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St. Louis Standards
A er just two months on Morgan Ford, Chatawa is sadly out of business. | PHUONG BUI
[CLOSINGS]
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St. Louis’ Best New Bar, Chatawa, Has Closed
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
Chatawa (3137 Morgan Ford Road), the much-buzzed-about bar in Tower Grove South that opened in late August of this year, closed for good on Sunday. The announcement was made last Wednesday afternoon on the bar’s Facebook page.
The bar, located in the heart of the Morgan Ford business district, was the brainchild of veteran barman and former Tick Tock Tavern co-owner Thomas Crone, whose vision was to create a food-anddrink-inspired journey down the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to New Orleans and stops in between. Intentionally bucking the beads-and-Mardi-Gras-masks caricature of the Big Easy, Crone described the space as being a true New Orleans bar inspired by the city’s neighborhoods and injected with a healthy dose of St. Louis.
Crone seemed to have succeeded in that vision. Almost immediately upon opening, Chatawa had the feel of a watering hole that had always been there, even though it had only opened on August 18. Warm, cozy and Venice Cafe-styled in its quirky, tchotchke-heavy decor, Chatawa was named the staff pick for the year’s best new bar in the RFT’s recent Best of St. Louis issue.
Crone gave no reason for Chatawa’s closure in the Facebook post, stating simply that “Chatawa, as an individual business, will enjoy a LAST week of service THIS week,” closing the post by noting, “It’s been an interesting experience!” Guests were invited to come in for a meal and a drink or to purchase its retail beers, natural wines and liquor to take home.
However, in a statement to the RFT, Crone cites a few reasons for why he made the decision to shut down. The first has to do with product sourcing. Crone was fiercely committed to offering products from the St. Louis-New Orleans Interstate 55 pathway, but he found that he was simply unable to do so, thus undermining the reason he opened the bar in the first place.
“We weren’t able to translate our vision of importing items into St. Louis from New Orleans and that I-55 pathway, despite begging, pleading and cajoling our distributors,” Crone explains. “Trying to buy niche products within the current distribution system is a tough task and we lacked the buying power, social capital and/or other necessary magic to make this happen.”
Crone says that another issue the bar had was that sales simply did not allow it enough time to get up and running. He notes that Chatawa could have slid by for another month or two at its current rate of business, but that he felt the right decision was to end things now. He further notes that he regrets not being able to fully explore his plan to donate 1 percent of sales every month to local arts nonprofits.
As for Grand Pied, the food component run by chef Tony Collida that shares the location with the bar but operates as its own separate entity, Crone is more optimistic, and feels that closing Chatawa at this point in time will give Grand Pied the space it needs to thrive as an independent, standalone concept.
“My goal is to let Grand Pied make announcements of their own re: their next steps,” Crone’s Facebook post reads. “I can confidently say that they’ll continue on at 3137 Morganford and are making moves to ensure a long and successful run here. I’ll root them on for sure.”
As for what that looks like for the time being, Crone says that Grand Pied is currently working on securing a liquor license under its own LLC but will operate under a BYOB policy until that goes through. Service will resume for Grand Pied on Wednesday, November 3, and it will be open Wednesdays through Fridays from 4 until 9 p.m., as well as for brunch service on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m.
“Tony Collida’s a fantastically gifted chef and deserves the avid following that I’m sure he’ll develop here,” Crone says. n
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ST. LOUIS STANDARDS
ICONIC PEOPLE, PLACES & DISHES THAT ANCHOR STL’S FOOD SCENE[ ]
The House That Jack Built
O’Connell’s Pub is a welcoming space for people of all stripes, thanks to one man’s vision
Written by CHERYL BAEHR
John Parker can talk at length about O’Connell’s Pub, about the cast of characters who have tended its bar and served its burgers, the ragtag crew of regulars who have sat at its bar, and, of course, that one night Allen Ginsberg came into the original Gaslight Square location and held court with his entourage, spinning poetry and pronouncing the realities of the world.
However, if there is one thing he wants you to know about O’Connell’s, it’s that this is the place Jack Parker built.
“Every bar or restaurant is a reflection of its owner, says John Parker, Jack’s son and now the proprietor of O’Connell’s. “To know O’Connell’s is to know the story of Jack Parker. If he was going to own this place, he was going to do it his way.”
Jack Parker may have been the heart, soul, captain and owner of O’Connell’s for many years, but surprisingly, he was not the original owner. Neither was anyone named O’Connell. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the city’s Gaslight Square neighborhood was considered to be the premier entertainment and nightlife hub of St. Louis, with bars, restaurants and clubs populating the area near Olive and Boyle in the Central West End, creating a district many considered to be the Greenwich Village of the Midwest. Two businessmen wanted to capitalize on the area’s popularity by opening an Irish bar, so they reached out to Jack Parker’s parents’ au pair, who was from Ireland, to consult on the place. She proved so instrumental in the development of the bar that the men wanted to name it Rita Ryan’s after her. She insisted that was a bad idea, and told them to name the bar after Daniel O’Connell, who was considered one of Ireland’s liberators. They took her advice, and opened their bar, O’Connell’s, in 1962.
From the get-go, Jack Parker was a presence at O’Connell’s, pouring drinks, grilling up burgers behind the bar and generally running the place. It was a departure for the south St. Louis native, who used to sell cars on South Kingshighway and run around Gaslight Square. His interest in the arts was sparked by his former roommate, artist Ernest Trova, who used to blast opera and experiment with his craft in their meager arts loft apartment, where Jack used to sleep on the floor on an old mattress. Passionate about art, music, poetry, literature and everything in between, Jack Parker brought that spirit with him to O’Connell’s and cultivated the bar as a welcoming space that was inclusive of everyone.
After a few years, the men who started O’Connell’s wanted to get out of the business and sold the bar to Jack for $1,500, an amount it took him three years to pay back. However, with his trained bookkeeper mom helping him manage the financial side of the business and his natural penchant for creating community — plus making darn good food — Jack Parker was able to translate that investment into success, eventually moving the bar to its current home on South Kingshighway in 1970, following the decline of the once vibrant Gaslight Square.
In its new digs — just as in its old ones — O’Connell’s became less about the bar itself and more about the motley crew of characters that filled its four walls. here was (and still is) Lenard Voelker, the bartender who came in one day as a replacement for his predecessor and was asked by Jack, “Do you work for me?” followed by, “Alright, how much am I paying you?” Nora McDermott, the server from Tanzania, also started in the Gaslight days and worked alongside Jack for decades, as did Red Garner and Ken Thone, two longtime bartenders that were considered masters of their trade before anyone dared utter the word “mixologist.” But it wasn’t just the staff who animated the bar; Jack Parker was determined to create an environment that made everyone feel comfortable, no matter what walk of life they came from.
“Back in the 1970s, there was R&F Spaghetti across the street and Banner Iron Works across the alley that went behind the building,” John Parker explains. “The R&F and the Banner guys would come in for lunch to eat roast beef sandwiches and drink a pitcher of beer, but the symphony guys and the artists followed us here from Gaslight Square, so we had this mix of the arts community and the south-city working class. We’d have regulars who were iron workers sitting next to some guy who played oboe in the symphony. The mix was natural, and that continues to this day.”
When Jack Parker passed away last June, the keys to O’Connell’s were passed to John, who knows that it’s his mission to keep the bar’s spirit alive as a way to honor his dad. He has a couple of plans
