Monarch ... It's More Than a Butterfly or a Sovereign

Courtesy of one last restaurant.com gift certificate and just in time for our 10th wedding anniversary, Jay and I found ourselves with a dinner reservation at Monarch, a trendy little "see-and-be-seen" kind of place on the outer fringes of Clayton. We've noticed lately that all the establishments we've dined at like to promote their affiliation with "local growers of organic and environmentally friendly produce" ... unfortunately when confronted with such highfalutin pre-menu language Jay and I tend to snicker and roll our eyes a lot. Please don't try so hard to impress us before we've had a chance to even look at your food offerings.

Monarch has a more formal dining room, which is where Jay and I dined, but they also have a bar where patrons can order from a more "relaxed" menu, if that makes any sense. Apparently the bar is the place to be if you are young, enjoy networking, and have delusions of grandeur. Since Jay and I are nothing if not crotchety loners, the hushed, dim dining room was obviously the place for us. I actually felt a little conspicuous when we first sat down at our table, undoubtedly a combination of my dress not fitting well (note to self ... please lose weight, pronto!) and a lot of rather elderly, grumpy looking guests scattered about the room. I very nearly didn't take any pictures at all but Jay encouraged me to shrug off my self-consciousness ... the flash isn't that bright, after all, and your friendies will never forgive you if you don't post food porn.

Monarch does offer a four-course tasting menu, but everyone at the table has to participate and two of the four courses being offered just didn't sound appealing to me or my intestinal tract, so Jay and I ordered ala carte. One thing that we both thought was cool about their tasting menu was that along with the standard wine pairing with each course it also included an option to pair each course with a specialty cocktail.

Damn!

I wish the tasting menu had been more appetizing because a food and cocktail pairing would have been awesome! I think I will file this idea away for future reference and try it at home one weekend with my lovey and some friends.

To start the evening off we were presented with a happy mouth gift from the chef: Gazpacho with Calamari.

Excuse me, but someone drowned a squid in my soup.


The gazpacho was actually very good - cool and salty with a few small tomato bits bobbing lazily in the bowl. It was most definitely not cold salsa, which I swear is what the Spain booth served us at the Food & Wine Festival back in 2004. As for the calamari ... it seemed like a generous portion for an amuse bouche, but I do not eat squid and asked Jay to get all those tentacles out of my bowl before I blew tomato chunks across the dining room floor.

After all the wine - some of it not very good - we had the night before at Soulard's I was not in the mood for more grape juice, so I spent a lot of time perusing Monarch's cocktail listing ... all eight of them. I kid you not, there were only eight drinks listed on their cocktail menu. I finally asked our server if the bartender could make me a pomegranate martini and she responded with a less than encouraging, "Well, if they can't, I'm sure they'll come up with something good."

Don't try to con Bendy ... Stinktown isn't so backwards that you can't find PAMA at the grocery store. Give me some ice, a cocktail shaker, and some vodka and I'll show that barely bearded baby behind the bar how to make a girly martini!

My eventual drink was something called Xanadu, and while it was a tad more citrusy than I am accustomed to in a pomegranate martini, it was still quite good. When it was first delivered to the table it was chock full of ice chips and I liked how they kept the drink cool for a long time while gently diluting some of the alcohol, which was very strong. I was also very grateful that the delivery of this drink was not accompanied by the soundtrack from Xanadu.

Excuse me, but now someone's drowned an orange in my drink.


I started the evening off with a Peeky Toe Crab Salad for my appetizer. Oh my, this was just delicious! A very large crab cake resting in a small puddle of tomato / vinegar dressing and garnished with arugula and "local" greens ... the taste of sweet, delicate crab mixed with tart vinegar-tomato was wonderful.

Peek-a-boo ... I'm gonna eat you!


Jay ordered Oyster Chowder to begin his meal. The chow-dah had lots of potato chunks along with slippery, slimy oyster bits, bacon, snow peas, and horrible 'shrooms in a creamy, dreamy broth. He liked this very much and that, my friends, is all you've got to go on because not only do I not eat squid, I don't eat oysters, either. I have a fundamental problem eating anything that looks like someone in the kitchen had a bad cold and sneezed in the soup.

Chowin' on the Chow-dah!


Do you guys know just how badly I wanted to order the scallops for dinner? But after the prior night's scallop disaster there was no way I was going to roll the Stinktown Seafood dice again so I chose the Strip Steak with Creamy Potatoes and Vegetable Goulash - hold the icky 'shrooms!

Ummm, did you just slaughter the cow in the back lot?


When I ordered this dish I requested my steak medium - it was delivered much more rare than I am accustomed to eating my meat and I considered sending it back. However, I decided that I should give it a try first and I'm very glad I did so ... it was tender and flavorful and just delicious. And those potatoes? They were so whipped and creamy they looked like pancake batter poured on a griddle. I could have eaten an entire bowl of those potatoes for dinner and followed it with another for dessert, they were that good.

Jay ordered the Red Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs with Glazed Baby Vegetables and Ramp Green Grits. This was a fine, fine selection with rib meat so tender that Jay didn't need to use his knife at all. I'm not sure about the green grits ... they tasted alright but why serve them any color other than grit? It's a puzzlement.

Mmmmm, ribs-a-plenty!


We took a long and careful gander at Monarch's dessert menu, but we weren't overly impressed. They did, however, offer a 3-or-5 cheese plate of dairy delights and so we opted for the five cheeses (would you expect any less?) and washed them down with a lovely glass of Dow's 20-year Tawny Port. My only beef is that the cheeses weren't listed on the menu and no list was given to us with the plate, so neither one of us has any idea at this point what the cheeses were. They were good ... nothing really knocked us on our asses ... but they were decent and obviously utterly forgettable.

Cheese, bread, and booze ... I could live on it for the rest of my life!


Way back in April when I made this reservation I must have told them we were celebrating out anniversary because our server re-appeared with a wee giftie for us: a slice of chocolate-caramel celebration cake. Had this item been on the dessert menu we might have ordered it - it was thick and rich and decadent ... a damn tasty and lovely little offering from the staff. Just look at all the chocolate shavings on that cake ... YUM!

It's free and it's chocolate!

So, how did I feel about this meal? Truth be told, I was, and still am, a little ambivalent about Monarch. Their food was very good but I really think that their menu is a little too limited and tries a little too hard to impress. Overall the service was good - water and bread were always refilled - but I would have liked a little more help finding drink and entree choices that were appealing to me. Our server didn't offer any recommendations to either Jay or me while we were trying to decide what to order. While Jay and I wouldn't tell anyone not to dine at Monarch, it's a long drive from our house and didn't make enough of an impression for us to feel like we need to pay them a return visit anytime soon. If I had to recommend one nice restaurant in St. Louis to my friendies at this point I think it would still be Harvest. Now there's a comfortable, accessible restaurant with a seasonal menu that offers a fair number of dining options, one of which just happens to include foie gras!

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.