Short Orders

[FIRST LOOK]

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

One day before they opened their highly anticipated wine shop, Grand Spirits Bottle Co. (3194 South Grand Boulevard), Natasha Bahrami and Michael Fricker received the most delightful omen. A sweet brown-and-white stray puppy was running around their neighborhood, begging for someone to take her in. Bahrami and Fricker didn’t hesitate.

“We found her on Tuesday just running around the streets super malnourished, in bad health and horribly dirty, so we snagged her and are going to keep her,” Fricker says. ou can’t find a shop dog the day before you open your shop and not realize it’s fate.”

Little Nebbiolo, also known as Nebby, may make a visit to Grand Spirits more charming, but it’s not the main reason to visit this stunning natural wine shop and bar, which opened to the public on December 15. In addition to running the successful Cafe Natasha’s and the Gin Room just down the street, Bahrami and Fricker have been working tirelessly for the past year to create a bastion of natural wines and Italian-inspired snacks, something they felt was missing from the Tower Grove East neighborhood where they live.

“During quarantine, I wanted a small shop close to the house to be able to go to and just grab a couple bottles of wine without having to make a Schnucks run,” Fricker says. wanted it to fit in with what we did, which is something curated and centered around natural wines, and there was nothing really around that focused on that in the Tower Grove area. 33 [Wine Shop & Bar] does that, but they are still a drive, so I had a dream one night that we owned a little bottle shop. I woke up and said, ‘We are going to do this.’”

For Fricker, Grand Spirits is the extension of a passion for natural wines he developed a few years ago in France. There, while eating and drinking with fellow industry professionals who were into natural wines, he felt something click. As he explains, these wines appealed to his chef background (Fricker has an extensive culinary background which includes high-end properties around the country such as Cielo and Cinder House at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis). And once the spark was lit, he dove headfirst into learning everything he could about their history, production and tasting notes.

Grand Spirits is the result of that

deep dive. As Fricker explains, the purpose of the shop is not simply to be a place where people can buy natural wines, but an opportunity for education in a welcoming, judgment-free space. He believes this is particularly important because there is some controversy and misinformation around natural wines, and he hopes to dispel some of these myths.

“It’s kind of a dirty word in the wine world, and it’s pretty divisive,” Fricker explains. “I get the question constantly, ‘If these wines are natural, does that mean

that all others are not natural?’ The word itself can be divisive and misnomered. In trying to figure out a way to define what makes a natural wine, we are focusing on clean agricultural processes where people are either certified or practicing organic and biodynamic methods and being biodiverse in the fields. During vinification, these wines are using natural yeast, and post-vinification, winemakers are not adding sulfites or preservatives. e’re focusing on clean practices and doing things intentionally and with

detail and on sustainability.”

To that end, Bahrami and Fricker have curated a substantial selection of natural wines, focusing on bottles in the $16-$25 range. Guests who choose to enjoy a drink at the shop have their choice of tastings ights, glass pours, mezcal and whiskey tastings, and vermouth service.

Food-wise, Fricker is offering a simple menu of small plates centered around imported Italian goods. Four rotating vegetarian items will be available during every service, including a conserva of artichokes served over Calabrian chili ricotta, as well as blackbean hummus. Fricker has also created a menu of Italian sandwiches, such as prosciutto with olive tapenade, carameli ed figs and arugula. Charcuterie boards will also be available.

“There’s a lot going on, and it’s really fun and interesting,” Fricker says. “This feels like the natural culmination of what I have done over the past ten years.” n

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

When Blake Askew thinks back on what inspired him to get into food in the first place, it all goes back to his nostalgia for a bygone era of dining — one that he hopes to recreate with his new pop-up series, the Mainlander (themainlanderstl.com).

“I always had this desire to go back in time, which is what drew me to restaurants in the first place,” Askew says. “I got serious about cooking in my mid-twenties, and I read everything I could get my hands on — cookbooks, memoirs of chefs. For me, it all really goes back to that period in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s when my parents and grandparents were dining out and experiencing these things I didn’t get to experience. That interested me and drove me into the type of food I wanted to make and the chefs I wanted to work for.”

