Looking for a new place to dine in St. Louis, I came across some Internet reviews on a place on the south side of the the city that sounded pretty interesting. It featured many items that are locally and regionally-sourced with a down-home St. Louis-style flair to the food, as well as a good beer list. I took off from my hotel in the Forest Park area to go check out Quincy Street Bistro.
Mike Enright grew up in South St. Louis in the Princeton Heights neighborhood - actually right on Quincy Street. A longtime neighborhood watering hole - Jimmy's Saloon - sat at the corner of Gravois Ave. and Quincy Street. On the ground floor was the tavern while four apartments with a shared bathroom occupied the upper floor of the building that was originally built in the early 1900's.
Jimmy's Saloon closed about 10 years ago and Mike Enright - who became a contractor - bought the building in October 2009 along with his childhood friend Kevin Winkler who had an extensive background in the restaurant industry. Enright, along with his brother and his nephew, renovated the building taking out the rooms upstairs for a spacious over-flow dining or private dining area, rebuilt the bar area exposing the brick walls and putting in wood floors, and put in a full kitchen that any chef would be proud to work in. Quincy Street Bistro opened its doors on March 1, 2011 and immediately became a hit with their blue-collar foods prepared by Winkler.
A year after opening, Winkler relinquished the kitchen to Mike and Sue Enright's son-in-law, Rick Lewis who put his own stamp on the down-home regional foods that Quincy Street Bistro was serving. Lewis was subsequently named a James Beard Award semi-finalist for "Rising Star Chef of the Year" in 2014. (I'm not certain that Kevin Winkler is still involved in the restaurant.) Lewis networked with a number of chefs and restaurant owners in the St. Louis area - most notably Mike Emerson of Pappy's Barbecue - over the years, and in 2015 he left the Quincy Street Bistro to partner with the Mothership organization (Pappy's, Bogart's BBQ, Adam's Smokehouse) to open his own restaurant Southern, a Nashville-hot chicken restaurant next to Pappy's in St. Louis' mid-town area. The kitchen at QSB is now headed by Matt Birkenmeier who took over the kitchen last fall and goes by the moniker "Chef Birk".
I drove down Hampton Ave. before cutting across on a side street through the Princeton Heights neighborhood to make it over to Gravois Ave. Many of the houses in the neighborhood are small bungalows built before World War II that housed mainly brewery and factory workers and their families. I found Quincy Street Bistro at 6931 Gravois, about a 10 minute drive from my hotel. (see map)
I walked into Quincy Street Bistro and I found myself entering the bar at the front of the restaurant. It was a vibrant crowd in the bar area watching flat screen television showing hockey and baseball games. I wanted to sit at the bar, but it was full. There were a handful of hi-top tables in the bar, but those were full, as well. I paused for a moment to take a look at what they had for beer offerings on tap. It was a short, yet impressive list of beers that included a number of locally brewed beers from Schlafly, Urban Chestnut, Perennial and 4 Hands breweries, as well as regional beers from Bell's, Tallgrass and Piney Rivers. QSB also offers a number of artisanal cocktails that their bartenders have perfected over the years.
I was greeted by a server who took me to a small table along a wall lined with what appeared to be family heirloom portraits. He dropped off a menu and it was a short while later when my server for the evening - a friendly guy by the name of Bax - came over to greet me. He got my drink order - a Schlafly Kolsch that they had on tap.
The downstairs dining area was rustic in its appearance with a number of antique farm tools, kitchen utensils, and window frames hung on the wall. The flat screen televisions along the wall in the room looked a little out of place. Quincy Street Bistro was far from what I would call a bistro and more of something that I would call a quaint little rustic restaurant.
The menu at Quincy Street Bistro features a unique style of appetizers, soups and salads. The appetizers featured hogs head-stuffed toasted ravioli, corn meal-battered cheese curds, and QSB's signature Buffalo chicken dip served with tortilla chips. For dinner choices, they had a handful of gourmet burgers including their "ultimate" burger that featured a 10 ounce ground patty of locally-raised beef wrapped in bacon. Sandwiches included a charcoal slow-pit roasted beef on a garlic hoagie, and a pastrami sandwich with the pastrami made in-house, topped with pickled cabbage, gruyere cheese and 1000 island dressing and served on New York-style Jewish rye bread. They also had a banh mi-style sandwich with crispy pork belly with a sweet chili glaze and five-spices chicken.
I was looking for something sort of hearty that evening and a couple things caught my eye. The meat loaf featured locally-raised beef mixed with bacon, oats and seasonings, then topped with a house glaze and onion straws. Mashed potatoes came on the side. But when Bax came around to take my order, I ended up ordering the churrasco beef tri-tip they had on the menu that evening. It came with roasted potatoes topped with a Brava sauce and a side of creamy cole slaw with bits of bacon mixed in.
The tri-tip was seasoned with spices and smoked. It was a little over-cooked, but still was tender enough. There was a healthy amount of beef on the plate and each piece had a smoky and there was a bit of a spicy bite to the seasoning. While the tri-tip was good, it made me wish I would have maybe tried the meat loaf or their ultimate burger.
The roasted potatoes with the Brava sauce were tasty enough, but the creamy cole slaw with the real bacon bits was simply outstanding. The tangy vinegar with the creamy slaw went exceptionally well with the bacon. Sometimes the sides outshine the main entree and this so happened on my visit to the Quincy Street Bistro.
That's not to say the smoked tri-tip was bad - it was actually good. It was a tad overcooked, but it was still edible. The potatoes with the Brava sauce were fine enough, but the creamy cole slaw with bacon was the hit of the evening. Bax's service was prompt and friendly, joking with me from time to time and making this single diner feel welcome at the restaurant. The Quincy Street Bistro isn't what I would call a traditional bistro, but their take on locally-raised farm-to-fork foods is more rustic than chic or upscale. And I like unpretentious places like that.
(Update Nov. 2018 - This article in St. Louis Magazine announced that Quincy Street Bistro would close in late October of 2018. Owners Mike and Sue Enright felt that their seven and a half year old "adventure" had "run its course.)
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