Review: Niche Taste Bar in St. Louis

What does a wildly successful restaurant do when it’s up to its rafters in rave reviews and national recognition and so damn popular it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation? Serve cocktails. And small plates of terribly creative snacks all made on the premises. That’s the idea behind Niche Taste Bar, a tiny square of a restaurant attached to its big brother next door.

Unless you’ve been holed up in Gitmo for the past four years, you know Niche either by reputation or experience – hopefully the latter. You know that chef and owner Gerard Craft and his crack team have raised the bar on what it means to eat locally. St. Louis owes much of its recent evolution into a food-centric town to the innovative cooking of chefs like Craft, whose simple yet daring approaches in the kitchen and partnerships with local farmers have garnered him numerous accolades, including Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs last year and, this year, a James Beard Award nomination for Best Chef Midwest.

Craft envisions Taste as place to start or end your evening: Pop in, grab a drink and a snack, move on. Bar and grill, sushi bar, tapas; all are Taste’s influences. This tiny space – only 18 seats between the bar and one short wooden communal table, a chalkboard wait list near the door (no reservations), the restroom next door at Niche – is true to the tapas bar ideal, a place emphasizing drink and numerous tastes of food. In the U.S., tapas has grown to mean larger servings, something to appease the American appetite. Here, it’s complex drinks for sipping and bits of simple, interesting food for nibbling. One leaves satisfied, but not stuffed.

Old-fashioned Edison-style light bulbs shine down over the bar for a speakeasy feel, subway tile lines the back wall, a chalkboard wall – with its prominent outline of a hog – lists the day’s specials, and the tiny, open prep station makes you wonder where all this food comes from. Food is prepared in Niche’s kitchen with the final prep work done behind Taste’s bar on a couple of hot plates, induction burners and an immersion circulator. A charcuterie master tends his meat slicer, carefully arranging coppa, country ham, heart salami and saucisson, five slices each, on a large cutting board; another chef cleans radishes. Sit at the L-shaped bar and it’s all very cool to watch. That intimacy, the connection between chef and diner and the conviviality a small space affords, is like sitting in the kitchen of a friend’s house, chatting it up as they do the work.

If a wine bar serving little food is called an enoteca, then Taste is a cocktailteca. Or a drinkteca. Or whatever word conveys the fact that Taste is equally a bar, only this one focuses on classic cocktails. As an exclamation point, Craft lured Ted Kilgore, the mad mixologist from Monarch, to run the drinks show. Just watching Kilgore mix a drink or listening to him describe some arcane aspect of drink mixing is worth the price of admission, were there one. But while those cocktails are amazing, I found it difficult to match them with the equally delicious small plates, like roasted and chilled octopus with potato and chile. The roasting and chilling make for a lovely chewy-tender texture, yet while I noshed and sipped my rye whiskey cocktail, what I really wanted was a bone-dry Champagne or Spanish rosé. But, true to the cocktail emphasis – and the sip and snack idea – there are only three wines by the glass at Taste: BIN 36 Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, and they aren’t listed on the menu. Made by Hahn Estate wines for BIN 36, one of Chicago’s premier enotecas, these are no weak-kneed private label wines. (Editor’s note: Since Michael’s visits, Taste has added a small wine list of about 10 selections.)

But get past the food-drink pairing conundrum – as I did – because the menu offers enough varied flavors that something will complement Kilgore’s creations. (Additionally, challenging Kilgore to create a drink that pairs with your food selections is a worthy, satisfying quest.)

The menu offers its own interesting pairings, like ricotta and pickled beets, a luscious combination of sweet, tangy beets mellowed by house-made creamy ricotta, all perfectly seasoned. Start with a trio of snacks (choose from four) while deciding on drinks. We went with almonds coated with French pepper; house-made pickles that will make the Vlasic stork green with envy; and egg with green sauce, a deconstructed deviled egg of yolk blended with white anchovy, loads of garlic and fresh herbs topped with a whole white anchovy. Don’t plan on sharing.

Over the course of a couple of visits, we ate our way through the entire menu, satisfying our ADD taste cravings: small crocks of pork and foie pâté and duck rillettes (allow both to reach room temperature for full, decadent fatty flavor), braised rabbit gnocchi (worth two orders), pasture-raised carne cruda (essentially steak tartare coarse-cut so you can actually taste the high-quality meat). From summer vegetables in bacon broth to pig’s tongue to pigwiches – pastry chef Mathew Rice’s bacon buttercream-filled cookies –Taste, as with Niche, loves pork.

And on it went. A cheese plate of, on our visit, Sally Jackson goat’s milk cheese, Mount Tam triple-cream and Prairie Breeze sharp Cheddar with house-made crackers. Spicy pork meatballs. There were things on toast, including a roasted radish bruschetta. More charcuterie of sopressata, pepperoni and Hungarian salami. And it adds up. With small plates coming in at a flat $8 per and drinks averaging $9, a bill could easily balloon. But you’re not there for a full dinner, remember? In addition to pigwiches, sweets include a “pork” pie of the day (lard-based crust, of course) and a sweet of the day. Where the Chess Pie special was crazy good, the Red Velvet Cupcake special hit a rare dull note; a beautiful, swirly mound of frosting topped the cupcake, setting up high expectations but delivering a tasteless, unctuous filigree to a usually delightful sweet.

Any St. Louis eatery based on small plates – appetizers, if you will – that doesn’t serve toasted ravioli is enough to make it hip. With Taste, Craft and Kilgore raise the standard – and fill yet another niche. The only problem: You may never want to leave.

NEW AND NOTABLE

Don’t-Miss Dish: Pork and foie pâté, duck rillettes, ricotta and pickled beets, pasture-raised carne cruda, and any special on the chalkboard.
Vibe: Sexy speakeasy meets corner bar and grill for an intimate, convivial feel.
Average Price: Drinks, $8 to $10. Snacks, $4 for three selections. Small plates, $8. Sweets, $5.
Where: 1831 Sidney St., St. Louis, 314.773.7755
When: Tue. to Sat. – 4 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
Editor's note: Niche Taste Bar will be closed for vacation the first week of September; it will reopen Tue., Sept. 8.