Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.

Spencer 7/15/16 Spencer 7/15/16

Scenes from Sidney Street Cafe

Behind the Scenes Sidney Street Cafe

St. Louis, Missouri June 2016

Spencer 12/2/15 Spencer 12/2/15

Sidney Street Cafe

Eating like a boss runs in the family—I got it from my daddy. For my dad's birthday, he decided he wanted not one, but two birthday dinners. The first at Sidney Street Cafe (SSC), the second at Niche. Not in the same night, mind you, but just a mere 2 days apart. I had seen SSC's chef de cuisine Justin McMillen just a few weeks before our dinner, when he was cooking at the Bolyard's Burger Battle. He kept talking about all these new dishes and they just sounded so good that I used my powers of persuasion to convince my dad that is where he wanted to eat.

Then again, it's not too hard to sell a hot dog gnocchi dish to a man who loves meat. Yes, that's correct: SSC has a hot dog and pretzel gnocchi dish. It's the second time this year I've had a hot dog inspired dish at a fine dining establishment and that is totally cool with me. This version was made up of a sliced house-made hot dog, spicy ketchup, pretzel gnocchi, pickled mustard seed, pickle-tomato relish, and a beer mustard veloute. If someone has had a finer hot dog dish than this, bring it forward! I'm doubtful one exists.

In need of a meatless option for the ladies, we went with the octopus confit—a thick tendril of tender octopus over salsa verde and pozole, Eiffel Towered by Swiss chard chips. I didn't get much of the octopus itself, but I ate most of the pozole. I love the puffed up, juicy bites of hominy.

Our last meal at SSC was in late summer, just after the Spatchcock Quail was added. It's about to leave the menu to make room for another fowl dish, but my thoughts remain the same: the tiny, adorable bird is grilled and served over harissa tossed papas bravas (fried potatoes), charred carrots, and chimichurri. It’s a perfect dish for summer with its smoke and char flavors.

The two newer dishes we got were even better. Even more outstanding.

First, we have the wood grilled snapper—a dish that looks pretty simple, but it's anything but that. The fish was perfectly cooked, the flesh white and tender with hints of smoke and a nutty sweetness some a brown butter vinaigrette. To enhance the smoke, the fish rested over a house made nduja puree, a spicy, smoky spreadable sausage.

The accompaniments were just as bold and delicious: squid ink gnocchi, bok choi, finger limes, and manila clams. Justin told me to get the pork belly special, so that's what I did...even though I'm not a huge fan of pork belly. However, he's bigger than me, so I relented. And boy, I'm glad that I did.

The pork belly was the crispiest I've ever had. Anywhere. I had a video on my phone of me tapping on it so I could send it to friends and family to make them jealous. The slightly blurry picture below does a decent job showing that top layer, I think. Eating a chunk of the pork belly, simultaneously as crispy as can be and as tender as meat gets, with the pickled pepper salad, chicharrones, smoked pig heart, and Cajun grillade sauce, was one of those moments where the world goes dark around you and you just think about how good what you're eating is. As usual, the Bob "The Zuggernaut" Zugmaier's desserts matched the entrees in both looks and flavor. His take on sweet potato pie ('tis the season, after all), a collaboration with his pastry assistant, Kelsey, was composed of: candied yam puree, sweet potato pastry cream, orange cardamom semi freddo, spiced pecans, and a winter spice tuile. Just like the sweet potato pie you make at home.

The apple dish was the family's favorite, though. The combination of caramel glazed Granny Smith apples, cinnamon coffee cafe, a caramel apple puree, creme fraiche ice cream, and the espresso gelee is a tough one to top. I would have gladly just had the coffee cake and gelee, though. They were so good.

And so ends another successful trip to Sidney Street.

Sidney Street Cafe

2000 Sidney St

St. Louis, MO 63104

314.771.5777

Spencer 6/18/15 Spencer 6/18/15

Sidney Street Cafe

Let's be real: there are heaps of good-to-great restaurants in St. Louis, but two stand at the top - Gerard Craft's Niche and Kevin Nashan's Sidney Street Cafe. You can argue, but you'd be wrong. If you're looking to impress, seduce, congratulate, or wallow in self pity, these are the places to do it. The dinner you see below was of the congratulatory kind - a dinner to celebrate me! I decided to leave the corporate world and make Whiskey and Soba my full-time job. I have total faith in both Nashan (and Craft), so I'm willing to be more experimental in my ordering at their restaurants. I typically avoid sweetbreads (thymus gland), but Sidney Street found one of my weaknesses: the Vietnamese bahn mi sandwich.

Sidney Street's version put smoked then fried sweetbreads over a sourdough griddle cake, then thinly sliced jalapeños, radishes, cucumber, fermented daikon, and a dill aioli on top. A few springs of cilantro - a bahn mi necessity - made their way on at the end. The sweetbreads were crunchy and delicate, a surprisingly fitting substitution for the typical sliced pork and pork pate. The crunch and smoke gave a meaty element, while the texture inside had that pate-like softness.

