Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.
Urban Chestnut Brewery & Bierhall
I think my feelings about The Grove are best expressed through the photo below—current me versus what I would look like if The Grove was never revitalized.
As the number of places to eat, drink, and drunkenly eat keep growing, so does the weight of the average St. Louisan. There are plenty of places to talk about, but the one I want to talk about right now is Urban Chestnut’s Grove Brewery & Bierhall. I’m admittedly not much of a beer guy, so if you’re looking for insight into UCBC’s beers, leave now. I just care about eating.
A couple months back, the two masterminds behind UCBC’s food program, Andrew Fair and Jon Huntley, did a full revamp of the bierhall’s food menu. I had never eaten there before the update, mind you, so I really don’t know much about what it used to be—more German-inspired fare, it seems. It wasn’t until I started seeing friends posting and raving about their smash burger, pommes frites (french fries, idiot), and liege waffles that I smartened up and made my way in.
For those who haven’t been (and those who were too drunk to remember), the bierhall is an enormous space that feels a bit like the Winterfell’s Great Hall if it was placed in an old paper factory. With ample seating, a big patio, and somewhere between 25-30 beers on tap at any given time, it’s a great place to spend an entire day. Which is basically what I did with my girlfriend.
I think the dining game plan is pretty simple: you’re definitely going to want to get one of twice-fried pommes frites and either the smash burger or one of their sausages. You can go simple and classic with the fries—plain with dipping sauces—but why wouldn’t you splurge on poutine or the loaded fries with bacon, sour cream, haus whiz, and green onions?
As far as sausages go, I went with the bacon and beet on this particularly occasion, but the classic Zwickel brat made at G&W is, uh, a classic. The burger is styled after your standard diner-style smash burger: two patties, American cheese, pickles, special sauce, onion, lettuce, and a soft bun.
If you’re with a group or you’re just prolific eaters, I whole heartedly recommend starting with their warm pretzels and ending with a liege waffle. Speaking of liege waffles: why doesn’t St. Louis have more options for these? They’re amazing, though I haven’t met one that was better than Blue Bottle Coffee’s.
There are healthier options, like salads and grain bowls, but frankly, I’d just rather eat a bowl of french fries covered in cheese and loose a few weeks off my life. Living to 100 is overrated.
Warm Pretzels
whipped salted butter, obatzda (German cheese dip), Bavarian mustard, radish
Smash burger
two patties, American cheese, special sauce, onion, lettuce, soft bun
Loaded Fries
Nueske’s bacon, sour cream, haus whiz, green onion
Beet & Bacon Sausage
Duroc pork shoulder, Nueske’s bacon, beet puree
Seasonal Grain Bowl
Liege Waffles
yeast waffles, sugar shell, dipping chocolate
brassWELL
What’s not to like about brassWELL? Gerard Craft took Brasserie’s Cinq à Sept happy hour menu and chef Joe Landis, put them in a light blue shipping container, and dropped them off at Rockwell Beer.
Now, Wednesday through Sunday, you can go to one of St. Louis’ newest breweries and drink freshly brewed beer while eating burgers, fries, and soft serve. What a life. It does get crazy crowded on the weekends, so keep that in mind—especially if you have kids in tow. Things should get a little less hectic once their huge patio is useable, but it’s winter and it’s gross out, so you’re stuck in the dining room.
The menu has its staples—beef burger, fries, chicken sandwich, veggie burger, beer brat—but you can expect specials and variations weekly, depending on what Joe is feeling. Scroll down for a menu breakdown.
Joe Landis
burger lover, chef
Double Brasswell burger
onions, American cheese, pickles, dijonnaise
This is why you’re here. Brasserie’s famous burger, offered as a single, double, or bigger, if you’re an animal. It’s the perfect diner burger, and I love it.
The fries are the same ones you know and love from Brasserie and Taste, and they have a pump filled with aioli.
Fried chicken sandwich
arugula, Crystal aioli
Veggie burger
arugula, Crystal aioli
Beer brat
sauerkraut, whole grain mustard
corndog
corn, dog
This is on the kids menu, but I refused to be shamed for eating it. It gives Peacemaker a run for its corndog money.
soft serve
Flavors change weekly, but I’ve never met a soft serve I didn’t like.
Beignets
Brasserie’s brunch beignets made their way to Brasswell, too. They’re served with whatever dipping sauce Joe feels like making—this lemon curd will be hard to top, though.
Schlafly Farmers Market
Too lazy to wake up in time to get to the Tower Grove Farmers Market before everything's been bought? Me too. Lucky for us, there's another option: Schlafly Bottleworks' Wednesday afternoon Farmers Market. With upwards of 40 vendors (some of my favorites include Baetje Farms, Ozark Forest Mushrooms, and Biver Farms), it's a large affair, full of all sorts of goodies. The Schlafly team arranged a special media day visit plus dinner a few weeks back, which also happened to be a day where it was hot as Hades outside. Smart thinking: dehydrate us to make the beer even more delicious.
We all wandered around, taking in the options—fruit (including white raspberries, which I didn't know existed), cheese, beautiful veggies, more cheese—then stopped by The Tamale Man's tent for a glass of Agua Fresca. If you haven't had Tamale Man's tamales or ice cold agua fresca, make sure you remedy that.
Nothing gets the appetite going like shopping. The Tower Grove market has Kitchen Kulture's confusingly amazing egg sandwich, but Schlafly has a whole restaurant. Who doesn't love shopping local then eating and drinking local?
