Neither stuffy nor rowdy, Truffles restaurant manages to hit quite a few sweet spots. Yes, it’s in Ladue. But the chairs are wonderfully comfortable. It’s even quiet, except on weekends. The feeling is relaxed – admittedly an elegant relaxation, but still. Leisurely meals are the rule, with conversations extending themselves spontaneously.
The restaurant has reinvented itself several times without a name change – originally offering Modern American cuisine for a few years, in the months after Hurricane Katrina they hired a New Orleans chef-refugee. Incongruous as the idea of gumbo in Ladue might sound It worked quite well, but the chef went home after a while. Then it went Italian-ish, and that, too, was pleasant – I recall it as the first place I ever tasted burrata cheese. During this time, it even survived a threat from the re-imagined and re-built Busch’s Grove abutting them to the east.
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Now Brandon Benack is in the kitchen, and the results have been impressive.
Steaks are featured, and no surprise, since he and accomplished chef/butcher Andrew Jennrich recently opened Truffles Butchery next door, a complete artisinal butcher shop with some eye-catching cuts (“tomahawk” rib chops), processes (an on-site dry-aging room), as well as fresh seafood products, like humongous head-on prawns and something rarely seen in these parts–soft shell crawfish.
Lamb chops and racks are sourced from ultra-boutique supplier Elysian Fields (Thomas Keller is a partner); breakfast sausage patties are wrapped in caul fat (a lacy, fatty, natural animal membrane that adds fat without disturbing flavor); and since Butchery processes whole animals, you’ll find “hidden cuts” (like Denver steak and flap steak), as well as pork secreto (cut from the belly, it’s the porcine equivalent of a skirt steak).
Butchery is an experience and really quite remarkable.
There’s also fresh pasta, homemade sauces, side dishes, and custom rubs–and it’s the only place we’ve ever encountered house-made, nacho cheese flavored chicarrones. Old favorites mix with new–both at the restaurant and at Butchery–like Dover sole and several of Benack’s New Orleans traditions, like Chef B’s gumbo and fresh redfish.
Meanwhile, back at Truffles proper, an amuse-bouche of beet sorbet topped with a few grains of coarse salt and a candied pecan bounced around the palate, the chill allowing for a slow arrival of the earthy beet-ness, a little tart punch, the salt and the sweet crunch of the nut. It was a great opening. The beef tartare, too, charmed. Topped with wee shreds of egg yolk that had been cured and a few microgreens, the flavor carried even farther with some olive oil and horseradish.
Deserving of special attention, the barbecued shrimp could easily have been a lunch entree, especially with some of the house’s warm bread. Five large shrimp lolled seductively in a creamy melange of their juices, plenty of butter, garlic, a judicious amount of pepper, probably both red and black, and other, more mysterious things. Unsurprisingly, they were shelled, unlike the traditional versions, but the overall effect was just the same, minus the buttery, lickable fingers the in-shell recipes produce. Wipe the last of that sauce up.
Filet mignon almost 2 inches thick ordered medium came warm and very pink in the middle, and quite delicious, especially considering the cut’s often-slightly-wan flavor. A swoosh of Benack’s own steak sauce and an orb of maitre d’ butter garnished it, along with some roasted Brussels sprouts and very buttery mashed potatoes. My tablemate thought the sprouts were undercooked, as they were still firm in the middle; I expect roasted ones to have that consistency. Another filet, this one of trout, was dusted heavily with cornmeal and quickly sauteed, served over lyonnaise potatoes, thin slices of potato and good-sized slivers of onion that had also been sauteed. Atop the fish was a generous serving of lump crabmeat and a shower of scallions. The two-onion move punched up what was essentially a mild dish, upgrading it considerably. The only flaw was too much oil on the plate from the cooking.
An injudicious balance of topping-to-apple was the flaw in an apple crisp baked to order. The apples were nicely tart and not cooked to mush, but dusty bits of topping need to be an accent, not the main feature of crumbles.
First-rate service, unrushed, of course, and a wine list that’s close to magnificent.
Truffles Restaurant
9202 Clayton
314-567-9100
Lunch: Tues – Fri
Dinner: Tues – Sat
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Truffles Butchery
Same address and phone
Open daily
Truffles Butchery on Facebook