The veal dumplings are a menu staple, one that I thought I remembered eating long ago and not caring for. Wrong. These little dumplings pack a punch of flavor mostly thanks to their teriyaki and honey glaze, but the cilantro salsa on top gives it a bright freshness that makes it pop. With each entree comes a soup or salad, and each evening there's a special salad option. My dad opted for the special, which had pickled rhubarb and a chimichurri dressing. I only got a small bite, but the dressing was the herbaceous explosion one would expect from a chimichurri.

How the hell is a chilled pea and mint soup so good? Someone tell me? I feel like people are going to think I'm lying when I say this soup was flat out amazing (or they'll accuse me of secretly working for Nashan, as someone did previously), but I promise you I'm not.

My dad went the healthy route for his entree, ordering steamed halibut over asparagus and a lemon nage, topped with a halibut chicharron salad. Five balls of dirty farro with crawfish lined the plate. The way he hesitantly gave me only a tiny bite of just fish - no asparagus, no farro, no chicarrons - made me think he enjoyed his meal.

I was fortunate enough to get their lamb Wellington, just days before it was removed from the menu. It's a perfect example of Sidney Street taking a classic dish - Beef Wellington - and playfully spinning it into something beautiful and different.

Lamb loin topped with herbs and wrapped in puff pastry is the dish's focal point, flanked by crispy lamb sweetbreads, creamed nettles, and a few drops of some kind of intense lemon puree. The little cauldron on the right side of the dish is a Merguez meatball ragout, a dish so good that I'm salivating just thinking about it again. It's cheesy, it's meaty, it's spicy; it should be an appetizer of its own.

If I went back again tonight, I'd get the grilled quail. The tiny, adorable bird is grilled and served over harissa tossed papas bravas (fried potatoes), charred carrots, and chimichurri. It's a perfect dish for summer with its smoke and char flavors. Oh, vanilla ice cream and a chocolate chip cookie! Wrong. That ice cream is popcorn flavored, and unlike most popcorn ice creams I've had, it doesn't taste like movie theater butter/a popcorn Jelly Belly. It tastes like creamy, delicious popcorn. Get it.Dessert of the year so far for me right here, folks. I typically detest deconstructed dishes. I don't want to order tiramisu only to receive a plate of Dippin' Dots. But this...this was something special. A crumbled piece of moist, wonderful carrot cake is served with shards of crispy ginger meringue, dabs of passion fruit gel, black currants, cheesecake puree (a "holy shit" delicious ingredient), and a carrot-passion fruit sorbet.

Pastry chef Bob Zugmaier and his crew looked at what the rest of the kitchen was doing with entrees and apps, said "let's show them what we can", then dropped the mic with this.

Sidney Street Cafe

2000 Sidney St

St. Louis, MO 63104

314.771.5777

Spencer 2/16/15 Spencer 2/16/15

Sidney Street Cafe

Kevin Nashan and his team are killing it right now. Peacemaker is the hottest new restaurant in town (for good reason) and this past trip over to Sidney Street Cafe was a standout. I've written about meals there previously, but this one takes the cake for best overall, I think.

Our visit to Sidney Street came during a particularly heavy eating streak, so we went sans appetizers for the evening.

Those at the table who opted for a salad instead of the evening's soup special suffered from a severe case of order envy. While it may look like your run of the mill butternut squash soup, it certainly was not. It had been Nashanized, its flavors so intense and rich I nearly picked it up and gulped it straight out of the bowl like a ruffian. A few crunchy pepitas countered the creaminess, and an intense, slow burning spice gave it a delightful aftertaste. Almost every bowl was left bone dry.

This thing of beauty you see below is the lamb wellington, a beautiful take on what most American's think of as "that dish Gordon Ramsay makes". Lamb loin is topped with herbs before being wrapped with puff pastry and baked. The result is perfectly cooked lamb swaddled in a flaky dough, each slice resting on creamed kale and crispy lamb sweetbreads.

The dish is really more of a duo of lamb than just a wellington. The merguez meatball ragout behind was absurdly good - like I have been thinking about it for weeks good. There's something about North African spices make the lamb flavor pop. If those meatballs showed up as a Peacemaker poorboy special, I would not be disappointed. Fingers crossed.

Before I talk about this dish, I have to say that I love Sidney Street's plating. I'm not sure anyone in St. Louis is putting out prettier plates of food right now - follow them on Instagram for sneak peeks at upcoming dishes. This is the first time I can remember having a pheasant entree, but it will not be the last. Juniper cured pheasant breast can be seen on the far ends, along with braised Belgian endives, thin slices of citrus and quince celery. The stand out was easily that thing that looks like a prop from a Tim Burton movie with a bone sticking out: the crispy ballotine made of pheasant leg confit, pheasant tenderloin, citrus, and herbs.

This is the best gourmet smoked brisket in town. I wrote about it in great detail already here. Must read, must eat.

We felt too guilty and fat to get appetizers, but apparently not too guilty to go for dessert.

Our first choice was a classic: the [symple_highlight color="blue"]dark chocolate turtle brownie[/symple_highlight] served with pecan brittle, vanilla ice cream and, by special request, some chocolate sauce. Intensely chocolatey in the best way.