Before heading inside, we took a walk through their enormous garden, helping to supplement the restaurant's local-focus. If you recall my interview with KT Ayers from earlier this year, you'll catch more insight into that.
schlafly farmers market restaurant garden
Another reason to stick around for dinner is Ayers' new Farmers Menu, a set of specials where all ingredients come from a 100-mile radius of the restaurant. On our visit, we got a big ol' tomato caprese plate, lamb kebabs, a veggie sauté, and, my personal favorite, the burger. Any burger topped with local goat cheese and crispy bacon will get a thumbs up from me. The dessert, a goats cheese cheesecake, was a great way to finish out the meal—and that's coming from someone who thinks most cheesecakes are gross.
The most important part of our dinner wasn't the food or farmers though. No, it was the St. Louis-exclusive Expo IPA. Eight hop varieties, three continents. I'm admittedly not a big hop-head, but what brewers have created is well balanced enough that I was able to enjoy a bottle or six. You can get it on draught or in six packs at either of Schlafly's locations.
Summary: you should spend your next free Wednesday afternoon shopping local at the Schlafly Farmers Market, then go inside and fill yourself with their farmers menu (or regular) dishes and beer.
Schlafly Stout & Oyster Fest 2016
I remember thinking that frat parties in college would be epic, just like I saw in the movies. Huge, sprawling houses would be full of cold beer, vast quantities of food, and the coolest people. As we all know, that was never the case. I never got to live that dream. Then I went to my first Schlafly Stout & Oyster fest, a wonderland of food and drink! I felt like Harry Potter when he first arrived at Hogwarts, eyes wide and full of amazement at the wonderland before him. I saw men shucking oysters at lightspeed in the outdoor "Shuckerdome"; I saw beer flowing out of a truck; I saw fried oysters being lowered from the 2nd floor by a winch and raw oysters send upstairs via pulley. I was overwhelmed.
A gameplan was formed. I would start in the Shuckerdome, then make my way through the rest of the madness.
I enter the Shuckerdome, a new addition to this orgy of excess, and make my way over to the bar. I order a Grapefruit IPA because it is unseasonably warm, and a Milk Chocolate Stout because this is Stout & Oyster fest. Two beers should last me a while, I think to myself, but then I taste the Milk Chocolate. This tastes just like real milk chocolate! By the time I have walked the 15 feet it is to the oyster line, half my beer is gone. Scrumptious.
Picking which oysters to get is too difficult, so I just decide to get a dozen and take 2 from each place. The East Coast options are Blue Point, Beaver Tail, Chesapeake Wild, and the West Coast options are Penn Cove Select, Sunset Beach, and Dabob Bay. The shuckers, I would come to find out, are some of the most hilarious people I've ever met, and they love nothing more than shucking oysters, eating oysters, and drinking beer. These guys are celebrities—20 of them were flown in just for this event and shucked for 12 straight hours Saturday. I would hate to be their forearms come Sunday.
I find a barrel to eat on and go to town on these oysters. No horseradish, no sauces. Just me, some lemon, a whole mess of oysters, and two beers. The East Coast remain my favorites, with their smaller size and briny flavor. I am saving this Dabob Bay monster for last. I don't know how to handle it—it seems like too much to go in my mouth at once time (that's what she said). It ends up being a two-biter. Like someone else said to me, some of those Dabob monsters looked like a chicken breasts in a military helmet.
Oysters eaten, beer nearly gone, I head into the courtyard of the Tap Room. Here, people are in line to get absolutely huge grilled oysters and mouthwateringly delicious fried oysters. I keep hoping someone will just give me one of their fried ones, but no one offers.
On the opposite side, they're selling souvenir samplers for about an hour before they run out of most beers and switch a commemorative glass of Oyster Stout. I have my doubts about Oyster Stout (made with real oysters), so I do what must be done and drink it. It is surprisingly tasty. To me, it tastes like a normal stout with a salty, briny aftertaste. I approve.
From there, I make my way inside. I stop by the restaurant—it's packed. I peek into the bar—it's packed. So I head upstairs, where a whole mob of people are eating or waiting to eat oysters. The shuckers up here are even funnier than the ones in the Thunderdome Shuckerdome, some with accents so thick I can't understand them. I just nod and smile. They smile and get back to work, ignoring the idiot with a camera.
I ask them how they're getting the oysters upstairs, so they show me: they have a guy out on the fire escape who calls down to another Schlafly employee, who then hooks the requested oysters onto a pulley.
I head back downstairs, ready to leave, when I pass Schlafly celebrity Stephen Hale carrying Imo's boxes for the shuckers. Lucky guys. I try to get Stephen to give me a slice, but he smartly distracts me with more beer. The Double Bean Blonde that he had told me about a few months back is on tap!
I don't know if this or the Milk Chocolate stout was my favorite, but I would happily drink either any day. The Double Bean, made with Ghanian cocoa nibs and Kaldi's roasted coffee beans, smells and tastes like coffee and chocolate, but without the heaviness of a stout. Magic.
I have to applaud the whole Schlafly team and the shuckers for their hard work. From what I saw, the event went off without a hitch, which is tough when you've got a Walking Dead sized horde of drunk, shellfish eating people wandering around. In the end, over 55,000 oysters were sold, the equivalent of 1,050 cases of beer was consumed, and it was the highest attended festival in Schlafly history.
It sounds like next year will be even more epic. Make sure you're there.
I was paid by Schlafly to photograph the event, but not to write this blog post. All opinions are my own.