An Effingham, Illinois, native who moved around the country for his dad’s work all through his childhood, Askew moved to St. Louis last year from San Francisco, where he had lived for the past decade. There, he worked in the restaurant business, cooking in upscale restaurants around the Bay Area, from classical French eateries to modern American kitchens to Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant group. At each property, he honed his techniques and developed a passion for fusing flavors from various culinary traditions, all the while dreaming of having a restaurant of his own one day that would capture the restaurant nostalgia he was so drawn toward.

As he got more and more serious about opening a spot, he realized that doing so in San Francisco, or California at large, was going to be an impossible feat. Every facet of the process was so prohibitively expensive (Askew notes that the going rate for a liquor license in San Francisco is $1 million) that he knew, even if he was able to secure the investors needed to open a business, he would be so beholden to other people’s visions that it would dilute what he wanted to do.

He and his partner began thinking of other cities that might be more accessible in terms of starting a business, and the more and more places they considered, the more St. Louis seemed like the right fit. Not only had Askew lived nearby in Effingham for several years, his maternal grandparents hailed from St. Louis, and he had many fond memories of visiting them during his childhood. Inspired by that connection, he and his partner visited the city last fall, and decided to take the leap and move across the country a few months later.

Since arriving in St. Louis this past summer, Askew has been working as sous chef at Rob Connoley’s acclaimed restaurant, Bulrush. There, he has not only immersed himself in learning abut Ozark cuisine; he’s also received an education in all facets of the St. Louis food and beverage scene, including seasonal ingredients, producers and makers. With the support of Connoley, Askew has also been able to begin sketching out ideas for what will hopefully be his eventual restaurant concept, the Mainlander, which will make its debut as a pop-up at Bulrush on Saturday, January 8.

“Rob has been generous, not with just me but with everyone else on his staff,” Askew says. “He has this desire to make a place where people can explore their own ideas and have it be a bit of an incubator. Things don’t start and end with what we do at Bulrush. We are all people and have our own ideas, and he wants to be a part of that and push it forward. He has a really generous spirit, and I’m going to take advantage of that opportunity to do what I do.”

As Askew has dived deeper into the Mainlander concept, a few things have become clear to him. First is the transportive, aesthetic component he hopes to create. Believing that people go to restaurants for the overall experience, Askew hopes to recreate the pop tiki Polynesian Midcentury vibe his parents and grandparents got to experience. Places like the storied Trader Vic’s, Don the Beachcomber and St. Louis’ own longgone spot, the Mainlander, all inspire his vision, as do more modern iterations of the style that he used to frequent while living in California.

Another element that has come into focus for Askew is the food. Having cut his culinary teeth on fusion cuisine, beginning with his first job in Houston and throughout his tenure with Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, Askew is passionate about mixing what are typically thought of as Eastern and Western flavors and is inspired by culinary styles found throughout the globe. To this end, he says that diners at the Mainlander pop-up series can expect dishes like steamed mushroom dumplings, crawfish hand pies, skewers of meat cooked over a personalsized tabletop charcoal grill and smoked duckling with a savory take on the ’70sera ambrosia salad.

As for drinks, Askew is drawing inspiration from classic tiki beverages, but he is infusing them with a Midwestern spirit by using local ingredients. Cocktails include a punch made with rum from the Missouri distillery Nobletons, an apple daiquiri based around apples from a local orchard and a paw-paw-based libation.

What Askew is most focused on, however, is making sure he hits the right note with the Mainlander. Conscious of the problematic history of the tiki phenomenon in terms of appropriation, exoticism and cultural insensitivity, he wants to be clear that he is not simply resurrecting the form but reimagining it in a respectful manner.

