Review: The Tuxedo Room in St. Louis

Guy's perspective

I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Grand, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blond, and whether you looked at her face or her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory. “Are you Nick Charles?”
she asked.

I said: “No.”

She held out her hand. “I’m Dorothy Wynant. You don’t remember me, but you ought to remember my father, Clyde Wynant.”

My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said Scotch and soda. I ordered two of them and said: “What the in the hell are you talking about, lady?”

I took a gulp of Scotch, looked around and blinked. This was not a speakeasy. I was not in “The Thin Man” and married to Nora Charles. I was in Midtown at The Tuxedo Room. But, if I continued drinking Scotch, and if I squinted real hard, The Tuxedo Room – neighbor to the Fox Theatre (opened 1929), Powell Symphony Hall (1925) and The Continental Building (1928) – could be straight out of Prohibition-era St. Louis.

If you appreciate a Dashiell Hammett novel and sing along to “Chicago” while drinking a dry martini shaken to the rhythm of a waltz, then The Tuxedo Room lounge is your spot. It comes strong for socialites over 40.

The Tuxedo Room’s well-dressed (blazers and dresses) crowd ebbs and flows with the performing arts hordes. Preshow, the bar crowd grows to a decent size. When the curtains rise up the street, it’ll just be you and the celebrity caricatures that circle the room below the ceiling. Post-show, things peak.

It’s fascinating to peer out the lounge’s large windows and watch the Fox crowd spill onto Grand, many into this bar. Because of the timing, most of the crowd misses the best part of The Tuxedo Room: top-notch lounge music. Gene Lynn and quality-yet-unknown-to-me acts gently croon until about 11 p.m. Later, the DJ begins spinning. It’s here that a major flaw in the lounge’s image shows.

What the hell is corner dance floor Studio One? The glass walls and disco lights seem more America’s Pub than Grand Center. People do not want to dance in a fish tank. The live music stage is smashed between the lounge and dining room. I say kill Studio One, move the stage where Studio One was and give the loungers a genuine view of the live music.

The beer selection is nothing to write home about. The cocktail menu is ordinary. (Why do we even need cocktail menus anymore?) The drinks are small-portioned but well-mixed. As of press time, the wine list was only available from the servers’ memories. The Stag’s Leap Petite Syrah is incredible. If only my server had told me it was $12 a glass before my date and I downed six glasses. The Continental food menu is upscale. It’s damn cool to be able to order surf and turf at 11:49 p.m. Not many places can claim that.

The straight 411 ...
For Midtown pre/post-show cocktails mixed with the charming drunken ghost of Prohibition, head to The Tuxedo Room.

Gal's perspective

So, my first five minutes at The Tuxedo Room weren’t the best. I stepped into the bathroom only to find most of the stalls devoid of toilet paper. I then headed over to the sink to wash my hands only to have the soap spray out a good 3 feet from the dispenser and all over my pants. But I decided to push on and see what this venue had to offer aside from menacing bathroom antics.

The bar area has a seedy yet cheesy appeal. The barmaids wear garters under their too-short skirts and have a slight air of superiority. When I asked for a wine menu, I was told that there was no wine menu yet, then was pretty much left to guess what The Tuxedo Room had to offer. To be on the safe side I stuck with bottled Bud Light, which it ran out of at 7:30 on an uncrowded evening.

The bar does have a theater-themed menu of drinks, appropriate for its proximity to the Fox Theatre, including the Phantom of the Opera, made of Blavod black vodka and Pama pomegranate liqueur, and the Dirty Rotten Scoundrel, which is basically a dirty martini made of Level vodka, but the name still makes it more fun.

The food menu carries on the stage theme. Courses are offered in “acts,” so you can choose Reggie’s Escargot for an Act I opener, First Lady Carmen’s Upside Down Cobb Salad for Act II, and for your entrée, or Act III, Critic’s Choice White Tie Lobster Tail and Tenderloin With Tuxedo Escoffier Sauce. I imagine dessert would be the encore, if there were a dessert menu. The food offerings seem enticing for the black-tie crowd that would grace the restaurant before a gala affair at Powell Symphony Hall.

Private parties can score a little privacy in the area that is thought to have been an old speakeasy. A wine cellar and cigar humidor style the area so patrons can sit back to swig and smoke while trying to channel the rebelliousness of the old speakeasy clientele.

The entertainment at The Tuxedo Room is lively. On a slow Tuesday, a piano player and soloist act playing lounge-lizard music proved very entertaining while performing “Fly Me to the Moon.” A small dance area named Studio One featuring a DJ booth is hoping to draw the younger Washington Avenue crowd. At around 11 p.m. the dance floor opens and the turntables spin techno, an interesting choice for an establishment seeking the appearance of refinement.

One of the most entertaining nights I spent at The Tuxedo Room was knocking back cocktails while watching patrons over at the Fox repeatedly try to enter through a locked door on the front entrance of the theater. Terrible to revel in someone else’s mistakes, but watching the beleaguered theatergoers proved very amusing.

Overall, I would say that The Tuxedo Room is a great place to stop in before attending a performance at the Fox or Powell Hall, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit.

The straight 411 ...
An interesting venue that will entertain you prior to curtain call or well after the encore of an event in Grand Center.