We are excited to report on the arrival of a new star—or perhaps it’s the re-appearance of an old one.
Or both.
Eau, which started out with such a culinary bang in the reborn Chase Park Plaza some years ago and then went adrift, is back. At the helm, as the chef de cuisine, is Marie-Anne Perez whose credentials cut a wide swath. This woman, praise Julia and James, is not afraid of seasoning. No bland hotel food for her.
The wonderful old dining room reminds us of something from an ocean liner in its large and elegant proportions. It’s as easy to sweep into this room in a silver lame gown as it is in jeans and a turtleneck. The newish maitre d’ sweeps the room with an eagle eye, a pleasure to watch as he patrols. The last night we visited, things were almost frighteningly quiet until relatively late in a St. Louis restaurant evening. At about 8:30 activity picked up, and by 9:45, it was very busy. People came in after the movies next door, business meetings were timed to late-arriving planes, young couples came in after who knows what. Nice to see.
But the food? For us, as regular readers know, it’s nearly all about the food,. The tasting menu, $60 without wine or $80 with, is four courses. At many restaurants, a tasting menu can’t be ordered by just one diner; it has to be done by the whole table. (Hmmm. What about the person dining alone?) Happily, policy here allowed one of us to enjoy the tasting menu while the other ordered a la carte.
The evening began on a high note with an amuse guelee that was one of the finest we’ve ever been exposed to. It was a single, well-chilled Kumamoto oyster, one of the small and flavorful natives of the north Pacific coast. With a drizzle of mignonette sauce, it was just perfect to tingle the taste buds with a light, fresh, provocative feeling, and it wore a couple of strands of fresh, sweet fennel to add some crunch.
A first course of risotto with asparagus, sun-dried tomatoes and porcini was outstanding. It was creamy but still slightly al dente, full of flavor, just a little hot in terms of spice but steaming happily and exuding its marvelous mushroom aroma from a small lidded cast-iron pipkin. From the a la carte side, a tower of small, blini-sized cornmeal pancakes were layered with stone crab claw meat, a tangy salad of julienned celeriac and a tangle of baby beet greens. The presentation was lovely, and the flavors juxtaposed perfectly.
The tasting menu’s second course was foie gras, a couple of slices quickly seared and served over squares of prosciutto and some buttery sauteed spinach with a brilliantly-colored huckleberry sauce, its tartness bouncing off the rich foie gras and even setting off the prosciutto.
A double venison chop was stunningly good, grilled medium-rare, not at all dry, its pan juices saucing edamame, or fresh soy beans (and a surprisingly tasty pairing it was), as well as some polenta. And capping off the dish was a crepe filled with a quince preserve. Traditionally game is often served with a tart fruit accent of some sort, and this filled the bill with considerable imagination. The venison was almost unsettlingly tender, but extraordinarily delicious.
"Swordfish cassoulet" is what the tasting menu promised. What arrived was a tender, perfectly cooked chunk of swordfish that had a hint of paprika-like spice similar to harissa. It sat in a sauce with finely diced vegetables that included a touch of fennel, carrots, potatoes, more edamame and a crunchy white vegetable that might have been cauliflower or parsnip. The menu also had promised Little Neck clams, but they weren’t around. Their broth certainly was, though, and while the swordfish was tasty, it was the vegetables and broth that made this a real winner, all well balanced, a real big-flavor choice. And fennel, which can become extremely intrusive, was handled with just the proper amount of care.
The tasting menu’s dessert was a martini glass with a scoop of raspberry chocolate sorbet and a house-made rolled tuile. More raspberry than chocolate in taste, which is fine as far as we’re concerned, the color was almost as lovely as the flavor. However, the evening’s big miss was a lemon crepe dessert that had three crepes, a silver-dollar-sized dense molded mousse with lemon and white chocolate, and a mint sauce. Two of the crepes seemed absolutely unadorned, no filling, no flavoring, and the third had what may have been mint in the batter. If so, it created only a faint flavor. Dull, dull, dull, and a disappointment at the end of a meal that was so splendid.
The wine that accompanied the meal provided two hits, a neutral and a miss, but speaking up allowed the server, a man who seemed to have superior knowledge of the wine list and what it covered, to more than properly rectify the problem. The miss was an Austrian white Veltliner that was completely unacceptable; no real flavor, flabby texture, flat and rather stale. The substitute, a delicious California Chardonnay by Bernardos, was perfect with the risotto. A Gewurztraminer from Trimbach was up to the high standards of that Alsatian producer, with a hint of spritz and sweet, but splendid alcohol balance to complement the course. A too-young, high-tannin Cotes du Rhone arrived with the swordfish and was almost adequate, and a 1994 tawny Port provided good company for dessert.
Service began at a pace that was a little too leisurely—empty dishes from the chef’s amuse guelee stayed on the table more than 10 minutes—but picked up as the pace of the meal, and indeed, the whole dining room, increased. Our server, however, really knew the menu, including an explanation of a garnish we’ve never seen before, tall, pale stalks of what turned out to be mung beans, which taste, not surprisingly, like bean sprouts.
A charming evening at Eau; we hope it stays on its current pace for a long time.
Eau Café and Bistro
Chase-Park Plaza Hotel
212 N. Kingshighway
314-454-9000
http://www.saucemagazine.com/website.php?e=224
Breakfast and Dinner daily, Brunch Sunday
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Good
Smoking : Yes
Entrees:$26-$36
