Irene and I made our way down to the newest Amalgamated Brewing venture, The Stable, for Saturday night’s grand opening. I’ve been to a few grand openings as of recent and for the most part they’re usually low-key events. The opening of The Stable was anything but. We walked in and the place was packed, filled to the brim with people either waiting to get a beer or waiting to get a table.

The Stable
1821 Cherokee Street (Map It)
St Louis, MO 63118
(314) 771-8500

Beer

If The Stable doesn’t win some sort of award next year for best beer selection in a restaurant in one of the local magazines, I may just have to give up hope for this town. The devotion to beer that everyone involved with The Stable has is just mindblowing. With over 20 hand-picked draught choices and another 15 in bottles, The Stable proves that having the largest selection doesn’t necessary mean you have the best selection. Two other extremely encouraging tidbits I picked up was that this will be a rotating selection, so that beer you had on your first visit may not be there on the second. Also, they’ve made the promise that you’ll see no beer with the word “Light” in the name.

Food:

Not content with just pizza and beer, The Stable offers a full line of sandwiches and also some interesting starters. I had the steak special and Irene tried the cajun carbonara. While my steak was cooked perfectly to temperature, I found it a bit tough and not very moist. But I was in the mood for beef so it satisfied my craving. Irene’s carbonara was the winning dish between our two. The spiciness of the andouille helped to balance the richness of the cream sauce. The pasta itself was also very well received as it still had a bit of chew to the noodles, almost just shy of al dente.

Intangibles:

This place is pretty gorgeous. If you’ve ever been to the Lemp Mansion you’ll know that it’s almost like stepping back in time to when the mansion was full of Lemps. The Stable does a good job of taking a lot of the feel from the Lemp Mansion and continuing it in this new spot. The updated wood features along with some of the other features keeps you in a very particular mindset. Irene couldn’t stop looking around and saying “wow.” They also feature a “patio” area featuring a second bar which seems less finished and much more sparse. I’ll be interested to see if it gets updated as well.

I’m really excited about the future of The Stable, some time to work out some opening kinks I think it could quickly become the best beer restaurant in St. Louis. Let’s hope that the crowds I saw on opening night think the same as me and keep filling the place up.

You may remember me mentioning The Stable some time ago, well it looks like they’re very close to opening and Kelly Schmickle has a sneak preview of the new restaurant/brewery/distillery up. Looks like they’ll be specializing in pizza and beer (always a great combo.)

Some of the other highlights include that they’ll be serving a Helles-style beer as well as a Marzen to start and will be featuring 16(!) taps of Belgian and “big bad American microbrews.” (Have I ever mentioned that I hate the word “microbrew” or “microbeer”?)  I look forward at what’s to come and we’ll see what these brewers have up their sleeve.

For those of you that didn’t get a chance to make it down to the Brewers Heritage Festival, but still want to try Augie’s Rye Pale Ale, you’re in luck. Dereck Bean from O’Fallon Brewery sent me over a list of restaurants that will have Augie’s beer on draught:

• Riddle’s
• Cicero’s
• Rumple’s Pub (Main Street, St. Charles)
• Bottoms Up Brewhouse (Hwy. K, O’Fallon)
• Syberg’s (Gravois)
• Tin Can Morgan Ford
• Tin Can Downtown

I may have taken far too long to get the post on The Scottish Arms up, but I won’t make the same mistake twice. We attended the opening of The Shaved Duck on Thursday evening and I implore you to visit. Not only do you get a wonderful dining experience in an upscale but laid back restaurant, but you get a great selection of American craft beers.

The Shaved Duck
2900 Virginia Ave (Map It)
St. Louis, MO 63118
(314) 776-1407

Beer: I’ll be honest, I can’t quite say enough good things about the beer selection. But one thing I want to get straight first, in the lead up to the opening of the Shaved Duck, Allie (the owner) called to ask for my thoughts on a beer list. Looking back on my post, it looks like I had something to do with the beer list as it is now. I just want to say, Patrick and Allie didn’t need my help in the least. They had done a great job of choosing a lot of the beers before I ever got there. I don’t want to take credit for something that I don’t deserve.

Anyway, now that I’ve got that off my chest, the beer menu is a varied at it is affordable. I didn’t see a single 12oz bottle over 6 dollars and not a single 750ml for over 10 dollars. I had a draught 20oz glass of Unibroue’s Maudite for $5.00. Let that sink in for a couple of seconds. $5.00?! I don’t think I’ve seen a draught Unibroue for less than $6.00 anywhere in St. Louis. Especially not one with a 20oz pour. I posted the list about a month ago, but it has changed slightly, as any good beer list should.

