato sauce. So many amazing layers of flavor.

Date Chorizo Pizza at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration Dinner

The next time you see there's a Pastaria collaboration dinner, you need to be there. I will.

Pastaria

7734 Forsyth Blvd

Clayton, MO 63105

314.862.6603

Spencer 3/18/15 Spencer 3/18/15

Brasserie by Niche

Maybe I'm lying to myself when I say I don't like French food. Every time I eat at Brasserie by Niche, I end up with enough food to choke a horse. As usual, it was packed on the Friday I went.

I was feeling particularly indecisive that night, so rather than make any tough decisions, I just got it all. First up were the classic Burgundy Escargot, swimming in little pools of herbs, garlic, and butter. Thinking with my tongue and not with my brain, I dove straight into these bad boys. There go the taste buds - these things were still hot as hell! Not one to be defeated by stupid little snails, our table still managed to decimate these.

Hidden away to the right are the gougeres, little poofs of cheese bread. I stand by my previous statement that Gerard Craft is the master of cheese breads.

Organ meats - liver in particular - are typically not my favorite due to their minerally flavor. However, if you think wayyyy back to my first Niche post, you'll see that I raved about a play on Peanut Butter & Jelly using chicken terrine. The Brasserie Chicken Liver Terrine is that terrine! I didn't even know! That ramekin left the table clean as a whistle.

Now onto our fourth appetizer (stop judging!), the Steak Tartare. We finished this baby off, too. The meat had a good amount of capers mixed in, giving it a nice salty punch.

Full yet? We weren't. It's entree time!

To share, we got the Moules a la Normande, mussels cooked in a broth with country ham, cider, leeks, garlic, and creme fraiche. I wasn't keen on ordering these (mussels are mussels are mussels, right?), but lo and behold, these are now my favorite mussels in town. They're smokey from the ham and sweet from the cider, giving them a different flavor profile than most places. I drank that broth like it was soup.

My main was...vegetarian? Yep, I went meatless. I picked the MASSIVE Roasted Vegetable Tart. Lentils, cauliflower puree, caramelized onions, and all sorts of other veggies were piled high and cooked spectacularly. This was my dish of the night. The different vegetables and cooking styles gave it all sorts of textures and a deep, complex flavor.

Roasted Vegetable Tart at Brasserie Niche

This is not a great shot, but it's just there to reiterate that Brasserie's roasted chicken is great.

The final entree was the Trout with fingerling potatoes, lemon, brown butter, capers, and parsley. It's a solid, healthy dish.

At this point in the evening, it felt like death was near. Clothing was tighter. Breathing was labored. I was sweating butter. I thought the evening's eating marathon was over, but Brasserie's great manager, Jen, and chef Nick Blue disagreed. Out came a chocolate mousse and the floating island. A few bites in and I passed out on the table.

Another successful meal at Brasserie completed.

Brasserie by Niche

4580 Laclede Avenue

St. Louis, MO 63108

314.454.0600

Spencer 11/18/14 Spencer 11/18/14

Pastaria

I will use any excuse I can think of to get over to Pastaria. Birthday? Check. Promotion at work? Yep. Splurging on a very expensive new camera and wondering if I've made a huge mistake? You bet.

With my new Nikon D750 in hand, I made my way over and hopped up to the pizza bar for dinner. It's like sitting in the front row of a hockey game: all the action is happening just few feet from you. It's brutal sitting up there having pizza after pizza put down in front of you to rest. You know those videos all over Youtube of dogs balancing treats on their noses but not eating them? That was me at the counter.

Our pizza choices for the evening were the fennel salami and the day's special: béchamel, pear, gorgonzola, pancetta cotto, sage. Both were good, but the Nduja is still #1 in my heart and stomach.

Spencer 6/18/14 Spencer 6/18/14

Niche

Update: Niche has closed.

The last time I took my girlfriend out for a celebratory dinner, we went to JAAN in Singapore, which was ranked #22 in Asia at the time. The dishes were complex, creative, delicious and overall mind blowing. How could I top it? For similar haute cuisine, there were two main options in St. Louis: Sidney Street Cafe or Niche. I opted for Niche with its constantly changing and oft praised menu. If you follow my reviews, you know I am obsessed with Chef Gerard Craft's Pastaria and very much enjoyed Brasserie, so my hopes for Niche were sky high.

Niche's menu is set up in a manner that allows you to pick a la carte, a four-course meal ($65) or the chef's tasting menu ($95). Our waitress, Laura, guided us through the menu like a Sherpa and patiently explained each dish to us. She was great.

The Coxhina kicked off the meal with a bang. The coxhina I've had in the past were almost like samosas, but these were bite-sized balls of hot and gooey Brazilian cream cheese and chicken skin on top of a tangy bed of sorrel aioli. If there were such a thing as mozzarella cheese sticks for adults, these would be them. If they served these at Pastaria (which is connected to Niche), I would get them every. single. time.

Following on the theme of tiny fried balls of deliciousness came the Smoked Trout Beignets. While each beignet was tres petite, they packed in a huge amount of flavor. It was almost like the essence of perfectly smoked trout inside, served with a sweet sorghum butter and chives. Cafe du Monde beignets got nothin' on these.

