Vicia is the hot restaurant of the moment. It’s the brainchild of Michael and Tara Gallina, he a St. Louisan and both alumni of the prestigious Blue Hill Farm in New York. In the French tradition, he’s a chef and she runs the front of the house. This is not French food, it’s modern American, and the word the Gallinas use to describe it is vegetable-forward. That’s quite accurate. There’s an extremely heavy emphasis on using locally sourced ingredients.
Before arriving for lunch or dinner, be aware that the street address on Forest Park Boulevard is not quite where Vicia is located. It’s in the Cortex complex, with an entrance on Boyle just north of where it intersects with Duncan Avenue – so, south of Forest Park Boulevard. There’s parking east of the restaurant – a lot directly across the street is permit-only.
It is indeed a handsome restaurant, black and white all over, with a little metal intruding here and there, an open kitchen. The covered terrace on the south side, where the wood-fueled cooking fireplace is operating, allows for dinner seating; the bar area on the north side is snacks and drinks only. The terrace is very pleasant, but I’m hoping they install some fans overhead to allow for more comfort as the summer heats up.
The menu shows both snacks and starters. From the snack side, my pal and I went for the naked vegetables. That’s not a judgment, that’s what the menu calls them. It’s a dish that evokes mixed responses. It was certainly a lovely presentation, turnip, several kinds of radishes, two inch-long pieces of carrot and a baby squash with its blossom.
Four spreads ride shotgun, on this particular visit, hummus, vegetable top pesto, a yogurt-goat cheese dip and lard. The menu suggests turkey wheat bread alongside at a $5 surcharge beyond the $12 for the plate. What’s turkey wheat bread? Turkey wheat is a particular kind of wheat, we found out. It was good, crusty bread, four half-slices. Not enough to slather everything we wanted to on it, though. The vegetables were beautiful and fresh. But aside from the carrots and the understandably bland squash, everything was cruciferous, that family from which arise things like cauliflower and broccoli. Consequently, with varying degrees of texture and sharpness, it all tasted very similar. The dips, on the other hand, were excellent. A gossamer, lemony hummus shone. The vegetable top pesto is striking and rather mysterious. We suspect it varies by what’s arriving in the kitchen, but this one had notes of freshly cut wood and some mint. Then there was the lard. This dish desperately, wildly needs another name. “Lard” doesn’t do it justice. Think about wiping one’s plate after finishing a particularly succulent piece of juicy roast pork – that’s what this tastes like. It has nothing to do with the green and white Armour packages I remember as a kid. Divine, I tell you, divine.
The starter menu offers a goose egg, soft scrambled. The egg arrives in a (cleaned) shell, sitting in dried moss in a wire basket, a striking presentation.
A small spoon allows for exploration of the contents, which begin with focaccia crumbs and an egg white foam. Further down, there’s a slightly tart mushroom liquid, the egg, which is custard-y soft, and asparagus, both cross-cut slices and a puree. The dish is beautiful, the taste is intriguing, but this is food one should expect to think about. I liked it mostly, but the focaccia crumbs were so hard they were the texture of granola, a little too much of the texture contrast they were obviously meant to provide.
“Family style mains” are in two columns, one “from the grill”, the other “vegetables & grains”. They’re meant to be shared, said our server, and they suggest ordering one or two per person. That meant our two-top would have had up to four platters on it, we said, rather puzzled. I think most people, at least in this part of the world, think of family style as large platters from which an entire table takes their portions. It turns out these are for very small families, and it’s mostly plates, not platters. Oyster mushrooms with an oyster vinaigrette were beautiful, large hunks tasting of wood smoke. But there was no sign of a vinaigrette, either visually or on the palate, and they had been so casually trimmed that eating them whole was impossible, even after cutting the large pieces into smaller servings. The joint base from which they grow is very fibrous and that remained, unremoved.
Another visit’s foray into Berkshire pork was more successful. Three slices, two from a shoulder and one from a belly, added up to probably half a pound. Yes, still pink in a couple of places, sprinkled with just a little coarse salt, they, too, showed evidence of a long visit to the wood-fueled fireplace, coming out still tender and juicy. Alongside was a thick, very tart smoked cherry jam. If someone in the kitchen hasn’t tried that on a peanut butter sandwich, I would be shocked. A step up from the mushrooms, all told.
From the vegetable column, new potatoes were steamed and crushed just a little, then dribbled with a charred onion aioli, a winning combination. A couple of potatoes were those Peruvian purples, and giddily handsome they were. Some pickled ramps were hanging out in the dish, but the garlic scapes (or stems) that had been grilled were less successful, having the texture of twine.
Green salad, with mixed leaves, was pretty much classic, lightly dressed with a lemon vinaigrette, none of it puddling in the bottom, a shower of grated sarvecchio cheese crowning it. Very successful with the pork, a nice contrast in textures and tastes.
Desserts, too, were off and on. One called Strawberries and cream had no strawberries at all. There was a scoop of goats’ milk vanilla ice cream, an oval of very good strawberry sorbet, a shower of pink strawberry-flavored dots flash-frozen with nitrogen, smaller and more flavorful than Dippin Dots but using that same technique. Two inch-square thins of meringue finished it off. Nice, but not quite as expected.
On the other hand, the mulberry tart exceeded expectations by a fair amount. A fine shortbread crust, its filling a soft custard with a very faint flavor of almond and unidentifiable other things, topped with a paper-thin crisp oat cookie and a scoop of mulberry sorbet, along with a couple of mulberries. It was an excellent combination of flavors and temperatures and textures.
Service is pretty much impeccable without being stuffy, a point that St. Louis should love. The price range on those family-style mains is from $10 to $14, so this is a restaurant that announces its intention to produce serious food. Much of it is food that the diner needs to think about rather than eat casually – the pork and salad came closest to that, although the cherry jam was not to be ignored, certainly. That’s fine, but the diner needs to be prepared.
Vicia
4260 Forest Park Blvd
314-553-9239
Credit cards: Yes
Wheelchair access: Good
Smoking: No
“Family style mains”: $10-$14
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Lovely restaurant. I only wish the dining room was quieter. Going there for a nice dinner on a Friday or Saturday night and expecting to have a conversation and good food will yield only good food. No kind of consideration for acoustics, and everybody ends up shouting to their dinner companions. I kept thinking how good of a time I’d have if I had been temporarily deaf for the evening.