Review: Robust Café & Wine Bar in Webster Groves

How cool is it when you dine at a restaurant that has a sommelier? I don’t know why, but I’ve never grown out of the stage where I get giddy, like I’ve just found the answer to life, the universe and everything. I love putting myself in a sommelier’s capable hands and just riding the endorphins brought on by wave after wave of perfectly married flavor.

However, since it is expensive and time-consuming to acquire the knowledge required to slap my taste buds silly for two hours, sommeliers seldom work for free. This means that to partake in the fun, I have to go to an establishment that can afford to pay these wonderful souls a fair salary, which, in turn, generally means expensive food, more expensive wine and trauma to my wallet. At least, that’s what I thought until I wandered into Robust Café & Wine Bar in downtown Webster Groves.

Robust has married the pairing expertise of a sommelier with a casual atmosphere and delicious, affordable food. Although owner Stanley Browne is a certified sommelier, he is not walking the room consulting with diners on their wine selections. Instead, he has divided the wines into eight groups based on body style, rather than varietal, and listed the best pairing groups with each menu item so you have them at your fingertips.

To make it even more accessible, Robust offers 3-ounce tasting portions so that you may refresh your pairing with each new course and not end the night a bottle deep or more. This is a nice touch considering that, with the small-plate format of the menu, you could easily see four or more different items by meal’s end.

It was an especially nice way to enjoy lunch: two courses, each paired with a different wine – and guilt wasn’t even an afterthought. A soft, luscious triple cream Saint André paired wonderfully with a crisp, minerally Sauvignon Blanc. A beefy Crush Pad Cab blend paired with a flatiron steak and hot coppa panini that missed the mark a little: Briny green olives and capers should have brilliantly countered the spicy coppa but were buried literally and figuratively under a mountain of caramelized sweet onions.

On another visit, I seemed to unearth a philosophical flaw in the system that I missed in my initial exuberance: Small plates really promote sharing. Which wine do you choose when you will be eating several different menu items for each course and each of these falls into a different category of suggested pairings? Well, sir or madam, I can tell you it’s quite a conundrum indeed.

I gave it the old college try, but the amount and variety of food to hit the table simply made staying with suggested pairings impossible. Luckily, there seems to be a good margin of error built into the pairing suggestions, as the citrusy Alois Lageder Pinot Bianco and clean, acidic Cabert Pinot Grigio flowed well with the diversity.

Of the meat and cheese variations afforded us, my favorite was a sharp, creamy blue Fourme D’Ambert that I paired with sweet dried fruit and then wrapped tightly in a slice of a smoldering-hot sopresetta. A huge bowl of velvety hummus, feisty feta and pitted kalamata olives only suffered from a shortage of crostini.

Probably the single best dish we had was the chèvre, mozzarella and Fontina flatbread. These creamy cheeses rode atop one of the most perfectly crunchy and chewy crusts that I have come across, and they hit the palate in a satiny wave, punctuated by the fresh basil, sweet roasted garlic and floral olive oil.

Had the skin on the roast breast of chicken been crispier, it could have rivaled the pizza. The meat was tender and juicy and sat atop sweet apples with rich pancetta, all sauced with a Riesling reduction that tasted of honey. Bright, firm cubes of tuna tartare glistened like rubies atop a bit too much avocado (it just seemed to outduel the tuna) surrounded by a drizzle of an amazing sauce. Imagine wasabi syrup, sweet and savory but with just the tiniest breath of that sinus-clearing wasabi kick. I can’t stop thinking about it; it haunts my dreams.

I enjoyed the service. Servers do a good job of explaining how the pairings work and making you feel comfortable. Courses were well-timed, but things sometimes fumbled a bit when the wine arrived at the same time as the food. In the end, though, what can I say except that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute I spent in Robust. It makes me feel good to know that this much thought has gone into a wine program that is accessible to so many people. And the best part is, if you find a wine you love at dinner, there is a shop attached where you might just find a souvenir (wink, wink) to take home with you.