Review: Grbic in St. Louis

Grbic, at the South St. Louis intersection where Keokuk runs into Meramec, east of Gravois and south of Chippewa, provides eastern European fare that many of us miss and hardly any of us have seen on a restaurant menu in a long time.

Equally as important, the Grbic family has taken the old Bailey Farms Dairy building and given it a stylish, old-fashioned look that goes back to the days when real craftsmen and artisans walked the earth and left St. Louis much of its beauty. A huge fireplace dominates a rear corner, and among the antiques placed here and there is a small organ that displays lovely woodwork. The brick walls are dotted with stones that reminded me of the Chicago Tribune building on Michigan Avenue where the late Col. Robert McCormick inserted stones, plaques and other memorabilia that marked important days in history.

Service is leisurely, but friendly, and part of the reason for the pacing may be a kitchen where almost everything seems freshly prepared.

The menu displays eastern European dishes like goulash, schnitzel, veal cordon bleu, stuffed cabbage, the spicy smoked beef sausage cevapi (or cevapcipi), veal and chicken shish-kebabs known as shashlik in the late, great Russian Tea Room in New York, but also has a handful of pasta dishes, chicken piccata, scallopine and parmesan, a few steaks, grilled chicken breast, grilled salmon in a dill cream sauce, tilapia in lemon-caper-wine sauce, shrimp in lemon and garlic and even a couple of vegetarian entrees, eggplant parmesan and cauliflower schnitzel, or breaded cauliflower and cheese in tomato sauce.

Speaking of tomatoes, they bring considerable flavor to a tasty, garlicky marinara sauce that is used a lot. We saw it involved with mussels as an appetizer and, of course, with pasta and some outstanding meatballs, big and fat and meaty, almost the size of baseballs, with a texture that showed just enough hand-kneading.

Fat, juicy, tasty mussels certainly aren't an eastern European mainstay, nor are spicy chicken wings, but both are on the Grbic menu, and there is no reason to limit what the restaurant can do merely in the interest of ethnic authenticity. The mussels were splendid, and the sauce helped them.

Other appetizers run the gamut from smoked salmon and shrimp de Jonghe to toasted ravioli.

A couple of visits provided a good range of flavors, at moderate prices.

An old and dear friend, a schnitzel and goulash lover from his Viennese childhood, has been in a mood to mope because his goulash supply had dried up. All it took was the mention of the word and he was bright and lively and ready to roll. And the goulash is very good, hearty with meat and tomatoes and homemade spaetzle, all nicely spiced and enriched by a thick gravy. By the way, the menu's use of the word "gravy" instead of the more effete "sauce" shows exactly what Grbic is all about. To whet the appetite a trifle more, try the goulash soup, a thinner and lighter version, but with good flavor.

The stuffed cabbage was delicious, tender cabbage leaves packed with ground beef and rice, with a similar red gravy to help the mashed potatoes, which were pretty ordinary.

Grbic serves two types of schnitzel, the standard veal and what the menu calls "Parisiane schnitzel," of either chicken or veal in a lighter breading. It was delicious, the batter easy to handle and not much thicker than a Japanese tempura batter. The veal was juicy, tender and tasty, and instead of buttered potatoes, we were served oven-roasted potatoes that were cut into small pieces and browned nice and crispy. Splendid.

Another winner was the cevapci sausage, peppery and garlicky, about as thick as the stogies smoked by Clint Eastwood in his Italian Western days, and close to the same dark color. They're home-made, and a wonderful treat for a sausage lover, though not in the German style that many of us are most familiar with.

Many entrees come with salads, and the salad lover can enjoy the Grbic salad, a fine mixture of romaine, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese (feta on one occasion, mozzarella on another) and turkey bacon, which adds a surprising and smoky flavor. The turkey bacon was sorely missed on a visit when it was forgotten.

There's a limited wine selection, though an Australian shiraz made a pleasant addition to the meal.

Desserts also are cross-cultural, with cheesecake and tiramisu joining baklava, apple strudel and palacinke, a Bosnian dessert of crepes filled with whipped cream and topped with a hit of chocolate sauce and some nuts. Very good. Strudel was satisfactory, though not up to the standard set by my grandmother, and baklava was excellent, better for not being as overpoweringly sweet as many I've sampled.