I pushed for the seasonal [symple_highlight color="blue"]Blood Orange[/symple_highlight] dessert and won, of course. Like a blood orange, the dish hovered between sweet and tart. Down the center of the plate you can see a twisting block of very sweet white chocolate ganache, flanked by pistachio crumble, cranberry sorbet, and all things citrus. It came with a Gran Marnier creme brûlée, served separately, which happened to be my favorite component of the dessert. A normal creme brûlée does nothing for me, but add a flavored liquor and I'm all in.

As I said at the start, this was a memorable meal at Sidney Street from a taste perspective - everything was delicious. The kitchen was firing on all cylinders. I got the brisket myself, but I would have been happy getting any of the other entrees we ordered. I tend to go through obsessive phases with my eating; for weeks at a time I'll go to the same place over and over until I'm ready to move on. Earlier this year, that place was Niche. After this meal? It's Sidney Street. I'm watching the menu like a hawk, just waiting to see something so tantalizing I can no longer resist the temptation.

My return is imminent.

Sidney Street Cafe

2000 Sidney St

St. Louis, MO 63104

314.771.5777

Spencer 2/9/15 Spencer 2/9/15

The Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co

You would think that Kevin Nashan was giving away lobsters for free at The Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co. judging by the amount of people waiting. Even the NoWait app seems to be perpetually stuck at 60+ minutes.

Nashan's flagship restaurant, Sidney Street Cafe, has long been one of St. Louis' culinary jewels. It, along with Gerard Craft's Niche, is probably St. Louis' best shot at a coveted James Beard Award. When it was announced that he was opening a casual eatery specializing in coastal - both Gulf and East - cuisine, the hype train shot off at full speed. I ate there one of the first nights it was open and while I put up a post on it, I didn't write much. Like any new restaurant, kinks were still being worked out, so I vowed to come back some months later and do a proper write up.

I didn't take many interior shots this time, so I recommend you check out the previous post if you're interested. Peacemaker's interior is maybe my favorite in town. It's bright and beachy with pops of color, my favorite of which come from the photographs of the fisherman.

The menu and utensils come in a bucket; drinks come in colorful mason jars. The whole restaurant has a playful vibe.

I tried their namesake cocktail, which was basically a margarita with beer in it too. Nothin' wrong with that.

I'd heard repeatedly that their nightly crudo specials were worth ordering, and after having a pretty stunning fluke crudo at Sidney Street a few weeks before, I didn't doubt that. The evening's special was an albacore tuna with jalapeños and a sauce that I've since forgotten. It was very good. Top notch fish with a little heat always works for me.

I'm still recovering mentally from an oyster-related food poisoning in 2011. I've had them a couple times since, but I always get Larry David neurotic when I eat them, just sitting up in bed...waiting. My unwavering trust in Nashan for all things food pushed me to give their oysters a go. The waitress recommended their Freeland Creek oysters and, after tossing it back, knew she was so right. The oysters were the best I've had since that fateful 2011 day. Bright and briny. Game on, oysters. I'm back.

I had steamers on my first trip ever to Boston and have been obsessed since. They're simply steamed littleneck clams served in broth with some bread. They've been quickly consumed during both Peacemaker trips.

The other plate you'll see below are the fried green tomatoes, crunchy and deliciously tart. Dipped into the tangy remoulade, they can compete with any french fry or chip. It was one of those dishes that is good enough that I contemplated shoving all three into my mouth at once to avoid having to share.

Fried Green Tomatoes at Peacemaker Lobster and Crab

We didn't get the lobster roll this trip, but I can assure you it is the buttery sandwich you desire. Instead, we opted for the Lobster Frito Pie, which sounds like a high-dea (as in an idea you get when you're high). You may be surprised to learn there are no Fritos in here; no, my friend, it's much better than that. They take the Fritos, smash them to bits, then roll crispy chicharrones in the Frito powder. Those Frito-chicharrones are then topped with a tomato-based bean chili filled with big hunks of lobster, then smashed back into the empty Frito bag. The chili itself was more tomatoey than I normally go for, but it's a really fun dish.

If you happen to be a corndog aficionado, you'll surely want a taste of this housemade beef & pork dog dipped in a fluffy corndog batter.

So far, this is my favorite item at Peacemaker: the [symple_highlight color="blue"]smoked brisket poorboy[/symple_highlight]. It's really similar to the smoked brisket entree they have a Sidney Street right now, but the meat's rub is different. It doesn't seem to have that same level of seasoning as Sidney Street's, but since it's in a sandwich rather than standing alone, it makes sense. You get a peppery taste from the meat combined with this fantastic horseradish aioli on it - my god, I'm getting so hungry right now. You have to get this next time you're there if you're a meat eater.

I think it's safe to say that Nashan has created another Benton Park staple with The Peacemaker. Top notch food, attentive service, and a fun atmosphere. I can't wait to get back over.

The Peacemaker Lobster and Crab Co.

1831 Sidney Street

St. Louis, MO

314.772.8858