Food:

The Shaved Duck offers a numerous amount of small plates (one of my favorite ways of dining) and a few entrées as well. We tried the duck fat frites and the scallop wraped bacon to start. Both were very tasty. The frites were nice and light but still contained enough fat to remind you that they’re fries. Too often I find that potatoes cut this small become something similar to French’s French Fried Onions. The ketchup paired with the fries provided just enough vinegar to cut down on the sweetness of the tomatoes. The scallop wrapped bacon was a bit of a surprise as we originally read it to be bacon wrapped scallop. The wonderful part of the bacon remaining inside of the scallop was that the smokiness of the bacon didn’t overpower the dish and allowed the sweetness of the scallop to come through.

Both entrées were well prepared, though we were both a bit concerned that the dishes seemed very “wintery” and we’re quickly approaching summer. Nevertheless I’m rarely going to turn down a dish offering marrow and the didn’t disappoint. Irene’s pork was pleasant with the fennel pairing very well with the orange glaze, but the pork could have used a bit more salt to balance the sweetness of the glaze. The desert similar to The Scottish Arm’s wonderful bread pudding but with the addition of dried cherries and coco nibs. Irene found the cherries a bit boozy, but after 3 9% beers, I was completely down with them.

Intangibles:

I think one of the things I enjoyed most about The Shaved Duck was it felt very warm and upscale, but never came across as pretentious. It’s very laid back and never makes you feel like they’re pretending to be something they’re not. The staff was very personable, but there were obviously some opening night jitters and mishaps. But I was very impressed how well things were handled for a restaurant making it’s debut.

I can’t say enough good things about my experience at the Shaved Duck. If I have a few quibbles it’s that the price for a few of the small plates was a bit high (for instance, $9 for a single scallop) but otherwise it was a completely enjoyable experience and made me wish I lived closed to Pestalozzi Street.

A couple of months ago I received an email from Ally Nisbet, the owner of the Scottish Arms, thanking me for mentioning The Shaved Duck. The real shocking part to me was when Ally asked me to come by the Scottish Arms some time and talk about the beer list for the Shaved Duck. So on a cold Tuesday evening a few weeks ago, we (Ally, myself and one of Ally’s right hand men, Patrick Thomas) got together had some beers and discussed ideas for the new restaurants beer list.

They wanted their beer list to feature North American craft breweries. I thought this was a genius idea. America is one of the only beer brewing countries in the world that features all of the different styles of the world. Only in America will you find beers from German-style Pilsners to Belgian-style ales. It was a concept I was extremely excited about and couldn’t wait to see what kind of list they’d come up with. Without further ado, here’s the (very large) list after the jump:
Read the rest…

At least, let’s hope it is open today. Dave emailed me earlier in the week to inform me that Buffalo Brewing Company was shooting for a Thursday opening. Unfortunately, there is some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that due to some electrical problems in the brewhouse, none of the beer Buffalo is carrying will be their own. Dave is hoping that beer should be in the tanks as of this weekend. Now the good news: in the meantime Buffalo will be carrying O’Fallon Brewery’s beers.

One thing I want you to keep in mind if you do visit Buffalo this week is that this is a brand new restaurant, so it’s very likely that they’re going to have some bugs to work out for a little while. Don’t let what could be a kink in the works sour you on coming back in the future. If you do visit, please report back and give everyone your thoughts in the forum.

My girlfriend Irene and I find that we get in a rut about going to restaurants. It’s that sort of thing where you’re wearing blinders to all of those restaurants you’ve been hearing about, but for whatever you never remember when it comes dinner (or lunch) time. So we’ve started making a mental list of places we want to try in the near future. Of course almost all of my choices are beer related, but that’s should come as no real shock to anyone.

Last Saturday when dinner time rolled around, I knew I wanted to hit one of the first places on my list, the Tin Can Tavern and Grill. This is a place that boasts about the fact they they offer 50 different beers, all in can. Oh sure if you want you can get a glass of wine or you could get a draught or bottled beer. But you don’t go to Mexican joint expecting Chinese, so why would you want to go to a place called the Tin Can Tavern without drinking a beer that came from a can?

The other thing that drew me to Tin Can was the food. It’s not anything fancy, it’s just classic American comfort food. They have some of the standard bar staples like chicken tenders, hot wings, and mini corn dogs. But for the most part it’s food you grew up with in St. Louis: mac and cheese, chicken fried steak, BBQ pork steaks and even a fried bologna sandwich if that’s what you’re craving. Read the rest…