Perhaps the most unusual course of the whole evening was the Tea. Toasted oak tea was poured over a paper thin slice of lemon and a nearly invisible sheet of smoked and rendered pork fat. I have never had anything like this before. If you've ever used a BBQ smoker, then you know that you have to put a water shelf inside to help regulate temperature and to collect some of the drippings. This tea tastes like you imagine that smoker water would taste (if it tasted good). Sort of like drinking a whole wood fired BBQ.

Dia's Cheese Bread & Chartcuterie platter graced our table next. Prosciutto on one side, pickled vegetables on the other. Licorice pickled white asparagus, dill pickled green tomatoes and strawberry pickled fennel: all good, all things I'd never had before. It's funny how each course, no matter how big or small, swayed our conversation. By this point we were making plans to go home and pickle anything we could find. Chocolate milk pickled daikon maybe?! It was like a sketch out of Portlandia.

dias cheese bread Niche Restaurant st.louis

The prosciutto was good, but the dish's namesake was the star. Dia's Cheese Bread was holy shit amazing. I've eaten a lot of cheesy breads in my life, but none have even gotten close to this. It came out warm with crispy bits of cheese on the outside and an interior so gooey, so cheesy, so incredible that I reached nirvana. I don't care if you don't like charcuterie or pickles. Get this dish just for the bread. Give your table neighbors the other stuff. I would be morbidly obese if I worked at Niche, since I would asked be paid in cheese bread. I wish I had taken a picture of the gooeyness, but I was too busy shoving food in my face to take any. Sorry.

Another memorable dish is a Niche standard: the Egg. Oddly enough, JAAN also had an egg as their signature dish. Niche's egg was filled with a lemon maple custard at the bottom, then a layer of sauteed mushrooms, and finally topped by dashi "caviar". It was like a really good version of a Japanese chawanmushi.

My next course was the Asparagus Soup. A bowl was brought to the table with chive blossoms, buckwheat, garlic whipped cream and some sort of sweet jelly, then the soup was poured in on top. Like most of the main dishes, it just made me think of springtime. The soup itself was rich and undoubtedly asparagus, but the random spoonfuls with the crunchy buckwheat or the sweet jelly made it something special.

asparagus soup Niche Restaurant st.louis

My girlfriend went with the Fava Beans. It was the smaller of the two dishes, so I was a gentleman and only tried a small bite of it. The pretty little dish was comprised of fava beans, new potatoes, chives, ricotta creme fraiche, dehydrated potato skins and candied lemons.

Berger Bluff Carrots with quinoa, buttermilk, herbs and carrot-bushi shavings were out next. The carrot-bushi is a take on a Japanese technique. It was smoked and dried, resulting in a little intense stick of carrot goodness. Genius.

By this point we were getting pretty full, but we still had a ways to go...

I got the Chicken Liver layered between thin slices of brioche with crunchy peanuts and strawberry preserves and topped with celery leaves. Undoubtedly the best chicken liver dish I've ever had. This was a childhood favorite revamped for classy adults. My girlfriend went with the Smoked Pork Shoulder. Once again, I only took a small bite of her dish, but it had tender, smokey pork shoulder, brussel sprout leaves, hickory ice cream, popcorn and pecans. She devoured it, so I guess it was pretty good.

Before our final non-dessert dishes came out, we were given another childhood flashback: ice pops. Granted, these were filled with kombucha and 4 Roses Bourbon, so the flavors were a bit more adult than your normal ice pop. Great presentation.

bourbon popsicle Niche Restaurant st.louis

We finished the meal with the Akaushi Ribeye and the Quail. The ribeye came with a ramp puree, fingerling potatoes, onion, chicharrons, and honey. The quail was accompanied by turnips, orange, tarragon yogurt and sourdough. While the ribeye was very good, I would easily pick the quail over it.

Somewhere around this time, I began wishing I had worn sweatpants to dinner. I wasn't sure I could even feel my legs anymore. Still, I wanted more cheese bread.

Our dessert duo were the Green Strawberry and the Rhubarb. The Green Strawberry was our favorite of the two, mostly because it seemed lighter and we had just eaten like 30 other courses. Green strawberry sorbet rested on a light olive oil cake and goat cheese panna cotta, topped with almonds and fresh strawberries. The rhubarb was a normandy tart, stewed rhubarb, Angelica cream, pistachio meringue and pistachio ice cream.

green strawberry Niche Restaurant st.louis

The meal was as memorable as any I've had. The food was impeccable and the service was outstanding. Nothing impresses me more than when a kitchen creates unique and flavorful dishes out of the simplest ingredients, and that's where Niche shines the most. My girlfriend and I also loved that while Niche is certainly a very nice, the feeling inside the restaurant was relaxed and lively. It wasn't nearly silent (like JAAN) and the staff don't talk to you like they're Bruce Wayne's butler.

Niche easily joins Sidney Street Cafe and The Libertine as my St. Louis trifecta of fine food. It's perfect for a romantic evening or a small group dinner. The menu changes almost daily, but the cheese bread is always on there. You must get it.

Niche

7734 Forsyth Blvd

Clayton, MO 63105

314.773.7755

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