Chef Ben Welch is back in St. Louis and has taken the reins at Benton Park brewpub, The Stable, as Evan Benn of the Post-Dispatch reported yesterday.
Working at Overlook Farm in Clarksville about an hour and a half outside St. Louis, Welsh eventually grew tired of the long commute. “I love the farm-to-table thing at Overlook, but I lived there four days a week. That got hard on life,” explained Welch, whose final day with chef Tim Grandinetti and the rest of the kitchen crew at Overlook’s Clarksville Station restaurant was last Sunday.
When asked how the move came about, Welch responded that he knew that The Stable’s management was looking for a chef and that it was a “six-degrees-of-St. Louis thing.”
Welch’s first day at The Stable was yesterday and he’s set his sights on completely overhauling the menu within the next 30 days. Some of the dishes he’ll be cooking up include a pork duo, featuring pork belly confit and pulled pork with Southern braised greens and warm potato salad; “farmers’ market” pizza; chorizo-spiced cured salmon; and vegetarian options along the likes of mushroom risotto. Watch for some of these items to appear as specials as early as next week.
Welch may want to do contemporary American cuisine using French techniques, but will that work at a brewpub? “I’m going to push that and see what I can get away with in a microbrewery,” he said. “I will try to keep it seasonal. Local [products] might be a little out of reach initially, but I want to do local.”
One way the chef is connecting with the brewpub concept is via “lots and lots of cooking with the booze,” Welch said, referring to beer and spirits made on-site by The Stable’s parent company and in-house microbrewery Amalgamated Brewing Co. Chocolate stout cream pie or a beer float, anyone?
This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2010.