For this month’s Five Questions, Byron Kerman spoke with Claus Schmitz, owner and chef of several restaurants throughout the St. Louis area, including new downtown steakhouse Prime 1000. The first part of the interview is in the December issue of Sauce. Here’s the rest. There’s some really inventive stuff on the Prime 1000 menu, like Maine lobster shots in a popcorn emulsion with caramel-roasted peanuts and green curry. How do you come up with something like that? I can’t take all the credit. Executive chef Benjamin Lester and chef de cuisine Ray Carpenter and I all worked on the menu together. In fact, my ideas don’t always win. I’m very privileged to have these guys on board.
The Mosaic kitchen is open till 2 a.m., Thursday to Saturday nights. What’s a great late-night tapas to order? Late-night food tends to be deep-fried. Our most popular one is probably the potstickers. People love them with a little satay sauce. You eat them with your fingers, and everybody’s happy.
What are the best tapas dishes to share? Scallops are great to share. There are three of them on the plate, though, so if there are two of you, you may have to cut one in half. Also, the roast chicken we slice for you so you can share it. You don’t have to work so hard.
Where is the tapas concept going these days? Tapas has been around for 200, 250 years in Europe, particularly Southern Europe. And it has been in the U.S. for 15, 20 years. I believe that tapas is so healthy and easy and social to enjoy. Nowadays, if you do things really well, honestly, it doesn’t matter if they’re less authentic. That’s why we’ve been staying popular and successful. We’ll have six restaurants by June of next year, although not all of them are tapas.
What’s your favorite German food? My favorite is schnitzel and sausages. My mom used to make it.
What would you like to see happen downtown next? What we haven’t been able to do downtown is attract and retain a substantial retail store, not just boutiques. Big national retailers attract bigger crowds and younger crowds. Let’s get an IKEA down here.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2010.