Niche Taps Mike Sweeney for Beer Consulting

Niche BeerAs the craft beer market has expanded, so to have the requests that top-tier restaurants take as much care in assembling their beer lists as they do for their wines.  In an effort to address this and expand the beer selections in his restaurants, Gerard Craft of Niche has today tapped Mike Sweeney to consult on the beer lists for Niche, Niche Taste Bar, and the soon to open BRASSERIE by Niche.  Most know Sweeney as the owner of the popular St. Louis beer blog and forum, STL Hops.  In speaking with Sweeney this morning, he was excited about the news and stated that the goal is for each space to have its own list of beers to complement the food coming from each restaurant’s kitchen.  As one might imagine, at BRASSERIE this will mean a strong focus on French and Belgian styles.  For those looking for more esoteric selections, however, Sweeney also stated that Craft’s vision is that Niche Taste Bar will be the one place where the rules are “anything goes”.

Full Disclosure: As most know, Mike Sweeney is one of my closest, personal, friends.

Ah Ha! A Newbie’s Wine List or: How I Managed to Post Twice in One Day

2004 Westside Road NeighborsIn March of this year, Josh Galliano and I dined at the Niche bar together.  Throughout our meal customers of Niche, who were also customers of Monarch’s, regularly came up to say hello. To my great fortune, a particularly generous customer added to his hello a bottle of 2004 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors Pinot Noir and with that, my Ah Ha wine moment had happened, and a new chapter of my life began. Thanks Jeff L.

Certainly I’d had good wine before, and I definitely preferred it as my libation of choice with a meal.  Outside of restaurants, however, I’d been primarily a beer drinker because I could not only wrap my head around beer, I could afford it.  I had no idea what Williams Selyem was that night and, if the wallop of flavor were any indicator, I was pretty damn sure it was a winery producing a product well outside my price range.  Arriving home and doing a bit of googling, however, I found a bottle at Brown Derby, in Springfield, MO, for $55.  While I realize that’s not cheap by any means, it was significantly less than I’d anticipated, and I immediately purchased it and two other bottles of Williams Selyem Zinfandel to tuck away into my cellar (AKA the cool/dark corner of my basement).

The slippery slope of oenophilia had landed and, where once I was a guy that simply knew he liked wine more than beer but felt he couldn’t afford it, I quickly became a guy that reads a dozen wine blogs a day and voraciously clamors for information.  Which brings us, windingly, to my poorly written point: One of those posts was written by Stephen Schenkenberg on stlmag.com about his favorite wine books and websites.  It’s a good list but, as a newcomer to this world of wine, I thought I’d offer up a newbie’s perspective (which you can read here in it’s shiny-new polite form, or as an stlmag comment in it’s original, several glasses in, grammatically incorrect–but possibly more entertaining–form)

Read the rest of this entry »

#stl Foodies Look Forward to Another Niche

Niche Tweet

No longer a rumor, Chef Gerard Craft announced via Twitter last night that he has officially secured the Chez Leon space in the Central West End.  Having spoken to him two weeks ago, he’d confirmed his interest in the space, but an agreement had not then been reached.  The hopeful plan was a quick turn around to get the restaurant open quickly, and some additional weekend tweaking to get things just the way he’d like them.

Now official, he confirmed last night that they’d be “shooting to open Nov 1” and that the restaurant “will be called BRASSERIE by niche just as BOUCHON defines the style of the restaurant.”

He also commented that because of the use of Brasserie, the French word for brewery, “a much stronger beer list” would also be in the works.

taste. by niche

taste_drinks taste_eats

Niche Taste Bar is, without question, the hippest thing that has ever opened in St. Louis.

Goshen Coffee @ Foundation Grounds

LOGO_Goshen.jpg

And in still more local coffee news, Ian Froeb and Melody Meiners of toastedrav.com reported that Foundation Grounds is now open in Maplewood. Between the two of them they covered most of the W’s (like it’s being Green) except for one: Foundation Grounds is another Missouri notch for Edwardsville’s Goshen Coffee.

Continuing to increase their West-Side presence, their drip and espresso coffees are becoming increasingly easy to find around town as prominent spots like Pi, Winslow’s Home, Local Harvest Cafe, The Good Pie and Niche turn to them for service.

Notes

1. I spotted hardback copies of one of my favorite foodie books, The Apprentice by Jacques Pepin, on the discount racks of the Creve Coeur Borders.  I can’t possibly recommend it enough.  It’s incredibly interesting as a whole but, with Pepin’s insane skill, the really interesting bits are his years at Howard Johnson’s.

It’s hard to imagine a time when people were attempting to make chain food that actually stood up to some level of high standards.

2. Guanciale.  Salume Beddu was slinging some made with Fararr Out Farm Berkshire jaws at Tower Grove recently and it is delicious.

Toast some good bread, render some up like lardons, and top it with arugula and a fried egg cooked in the rendered fat for the ultimate (and fast) after-work snack.

3. Grits.  I’d been unimpressed by Revival’s in the past, but this week, cheesy grits baked in a dish and topped with a slice of ham and a sunny-side up egg were absolutely perfect.  It doesn’t get much better than egg yolk running over anything.

4. Getting much better…the Fat of stlbites.com has made an appearance at Niche.  Lamb belly is now the final savory course of the tasting menu and it’s ridiculously good–everything a solitary slice of tender lamb gut was meant to be.