“There is an aspect of pop tiki that is controversial, and rightfully so,” Askew says. “There is a lot of validity to the controversy, and we are trying to navigate that. This is a process, and we see the pop-ups as an opportunity to workshop and see how people respond and what they are into. We want people to get that transportative experience, where it feels like you are walking into something different and disconnected from without using religious idols or stealing from other cultures. There are a lot of Pacific Island people and immigrants here who have been imitated in these fantasy ways, and that is problematic. We’re trying to create something that is in a transportative aesthetic that gives people the idea of being on vacation without completely lifting from other cultures or through fetishizing and exoticism.”

Askew sees these pop-ups as a way to transparently work out these issues, and he looks forward to the conversations that he knows will lead to an evolution of the Mainlander. The intimate setting lends to such interaction; the January 8 dinner, which will take place at Bulrush, is limited to two, twelve-person seatings. Tickets can be purchased through the Mainlander’s website, themainlanderstl. com, where prospective guests can also sign up to receive updates about upcoming events. The price for the dinner is $88 per person, inclusive of drinks. Like Bulrush, the Mainlander has a zero-gratuity policy, eschewing traditional tipping in favor of building in a living wage for its staff into the price of the meal. Askew notes that this is very important to him, as he sees it as a way to address historical inequities and power imbalances in the hospitality industry.

For all the weight of these complex issues, Askew insists that the Mainlander is, at its heart, a lively, fun, boozy experience. He looks forward to seeing how the series goes with his sights set on a standalone concept someday — one that he hopes will give St. Louis diners not simply a taste of a bygone dining form but an immersive experience that will transport guests to another place and time.

“There is a fantasy aspect to it and a frivolous, over-the-top aesthetic that makes you feel like you’ve escaped from the mundane,” Askew says. “That’s what you are looking for when you go out to dinner and it is snowing outside. Why do you go out in that? Because you are getting something you can’t get everywhere else. That feeling is a destination, which is what we are really going for.” n

[ST. LOUIS STANDARDS]

Written by CHERYL BAEHR

When James Bommarito ticks off the list of things his dad, Vince, pioneered in the St. Louis restaurant scene, it stops you in your tracks. Tableside service, wine lists, valet parking, crumbers, wine glasses preset on tables, closing on Mondays — so many facets of the way St. Louisans dine out that are taken for granted as “just the way it is” can be traced back to his father’s innovations. Even the baked potato.

e were the first restaurant that brought the baked potato to St. Louis,” Bommarito says. “He couldn’t get anyone to eat it because people thought sour cream and chives wouldn’t be to their liking. Eventually, he changed the name to crema and chives so people would try it, and it worked.” he details of fine dining aside, there is no denying the broad impact the late Vince Bommarito and his iconic restaurant, Tony’s, had — and continues to have — on St. Louis dining. The gold standard against which all other restaurants are judged, Tony’s has become shorthand for food and beverage elegance, occupying a special place in the hearts and minds of St. Louis diners in a way that no other restaurant does. With international acclaim and numerous accolades under its belt, including the Mobil 5 Star and AAA Four Diamond Awards, it’s taken for granted that Tony’s always was, is and will continue to be the city’s undisputed beacon of fine-dining.

If there’s one person who doesn’t take Tony’s status for granted, it’s James Bommarito. Now captain of the storied ship, Bommarito is in charge not only of the restaurant’s day-to-day operations but of his father’s legacy. It’s a duty he does not take lightly, considering how hard his dad worked to create such a world-class property from its roots as a humble spaghetti house, beginning when he was just a teenager.

“Really, this all started in 1949,” Bommarito says. “My grandfather had passed away, and my dad had to look for something to do for a living. My grandfather had owned this building that had a kitchen in it, but it was more of a billiards room and cigar shop. My dad didn’t really want to do that, so he asked his mother if he could open a restaurant. She was a little reluctant at first and was going to sell the building, but he managed to talk her into it.”

