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Short Orders
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21
[BARS]
Taste to Be Replaced by BRASS Bar
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
Once upon a time, if you walked into any bar in St. Louis looking for a classy cocktail, your options were likely to consist of an appletini or a Stoli vanilla and Coke. Then came Taste (4584 Laclede Avenue), Gerard Craft’s revolutionary establishment helmed by acclaimed barman Ted Kilgore, which lit the spark that set the city’s beverage scene afire and changed the way we drink forever.
But the iconic bar is now headed to the annals of St. Louis restaurant history. In a Facebook statement posted last week, Craft announced that the restaurant has closed, effective immediately. “Now in 2021, after 12 years of service, we are sad to announce that Taste by Niche has closed its doors for good,” Craft’s post reads. “Like so many others in our industry, the past two years have led to countless pivots, and changes, and while we were hopeful to usher in a new era of Taste when we reopened in June, bouncing back was harder than we anticipated.” Opened in 2009 at its original Benton Park location, Taste was an instant success, earning a spot in Bon Appétit magazine as one of the ten best new bars in the country. In 2011, the bar moved to the Central est End where it solidified its reputation as the city’s top cocktail establishment and served as a launching pad for some of the city’s most respected bar professionals.
When the pandemic came to town in full force in March 2020, Taste, like all of the establishments in Craft’s Niche Food Group, temporarily shuttered its doors. It reopened this June. Now, just four months after that attempted reboot, the bar will close for good, signaling the end of an era in St. Louis cocktail culture.
The news is not all bad, however. In place of Taste, Craft has announced that a new concept, BRASS Bar, will operate in the space as a complementary concept to his wildly popular adjacent restaurant, Brasserie. Described as a place for French snacks and cocktails, Craft anticipates that BRASS Bar will be the place to go for predinner beverages or a post-dinner apéritif; to facilitate the connection, the restaurant and bar will soon have a doorway connecting the two concepts.
We reached out to Craft for comment but did not hear back by press time. n
Taste, which changed St. Louis cocktail culture, has served its last guests. | LAURA ANN MILLER
[OPENINGS]
Chicken Scratch Now Open at City Foundry
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
For years, chef Nate Hereford has worked in fine-dining kitchens, putting together elegant, cerebral dishes of what he describes as “tweezer food.” Now, he’s excited to veer from that path with his new fast-casual rotisseriechicken eatery, Chicken Scratch (3700 Forest Park Avenue), which opened last week in the Food Hall at City Foundry.
“Roasted chicken just makes people happy and has always been a big thing for me and my family,” Hereford says. “We love cooking it, and doing it on a rotisserie makes it exciting because it’s super tender and delicious. With the past year and all that’s gone on, doing something that makes people happy feels really important.”
For Hereford, the return from the Bay Area to the St. Louis dining scene at City Foundry is familiar. Having made a name for himself as the right-hand man to chef Gerard Craft at the acclaimed Niche, he finds himself again working with Craft to realize a vision, this time for the food hall, where Craft serves as culinary director. However, this time around, Hereford is focused less on the theater of fine dining and is more intent on serving up a viscerally comforting experience to his guests at Chicken Scratch.
His medium for providing that comfort is impossibly succulent chicken, made by using a French Rotisol rotisserie oven. The bird is seasoned with a dry rub and roasted to the point that its skin cooks up to a medium-brown crispness while the meat remains tender and juicy.
Guests can choose from a handful of combo meals to enjoy the chicken, either as a quarter chicken with a leg and thigh or wing and breast. Combo meals come with sauce and a side; guests can choose from such sauces as creamy Scratch sauce, horseradish mustard or hot sauce, while sides include kale with parmesan vinaigrette, macaroni salad or jojo potatoes (fried potato wedges). Other main-course combo options include the Scratch Salad, which consists of field greens, cucumbers, herbs, radishes, parmesan, sunflower seeds and lemon anchovy dressing with the option of adding on chicken. A crispy friedchicken sandwich and a creamy chickensalad sandwich are also available, as is the Chicken Dip, which features pulled chicken warmed in jus and topped with marinated kale, provolone, horseradish mustard and “liquid gold dip.”
Hereford also encourages guests who may be either dining elsewhere at the food hall for lunch or simply in the neighborhood to pop into Chicken Scratch and grab a half or whole rotisserie chicken for dinner. As he explains, you get the ease and familiarity of what is ubiquitous at area grocery stores, but with the quality and taste of something much more elevated — that extra level of care to give his guests the best chicken of their lives is what Chicken Scratch is all about.
“At the end of the day, the point of food and hospitality is to make people happy,” Hereford says. “The fine-dining drive is great, but it’s a big push. This is an opportunity to realize what’s important for me and my family. I love food that is delicious, whether it’s made with tweezers or served as fast food from a rotisserie. I’m trying to extend that idea of warmth and fun and hospitality here. You can bring those fine-dining elements to any type of food by the care you put into it and the little touches.”
Chicken Scratch is open Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 11:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. n
