[At this writing, the rivers are getting ready to rise again. But keep this spot in mind.]
It's always amazing how little St. Louisans actually look at their river. The out-of-towner's question, "Isn't there somewhere we can eat and look out at the river?" is often a challenge. Beyond the lovely views from Kemoll's, we're often out of luck. The Illinois side of the river, especially north of St. Louis, does far better than we.
But between St. Charles and West Alton, there's a spot with a view, a marina, and multi-level outdoor dining, plus an air-conditioned dining room with fans for those lazy, hazy days of haute summer. The Boathouse, while it offers entrees like steak, seems mostly a deeply casual spot for locals to lunch and music on the deck on weekends. There's nothing intimidating about this place.
To mix a baseball metaphor with this marine setting, a lunch was a tie game until the bottom of the ninth, when the kitchen hit one out of the park. We kicked off with onion rings, greaseless with a coarse and very crunchy breading. The bistro sauce promised on the menu seemed to be a southwestern ranch, quite spicy despite its creaminess. Crab cakes, no longer exotica in this part of the world, really were unexciting, a little spicy and again, carefully fried, but tasting of seasoning that ran all over the delicate crabmeat.
Slices of steak on a roll were still pink, and the slicing itself is a graceful touch – too often steak sandwiches seem merely to be a piece of beef tossed intact onto the bread, and making for difficult eating. The beefy-tasting cut was surprisingly tender and its horseradish sauce could have been superfluous. It was topped with caramelized onions, adding savor. Those same onions also graced the fat hamburger. The bad news here is that it was ordered medium rare, and arrived with no visible pink – but it was very juicy and again seemed to be of high-quality beef. The onions and beef paired up with considerable grace, rendering the white cheddar spread pretty much in the background, not that there's anything wrong with that.
The onion rings are available as a side, but since we'd knocked off an order of them to kick things off, it was the housemade chips and baked beans that arrived with the sandwiches. The beans are excellent, generous pieces of bacon, a sweet bourbon-esque sauce, very more-ish, to use the Britishism. But the chips flunked. The seasoning, a little garlic and probably some cheese, was fine. But the chips themselves were stale, not to the point of being damp and chewy, but hard rather than crisp.
But then. Ah, yes, but then…came the bread pudding. Described as having Granny Smith apples in it, they had been very thinly sliced and layered in with the bread. Tender to the spoon and laced with cinnamon, it was paired with lots of whipped cream, not surprisingly, but also coffee ice cream and toasted sugared pecans. Those last two items are what lifted it from really good to memorable, bouncing off the cinnamon and dancing on the tongue.
A few items to note: The featured sandwich is a pork steak, which wasn't available on this visit, but according to the menu is braised. Pizza looks to be St. Louis style.
The restaurant, reached on via a drive through a park-like setting after leaving the county roads, is on the second floor, looking out on the river.
To get there from St. Charles, take Highway 94 east out of town. Go past the turn for Golden Eagle Ferry and take a left on either Blaise Station Road, which comes first, or County Highway V, which is better marked. Those roads converge. Watch for the signs; your turn will be to the left on North Shore Road.
611 North Shore Road, St. Charles
636-250-3300
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Lunch & Dinner Tues.-Sun., Breakfast Sat.-Sun
Credit cards: Yes
Wheelchair access: Elevator
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $14-$23