At the time, the elder Bommarito was a senior at St. Louis University High School, so he enlisted the help of his aunts and uncles to run the restaurant during its breakfast and lunch service while he worked with his teachers to get his schoolwork done by noon. This went on for about six months until he graduated and went into the business full time. Even at that young age, and without experience in the hospitality industry, Vince had big dreams of having the finest talian restaurant in town, so he traveled around the city, and eventually the country, visiting restaurants that were better than his and picking up ideas on how he could improve.

Over time, those experiences helped him elevate Tony’s from a red-and-white-checkered-tablecloth breakfast, lunch and dinner spot called Tony’s Spaghetti House into an increasingly elegant, highend evening affair. He eventually renamed the restaurant Tony’s Stea ouse to re ect the change, and ultimately dropped the latter part to simply Tony’s, a name he felt re ected a more formal e perience. By the 1960s — due in part to the restaurant receiving a

prestigious award — his dream of having the best restaurant in the city was coming true.

“It was a struggle for him,” Bommarito says. “Getting started and not knowing anything about the business and learning the hard way was di cult, but he was totally dedicated and had a vision to have the best restaurant in St. Louis. Sooner than later, he had the best Italian restaurant in the entire U.S. and one of the best in the world. He had this intense pride and was going to do whatever it took to be the best.”

Bommarito inherited that drive from his father. Though he always understood that Tony’s was part of his birthright, he did not set out to get into the restaurant business. Instead, after going away to college at Rice University in Houston, he got a job with AnheuserBusch, working in New York City and Los Angeles. When his family took over food and beverage operations at the then Savvis Center and Trans World Dome, his dad asked him to come back to help out with the business. He hasn’t left since.

Now the only remaining namesake left running the restaurant (his brother, Vince Jr., left a few years ago to get into another business), Bommarito feels the weight of the restaurant on his shoulders every night. This has been especially heavy for the last few years, when he began thinking seriously about moving the restaurant from its downtown home on Market Street to a new location.

“I had a lot of sleepless nights when this opportunity surfaced,” Bommarito says. “I knew we needed to move, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d been to so many places around the U.S. and came up with a lot of ideas, but I didn’t know if the rest of St. Louis would like them. I was extremely nervous about our transfer to Clayton. I knew what we were doing would be very cool, but I had no idea if anyone else would like it.”

The news that Tony’s was relocating to Clayton may have initially been greeted with shock, but as soon as diners got to see the stunning new digs, they breathed a sigh of relief. Not only was Bommarito able to translate the Tony’s experience in the new location, he may have even improved it. With its chic main dining room, mezzanine bar and enclosed and heated outdoor patio, the new restaurant acts like three different properties under one roof. Still, what makes Tony’s Tony’s — the service, the food, the ambiance — remains fundamentally the same.

“We try to satisfy as many senses for guests as we can,” Bommarito says. “I think when you can do that, it creates a much more pleasant experience for our guests. I truly believe that if there are two restaurants — restaurant A and restaurant B — and they have the exact same food but the other items in restaurant A, like the service, ambiance and how well the restrooms and oors were maintained, are better than those in restaurant B, people will swear restaurant A has the better food.”

Providing hospitality at that level, day in and day out, is a commitment, Bommarito says, and it requires him and his staff to never be off their game, even for a moment. Though he understands the mystique of Tony’s that lives in the minds of St. Louisans — even ones that have never dined at the restaurant — he does not feel that he can rest on that reputation. Instead, occupying such a prominent place in the pantheon of great restaurants carries with it the responsibility of exceeding those expectations. When he sees the smiles on his guests’ faces and hears the compliments as they walk out the door, it lets him know he’s doing something right and fills him with pride, both for what his father was able to achieve and what the restaurant continues to achieve under his watch.

“We don’t take anything for granted,” Bommarito says. “We start over every day in this business, and the people who come through this door tonight don’t care about what happened last night. They are the only reason we are here, and it’s important to remember that. I get a little nervous every night before work, but if I didn’t, I’d think something was wrong. My main objective is to exceed every person’s expectations that comes through that front door, and if I don’t, I take it personally. have butter ies every day that I come to work.” n