First Look: Yellowbelly in the Central West End

The highly anticipated Yellowbelly will celebrate its grand opening Monday, Sept. 17, at 4643 Lindell Blvd., in the Citizen Park Building in the Central West End, with limited, soft-opening hours this weekend.

As Sauce reported in December 2017, the team behind Retreat, Travis Howard and Tim Wiggins, will offers a playful, Polynesian-inspired menu created by consulting celebrity chef Richard Blais.

The menu incorporates ocean flavors in St. Louis-friendly dishes like the punny Chicken of the Sea-sar Salad made with confit tuna and Macar-Uni Salad. “We want to keep things familiar while trying to be completely new and different at the same time,” Howard said.

Read More: Yellowbelly brings modern, tropical tiki flavors to St. Louis

While Blais will visit often, executive chef Jason Gethin will helm Yellowbelly’s day-to-day kitchen operations. Gethin previously worked for a different “Top Chef” winner (Brian Malarkey) before relocating to his native St. Louis for Yellowbelly. He is joined by sous chef Kate Wagoner, a longtime collaborator with Blais (they Facetime daily).

“The goal is to have a very collaborative process,” Howard said.

Wiggins will helm the bar with his signature modern tiki cocktails (more clean, sophisticated tropical flavors than kitschy sugar bombs).

“The whole menu trends toward savory, vegetal, briny flavors because that’s what goes well with the food,” Wiggins said in a recent Sauce article. “The cocktails and food will be very cohesive and use a lot of similar ingredients and techniques.”

Yellowbelly will be open daily from 4 p.m. to midnight.

Heather Hughes is managing editor at Sauce Magazine.