Lamb – mushroom, cauliflower, tapenade (& Brussels Sprouts when I had it)

5. A guilty pleasure: Chicken Modega and a side of white cavatelli at the Town & Country Rich & Charlie’s.  Bonus: it was $28 for two of us to eat.  Bonus 2: That Rich & Charlie’s is BYOB. Bonus 3: It was enough for lunch the next day too.

Artisan What?

cottage cheese

If you love cheese (and I totally do) you know what Cowgirl Creamery is. You would also know it’s a bitch to get any in St. Louis unless you feel like ponying up some serious dough by paying as much to ship the wedges of perfection as you did for the wedges. I, personally, do not. Maybe I could afford it, but I can get plenty of rocking cheese locally without going to all that effort and I’m kind of lazy.

And so I was elated a few weeks ago to see that amongst Niche’s vastly expanded cheese selection was a Cowgirl Creamery cheese. Oddly, it was cottage cheese. I, at least, had never seen an artisan cottage cheese until that moment. I had to have it. I love cottage cheese. In fact, love really doesn’t scratch the surface of my enjoyment of the stuff. When I shop for it, I pick the containers up and shake them like others manhandle ripe fruit to see which one is freshest. Somewhere in that dairy cooler I know there is one specimen filled with so much milk-juice–and it’s invariably the sourest.

As for Cowgirl’s, sad to say, it did not treat this cheese-head right. With a tight curd it was incredibly dry and it lacked the sourness I long for. I suppose that might make it the perfect entryway for the cottage cheese haters amongst you.

Other Restaurant Stuff

From the same source as the Andy White news I’d also heard that Brian Hale was parting ways with Monarch on less than savory terms. As I didn’t think that was the case, I just got off the phone with Hale who confirmed that the parting of ways is cordial between all parties. He will be moving on to take over all three kitchens at the Chase Park Plaza.

Of course no sooner than getting of the phone with him did I notice Joe Bonwich’s post out-scooping me to the same information just minutes ago. He also mentioned another oft-heard rumor about Gerard Craft spreading his wings a little further by picking up the old Melange space in the Central West End.

Edit: Actually Sauce Magazine seems to have out-scooped everyone including more information about who will be taking over the Monarch Kitchen to what they’re doing with the old Balaban’s space.

Edit 2: See where all this gossip gets us?  Ian Froeb has the whole story from Monarch co-owner Jeff Orbin over on Gut Check.

Slow Food Art of Food Menu

This is why you want to buy tickets for Art of Food

222 Artisan Bakery / Goshen Coffee – Debbie Sultan / Matt Herren

  • 222 Artisan breads in roll form: bacon, brioche, and sun dried tomato olive and feta
  • Goshen-roasted Costa Rican pour-over drip coffee

Bailey’s Chocolate Bar / Rooster – Robin Murphy

  • Fruitland roast beef sandwich with red onion marmalade and herbed Heartland Creamery goat cheese on a housemade roll
  • Bailey’s buttercream chocolate bar cake

An American Place – Joshua Galliano

  • Prairie Grass Farms lamb and foie gras ballotine, apple mustard, chickpea salad, saba

Annie Gunn’s – Lou Rook III

  • Duroc pork belly confit on Companion brioche roll with Atomic horseradish mustard and house made local peach chutney

Araka – Mark Curran

  • Prairie Grass Farms housemade sausages
  • Local heirloom tomato salad

Erato on Main – Kevin Willmann

  • House smoked Guthrie Farms chicken with local vegetable chow chow

Local Harvest Grocery – Clara Moore

  • Housemade hummus served on local cucumber circles and local tomatoes tossed with fresh pesto and served on Companion crostinis

Moxy Bistro – Eric Brenner

  • Duck breast with grilled peaches

Niche – Gerard Craft

  • Slow-roasted Greenwood Farms pork butt sandwiches with brussel sprout slaw on Companion bread

Schlafly Bottleworks – Matt Bessler

  • Schlafy “Gardenworks” beet and Arugula salad
  • Troutdale Farms smoked Trout Mousse with English cucumber cups
  • Bacon-wrapped Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork tenderloin with Schlafy pale ale raspberry BBQ sauce

Sidney Street Café – Kevin Nashan

  • Hinkebein Hills Farm smoked pork butt with cornmeal “toast”, Eilerman Brothers peach bbq glaze, Claverach Farm greens and pickled peaches
  • On the Wind Farms watermelon gazpacho with jumbo lump crab

Veruca – Mathew Rice

  • Local peach and lavender trifles

If you were cool…

you would be at Mad Art Gallery this Saturday for Slow Food St. Louis’s annual fund raiser, The Art of Food.

Art of Food

Full event details are at artoffood.org though what you’ll really want to know is who the chefs are:

Debbie Sultan & Matt Herren – 222 Artisan Bakery and Goshen Coffee
Joshua Galliano – An American Place
Lou Rook – Annie Gunn’s
Mark Curran – Araka
David Bailey – Bailey’s Chocolate Bar and Rooster
Kevin Willmann – Erato on Main
Eric Brenner – Moxy Bistro
Gerard CraftNiche
Matt Bessler – Schlafly Bottleworks
Kevin Nashan – Sidney Street Cafe
Mathew Rice – Veruca

and possibly more to come…