The Sardella Burger

Ask my brother what my favorite food was as a kid, and he’ll gleefully tell you about my love for bacon cheeseburgers, as if that’s something to be ashamed of—especially when his diet mainly consisted of Toaster Strudels, Oreos, and spaghetti and meatballs.

He wouldn’t be wrong though. I was a chunky burger fiend. Aside from my main career goal of being a pizza delivery driver, becoming the Hamburgler was probably next on the list. My love of burgers has evolved over the years. Now that I’m a wise 32 year old manchild, I’m much more likely to order a plain cheeseburger than some kind of Guy Fieri abomination that explodes out the back and sides when I bite into it. I want a good bun, good meat, and a slice of cheddar or American cheese.

I’ve also spent enough time in the St. Louis food world to know that there are few things St. Louis diners (and chefs) love more than burgers. So I’m going to focus on highlighting some of my favorites—the big dogs, the unknowns, the newcomers, the classics.

One that has been on my mind since the first time I ate it is Sardella’s burger weekend-only brunch burger. They take a 100% chuck patty, sear it off on the flat top, then top it with mushrooms cooked in butter and dashi—basically an umami bomb—before draping it with a slice of nutty fontina cheese. While that gets melted under the broiler, the brioche buns get slathered with a parmesan aioli. Even people who don’t love mushrooms tend to find this thing irresistible.

The finished product is more of an umami burger than the umami burger at Umami Burger. It’s a gourmet, thick patty burger, but it’s not dense, nor is it overly fancy. It’s the kind of burger you’d make at home to show off to your buddies, just much better than what you’re capable of pulling off.

P.S. I already know what you’re thinking: why isn’t this burger served at dinner?! Unfortunately, Sardella’s flattop is too small to handle normal dinner items, like scallops, and the burgers. Maybe one day…

 

Louie

You’re probably here for one of two reasons: you love louie and you want to bask in its glory, or someone told you louie was amazing and you don’t trust them. But you can trust me.

I’ve never believed there’s such a thing as a perfect restaurant, but damn if Louie doesn’t make me wonder if I’m wrong. Matt McGuire, a veteran of the restaurant world, is one of the most well-spoken, intelligent, generous, and focused people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and if you’ve spent any time at all talking to him, I’m sure you agree. (If you haven’t, pop over to the pizza oven & charcuterie station and say hi/bye next time you’re in). The restaurant is a reflection of him—it’s classic and modern, warm and welcoming.

I only have good things to say about Louie. I love it all. I love the staff, I love the cooks, I love the food. It works for a quick bite and a beer as well as it works for a celebratory meal. You can for something light and healthy(ish) or ruin your body with the Roman gnoccho, pastas, enormous pork chop, and cocktails. I prefer the latter.

The menu doesn’t change often, but there are usually a few nightly specials—especially on the pasta front. Matt and his executive chef, Sean Turner, have set the menu up where everything appears to be very simple, but the reality is, few things are. The simplest things are the hardest, after all.

If you stop reading right here, know that you must order the chicken and the ice cream sandwich.

Let’s walk through my favorite items on the menu. Below the write ups, you’ll find photos

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Small plates

The small plates section of the menu is where i spend most of my calories, for reasons that are about to become very obvious.

White bean hummus

mint, hearth bread

Simple—but with the addition of the pop of mint and drizzle of high quality olive oil, perfection.

Charred Eggplant Dip

hearth bread, season vegetables

The perfect blend of charred eggplant and olive oil—it doesn’t taste overly smoky, nor is the eggplant flavor very strong (shout out to the eggplant haters). Don’t think of it as baba ganoush, though—it’s closer to a hummus. Also, anything served with their wood-fired hearth pita bread is going to taste good.

Broccolini

calabrian vinaigrette

Charred broccolini topped with a slightly spicy, kinda funky vinaigrette. This photo is obviously not of the finished product, but I ate it before I could take a shot last time. Whoops.

Cauliflower Fritto

mint aioli

Everyone knows that the best vegetables are fried and dipped in aioli.

Prosciutto di parma

Parmigiano Reggiano DOP Vacche Rosse

There are three things on the plate: prosciutto, cheese, and olive oil. Each is amazing on its own. combined—unbeatable. Especially when eaten on a warm piece of hearth bread. Bury me in this prosciutto.

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entrees

salsiccia pizza

roasted fennel, sausage, hot cherry peppers, mozzarella

Okay, this is not a picture of their salsiccia pizza, but a special they did on their one year anniversary. Louie is really dark at night, and the spicy sausage pizza is really good, and…I just forgot to take pictures of it, repeatedly.

Filled pasta

This version: sweet potato ravioli, brown butter, almond, smoked ricotta

There’s usually at least one filled pasta special. Get it. Whether it’s sweet potato with smoked ricotta salata, summer sweet corn with tomatoes, or prosciutto en brodo, you won’t regret it. Unless you have Celiac disease.

Roman gnocco

pork ragu, bechamel, pecorino

The gnocco isn’t my favorite dish (controversial!), but it seems to be everyone else’s. One friend described it as getting a hug from your grandma. It’s heavy, it’s decadent and you’re going to eat way too much of it.

polenta & Roasted Mushrooms

If I’m going to eat until I hurt myself, I’m going with the polenta and mushrooms over the gnocco (once again, that’s just me). It’s another simple but perfect dish, except if you are lactose intolerant like this guy.

Grilled strip steak

crispy potatoes, salsa verde

It’s just a good steak, man. Those potatoes are crunchy AF.

pork chop

shishitos, chermoula

Some have said this is the best pork chop they’ve ever had, and I can’t really argue with that. Also, it’s huge.

Roast chicken

rapini, chicken jus

I’m dedicating an entire post to this chicken soon. It puts all other chickens to shame. I know chicken sounds boring, but you need to try it.

If you don’t like it, you don’t deserve to be eating here.

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Dessert

ice cream sandwich

Oh, great, not only is Louie’s entire savory menu off the fucking charts, but they’ve also somehow made the greatest ice cream sandwich I’ve ever had. I don’t even take Lactaid when I eat this—it’s worth the discomfort. Frozen chocolate mousse is sandwiched between two cocoa nib macarons, served with Dragees cocoa nibs and a chocolate coulis.

SAVE ROOM FOR THIS.

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.

Menu at Pastaria-Avec Collaboration

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

Date and 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

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.

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.

coxhina Niche Restaurant st.louis

trout beignet Niche Restaurant st.louis

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.

oak tea Niche Restaurant st.louis

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

pickles 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.

The egg at Niche Restaurant

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.

soup bowl Niche Restaurant st.louis

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.

fava beans Niche Restaurant st.louis

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.

carrots Niche Restaurant st.louis

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.

pork shoulder Niche Restaurant st.louis

chicken liver Niche Restaurant st.louis

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.

ribeye Niche Restaurant st.louis

quail Niche Restaurant st.louis

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

rhubarb 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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