The very name and area, the Village Bar in West County, leaves one with visions of polo shirts and Lilly Pulitzer skirts, Italian tile floors and a nice patio. Well, no. That’s not the Village Bar. The polo shirts, yes, since they’ve become utterly ubiquitous, but the Village Bar, exuberantly painted in fading red and white stripes, is otherwise about as far from that image as one can get and still have a liquor license.
While we’d never characterize it as a dive, we do get into discussions over whether it qualifies as a roadhouse. (Joe says yes, from the days when this was farm land; Ann says no, roadhouses have dance floors, whether or not they’re used any more.) For those who ask, there’s smoking, although less smoking and less smoke than in days of yore, probably a combination of fewer smokers and better air filters. Knotty pine paneling is almost hidden under layers of posters, photos, and neon signs. There’s a fireplace, barely visible, and four televisions, three on sports channels and the fourth, happily enough, on the History Channel. Lunch business is very busy; other times, it’s quieter, but we’ve never gone in without seeing a couple of bar patrons passing the time.
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It’s a sign of the times that men in late-middle age having lunch with pals or peers can be seen ordering salads and glasses of white zinfandel. Others in the group can be seen knocking back BLTs with the advertised six strips of bacon and some waffle fries, along with their Miller Light or iced tea. But the dish of choice, the one for which the bar is noted, is the Better Burger. It looks like a very ordinary hamburger, a throwback to decades ago, not a crisp-edged thin patty nor a fat feller that can easily be served rare, but a medium-plump edition that comes topped with a layer of Swiss cheese and abiding in an ordinary sesame seed bun. But the burgers arrive hot, really hot, the cheese well-melted, the bun crisped from a loll on the grill.
Furthermore, the onion rings and mushrooms are remarkable, freshly and lightly battered and again served blazing, properly, hot. Reminiscent of the o-rings of the late Parkmoor, they’re excellent, the batter crisp and ungooey. Our last batch had the faint taste of bacon, probably not deliberately, but what’s wrong with that?
The kitchen has its idiosyncrasies. What the menu calls a club sandwich is basically a grilled cheese/bacon/turkey/ham sandwich with a piece of lettuce, a single slice of (wan) tomato, and a pillow-pack of mayo on the side. The ham and turkey are thin-sliced deli stuff; the overall effect isn’t bad, but it’s surely not a club sandwich by usual standards. A fried shrimp appetizer, small guys in a crunchy cornmeal batter, is quite tasty, and the shrimp can be tossed in a buffalo wing sauce, a better combo than one would think, but it can get soggy before a cold mug of beer is drained.
Servers are affable and hard-working, moving quickly to take care of patrons, but table-busing can sometimes slide. Hey, it’s a bar, and because of that, we have no idea about the salads.
Village Bar
12247 Manchester, Des Peres
314-821-4532
Lunch & dinner daily
Credit cards: Yes
Wheelchair access: Yes
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $3-$8
By Joe and Ann Pollack
