Soulard's Wine Dinner: We're Choking it Down!

The excitement was palpable when I discovered a little nugget in the newspaper about a Napa Valley & Santa Barbara wine dinner being hosted by Soulard's restaurant during the week that Jay and I were taking time off from work. Many of the events that we've recently discovered are held on Wednesday evenings ... this is doubly frustrating because in the first place Jay typically works until 10PM on Wednesdays; and in the second place, who the hell wants to eat a five course dinner with wine after spending ten hours at work only to get up at 5AM the following morning to go back to work even surlier than the previous day?

This staying up late to eat and drink and drive home during the work-week thing sounded way more enjoyable when it wasn't going to be our work-week. We booked this dinner near the end of April and proceeded to count down the days because the menu sounded particularly delicious and we are nothing if not food-dreaming, crumb-licking, bonafide piggies ... especially when it comes to seafood, and three of the five courses listed on Soulard's wine dinner menu were of the fishie variety.

Shortly before leaving the house we snapped a picture ... just to ensure that the camera was still working.

Self portrait with a secret cash message from our TV.


The Soulard area is a well-known, well-aged downtown St. Louis neighborhood that is home to a very large, popular farmer's market on summer weekends as well as many bars and small eateries. The St. Louis area's weak and gammy-handed version of Mardi Gras is also held in Soulard ... the beer flows amidst the snows and the streets are wet with urine. I do not advise anyone to ever visit St. Louis for Mardi Gras ... go to New Orleans for the real deal where the streets are always wet with urine but the food and booze are so much better that no one really cares.

Soulard's restaurant is located in the heart of Soulard (duh, right?) and it is a long haul indeed from our cozy love nest on the outer fringes of Stinktown. To make the evening more exciting, there were severe thunderstorms popping all over the area with wild winds and big hail and wicked lightning. Driving in St. Louis during good weather will try the patience of a saint; just try getting anywhere during rush hour while it's raining ... it's like asking a lobotomized neurosurgeon to excise a brain tumor.

Once we arrived at the restaurant ... about 15 minutes before the dinner was supposed to start ... we were offered a glass of wine and taken to our table which the gentleman seating us described as a quiet, romantic spot just for two. We were seated at a nice little table in an alcove off the main dining room and right in front of the fireplace, which wasn't in use on this evening. Shortly thereafter a server bopped over with a plate of truly gorgeous bruchetta; although there were six good-sized pieces on the tray, Jay and I were polite and took one apiece, assuming that there would be ample opportunity for us to nab more if we were so inclined.

What's that old saying about making assumptions?

Ah well, before I get ahead of myself let me tell you fine folks that this was the one item on the menu that I was most skeptical of and was therefore most pleasantly surprised by. The Passed Cordon Bleu Bruchetta was hot and creamy with just a hint of garlic - it was tremendously tasty and really whet our appetites for the meal to come. It also tasted very good with our first wine of the evening, which was a Napa Ridge Sauvignon Blanc, 2006.

In retrospect I suppose we should have savored the bruchetta a little more and chewed each bite one hundred times before swallowing because nary another was to be offered for the rest of the night even though it would be another 45 minutes before course number two made an appearance. The staff was exceptionally generous with the wine all evening, plying us with refills whether we asked for them or not, but they were less than liberal with the food. I dunno, maybe the 'passed' in Passed Cordon Bleu Bruchetta meant something like, "Is that a platter of bruchetta I see being passed before me?"

Apparently we weren't the only patrons asking for more only to be denied, although at first Jay and I wondered if we were being singled out for some weird reason. Each guest was given exactly one piece of bruchetta and by gawd that had just better be enough because the kitchen was unwilling or unable to provide more.

The first course: Cordon Bleu Bruchetta


We had time to take some additional pictures before our quiet little alcove became a cone of unsilence with the arrival of a party of ten middle-to-older-aged people who didn't know how to hold their booze in a public setting. These people were so loud that later in the evening Jay and I actually tested our Belch With Impunity Theory to great success.

If I show some cleaves can we have more bruchetta?

Table setting ... look at all those glasses!

Our alcove was pretty cool, wasn't it?


We were so hungry waiting for the second course to arrive that we decimated all the "plain" bread that was nestled in a little basket on our table. We asked our server for a refill only to be told that they were out of bread.

How in the name of all that is yeasty does a restaurant run out of bread?

And keep in mind that they were also serving their "usual" menu on this night in addition to providing the wine dinner for upwards of 50 guests. Poor planning and poor service ... we were not impressed. Before either one of us could get too sidetracked about Soulard's lack of bread, however, our second course was delivered: Grilled Sea Scallops over Sauteed Spinach with Lemon Beurre Blanc Sauce served with a 2006 Santa Barbara Crossing Chardonnay. I was so looking forward to this course, especially after having had such unexpectedly wonderful scallops at the Scottish Arms on Sunday night.

I never should have forgotten the first rule of Stinktown seafood: Lower Your Standards.

My scallops were chewy and gritty with no discernable taste - the spinach added nothing but bitterness and the sauce was a total non-factor. All in all a truly disappointing entry from where I sat. And although he's not typically as critical as I am, Jay even went so far as to admit that he's definitely had better food - he sautees spinach here at the house and gets far more tasty flavor than we had with this course. The chardonnay was not very good with this dish, either; it tasted OK by itself but really warred with the lemon sauce and the spinach ... not at all a pleasant taste experience.

