Review: Market Grill in St. Louis

Market Grill, 728 Lafayette Ave., St. Louis, 314.436.7664

Last September, Market Grill closed for a few days to undergo a quick revamping. The space previously housed a restaurant called Griffin’s. Before that, it was Obie’s. The trouble in the building is to be expected. After all, this is Soulard – a place lined with every type of bar and eatery conceivable, where vice and revelry are par for the course. Here, being remarkable is not without its challenges.

When Market Grill reopened, the name on the door hadn’t changed. But everything else had. The restaurant had a new GM, Katie Shanahan, and a new chef, Jonathan Olson, both of whom had been hired to infuse Market Grill with something, well, remarkable. Olson, who made Sauce’s Ones to Watch list in 2009 and whose resume includes stints at The Terrace View and Erato, quickly created a seasonal, market-driven menu that reflected his commitment to locally procured meats and homegrown produce, even that from his own garden. Baking bread, curing bacon, smoking meats, rolling pasta, making sausages and churning cheese are all within Olson’s vernacular. And for this trouble-torn venue, it’s a game-changer.

Olson seeks that fine balance between your go-to Friday night burger-and-beer neighborhood joint and a restaurant interesting enough to be a destination. The result, while not flawless, is somewhere in between: a kitchen that puts out simple yet creative dishes using local ingredients and a bar that touts local draft beers, a suitable wine list and an array of cocktails with catchy names like the Real Housewife of St. Louis and Who’s Drinking Gilbert Grape?

Those sitting at the bar will do well with a bite or two from the “Bar Snacks” category of the menu. An order of four brisket-and-barley risotto balls – crispy, fragrant and chewy with smoky meat and plump barley – are dipped in a creamy, spicy sauce and popped in a flash. Soups, like the rest of the menu, are ever changing. So you may not get to revel in the deep-orange-glazed carrot soup, as I did. Pickled cauliflower floating on top served as a tangy foil to the carrot’s sweetness. A chicken-and-andouille gumbo was flavorful, redolent with sage, but arrived tepid on a cold night.

Should you find yourself craving fresh fish, order whatever is available that night from the “Big Plates” section 1) because it may not be available next time and 2) because Olson knows what he’s doing with seafood. One night there were sea scallops: five delicately sweet, plump jewels dusted with a hint of paprika, beautifully seared and served alongside butternut squash gnudi (Think lighter, more pillow-y gnocchi made from ricotta rather than potato.), tossed with shiitake mushrooms and spinach and offering all the warmth and earthiness of the season. Another night it was Missouri farm-raised trout, baked in parchment. An aromatic cloud of moist heat escaped from the package as our server sliced it open, revealing a jumble of sliced onions, shallots, bell peppers and potatoes, the latter retaining a bit too much crunch. Underneath, a de-boned fillet was fresh and delicate in flavor, light in texture and infused with the flavors of the vegetables. Sadly, I missed the Atlantic striped bass seared in duck fat by a few weeks.

The tagliatelle is house-made, and the mild Bolognese sausage – with notes of warm cinnamon and nutmeg – is from St. Louis’ own Salume Beddu. Toss with a confit of Roma tomatoes for richness, some fresh arugula for a bitter bite, parsley for a bright spark and a few shavings of Parmesan (because it’s important), and you have the only comfort food you need on a chilly evening.

Dessert fiends can indulge happily. The Jonathan apples in our dessert were grown locally, the puff pastry baked by pastry chef Michael Hood and the salted caramel ice cream made in house. They married for an apple fritter that was salty, sugary, fruity, flaky.

Two sandwiches from the lunch menu carry over to dinner: A cheeseburger made from Missouri grass-fed beef and a porchetta sandwich using Hinkebien Hills Farm’s pork. Both are sinfully rich and indulgent. The open-face burger consists of two 4-ounce patties, topped with melted cheese on house-made brioche with fresh lettuce, tomato and onions. A fine burger, indeed. But the egg-y, buttery, rich bun – combined with the cheese and fixings – drowned the flavor of the meat. A single thicker patty would make a stronger statement. That porchetta is worthy of a separate review, but imagine taking herbed pork, wrapping it with slices of fatty pork belly, slow roasting it until tender and glistening, slicing it thick and serving it on a house-made bun slathered with rapini pesto.

Market Grill recently started serving brunch on weekends, complete with an a la carte menu and breakfast cocktails including a bloody mary menu that lets you choose the ingredients you want in your spicy sipper. (I stopped short of ordering one with a bacon-dipped rim and mixed with bacon vodka and Sriracha.) The bacon is house-cured, gently smoked, thickly sliced and needs to be ordered crispy if that’s how you like it. The sausage has the smooth texture of the German variety rather than that of the rough-cut American breakfast sausage we’re used to. Nothing wrong with that.

Hood also bakes the sourdough rye bread – a loaf so dense, so yeasty, so irresistable, I had to order a second serving. I can’t say the same for the cinnamon roll. It lacked the pungent, spicy punch and gooey stickiness expected of the breakfast pastry. Other morning disppointments: Boring coffee, oversalted hash browns and bland breakfast tacos.

The space still features exposed brick walls and light wood floors and is sectioned into a bar area with tall dining tables, a middle dining area and that sunken room in the back that seems far from the action. It may have been the place to be one night when a raucous crowd of 12th-Night revelers streamed in to use the restrooms and mill around before hitting the streets again. To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield (“I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.”), let’s just say that, just as I was tucking into those scallops, a restaurant review broke out.