It looks way better than it tastes ... and that's not saying much


Now, this next picture requires both an explanation and an apology. So, I'm sorry in advance. Anyway, after using my knife for buttering the bread of which there was no more and then for the slicing of my not-very-well-prepared scallops, I placed it in the middle of the plate with my fork so that it could be taken away with the rest of the dirty dishes.

And then our waiter said, "You may want to keep that for the next course."

WHAT???

Where's the horrified, hair-on-end, screaming emoticon when you need it?

You're not going to give us clean silverware for each course; did you run out of cutlery at the same time you ran out of bread???

My opinion was hurtling dangerously downhill faster than Bode Miller on a three-day drinking binge in the Swiss Alps.

Gimme a new knife and no one gets hurt!


We were holding out hope for the next course, ahi tuna, when it made an appearance and dashed our hopes all to hell. The menu described it as follows: Black Pepper Crusted Ahi Tuna, Pan Seared Medium Rare, Sliced, with Baby Greens and Vodka Vinaigrette served with 2005 Oasis Pinot Noir.

Sounds promising, no?

Our tuna was over-cooked ... it was not medium rare, it was medium and even that's a stretch. It was chewy and not at all sweet and light like the seared ahi we've had in the past. Jeezum Crow, we've had better seared ahi tuna at P. F. Changs and that's a freaking chain restaurant! The tuna was also far too peppery and had it been cooked properly that would have been a real detriment; as it was, it was more of an annoyance than anything else. I will say that the Pinot Noir was actually very good - nice and fruity and not at all the kind of red that would give a cranky crohn a headache.

We did get a huge chuckle out of the loudies at the table across from us who not only had never eaten seared tuna, but had never eaten anything that pink before in their lives. I peeked and friends ... there was no pink tuna on that lady's plate.

Ah, Stinktown ... if it ain't beef and cooked to the point of cremation, it ain't worth eating.

This was a total, unmitigated disaster

I think it's safe to say that by the time the entree showed up we were both, in the timeless words of Dick Button, waiting for it to be over. This dish was an Exotic Mushroom Crusted Grouper with Rock Shrimp Risotto and Tarragon Butter served with a 2006 Reserve Napa Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon. To be fair, the grouper was actually pretty good once I scraped off the mushroom crust and shoveled it over to Jay's plate. The size of the fish was generous and it appeared to be well cooked and had a nice flavor. The risotto was clumpy and sticky and gacky and there was exactly one shrimp in my serving. Granted, the title of the dish wasn't rock shrimps risotto, but I don't think it was unreasonable for me to expect more than one shrimp. I didn't try the cabernet at all since I still had half a glass of pinot noir, but Jay said it was decent.

Grouper and exactly one shrimp ...

I eagerly anticipated the final course, Chocolate Mousse served with Delapierre Sparkling Seco; after all, it's an easy dessert to make and would require a real dedication to failure on the part of the kitchen staff to screw up.

Kudos to failure, then, because this was the worst chocolate mousse it's ever been our misfortune to stick a spoon into. I could tell as soon as the dish was placed before me that something was wrong ... the consistency was far too thick and sticky. I plunged my spoon into the middle and it was just like pulling an electric beater from half-mixed cake batter. And the Seco was terrible - it was dry and bitter and the taste did not improve with the chocolate.

Looks like pudding to me.

This is just wrong.


At one point our server did come back and ask me how I liked the dessert ... I shocked him, Jay, and myself by being brutally honest. "This is really bad - the worst mousse I've ever tried to eat."

He looked a little surprised but then admitted that no one in the kitchen had tried the dessert before it was plated - quality control seems to have been lacking all night if you ask me. He reappeared later and told me that he'd tried some in the back and was very sorry for just how unappealing it was. In his words, "it tasted like crap."

We didn't receive a discount off the bill, however; I guess that's because everyone got a bad dessert so it was only fair to charge us all for the same disgusting mess. While we waited for our check, the noise level from the party of ten continued to grow. Jay boldly decided to test his Burping Impunity Theory and actually began belching out loud at the table to see if anyone could hear him. Apart from me ... and I was giggling like the immature wifey that I am ... no one seemed to hear anything. I'm here to tell you that my husband can rock the rafters with his esophageal emissions and no one turned a hair because those ten people were so loud and so drunk that they completely drowned him out.

We were happy to leave and head back home, sadder and a little poorer, but definitely wiser and believe it or not in a good mood. Despite the bad food we'd actually had a pretty good time, finding as much to laugh at as we possibly could. The really sad part is that the overall meal was so poor I had no choice but to ask Jay to stop at Wendy's on the way home so that I could expunge the taste of dinner with an impossible to screw up single burger with cheese.

Ah, cheeseburgers ... is there anything they can't do?

All I can say in conclusion is that Soulard's kitchen must have had one hell of a bad night. I hope that's all it was but it doesn't really matter because we will not be going back and will caution our friends and acquaintances not to spend their hard earned money there. Not impressive ... not good ... not worth choking down a second time.