Photograph by Katherine Bish

4123 Chippewa
South City
314-772-1813
thebleedingdeacon.com
Lunch and dinner daily
Average Main Course: $8

Someday after global warming or creatures from Mars come along and wipe us all out, future excavators will uncover the ruins of St. Louis and determine, rightly so, that "bar culture" found one of its epicenters in our fair city. And if they're any good at their jobs, they'll be able to deduce that we had a good run on gastropubs, too. From places like The Shaved Duck, Newstead Tower Public House, and Schlafly Bottleworks, they'll see—judging by the adjacent herb gardens or the dusty, ancient menus with their pâté and bison and quinoa—that we took bar food to another level. (At other, less epicurean locales, they may unearth large sacks of toasted ravioli, still perfectly preserved all those eons later, but that's a different point.)

What might they deduce from some of our other little brag-abouts, places like Iron Barley, Mangia, or, more recently, The Bleeding Deacon— places that are barcentric and may not boast fussy gastropub ingredients, but man, do they deliver a wallop in the eats category, and for hardly any money? And what do we today, still alive and kicking, want to call them? What happens when you begin with a bar-food template that becomes so much more? These deserve their own category.

The Bleeding Deacon is truly a hidden little gem. In fact, the unsightly intersection where it sits (Gravois Avenue and Chippewa Street) practically makes it as off-the-grid an establishment as it will be in the year 3000, when it is covered in rubble. But its lineage does extend from some of those aforementioned places. Co-owners Mike McLaughlin and Todd Pruitt met as bartender and regular, respectively, at The Royale. Chef Jaxon Noon—and yes, the food at The Bleeding Deacon is absolutely good enough that he be granted the title of "chef"—has worked at too many places in St. Louis to enumerate. McLaughlin and Pruitt let Noon loose in their archaic little kitchen, and the results are pretty damn fantastic.

"Fantastic" may not be the usual word to describe things like meatloaf and coleslaw, but let's start there anyway. The meatloaf is available as the star of a "big plate" supper or as "starter plate" sliders. (My editor is pressuring me to procure him the recipe.) Sweet and savory in all the right ways, the meatloaf is also tender, almost flaky ... Alas, I was able to coerce but one of his secret ingredients: ground-up pork rinds. Surprised me too. And get this—the coleslaw is made not from cabbage, but from Brussels sprouts. That's the recipe I want most.

While there are missteps on the menu, they are infrequent and mild. Another starter, the sweet-potato salsa, sounds great in concept but is a bit too mellow on the palate. The fish-and-chips plate is just fine, but I was hoping for something more pizazzy. Don't fret, though; some of the greatest pizazz comes from the most "Mom-made" menu items, like buttered green beans, sautéed with yummy bacon and a hit of spice, and a Black Angus butter burger, which is as right-on a hunk of meat as you'd want from any South Side tavern. Then there is the unexpected triumph that is the curly dog, for which I must quote directly from the menu because it's indescribable otherwise: "footlong, all-beef frankfurter specially sliced and cooked to curl, served with our red BBQ sauce, pickles, and charbroiled onions on a cracked wheat bun." Can a hot dog count as a bite of heaven? This one does.

Don't skip out before dessert, impending doom be damned. And by that I don't mean the Armageddon thing; I mean your day's diet shall be ruined by the MoonPie tiramisu. Basically, it's pieces of a MoonPie layered parfait-style with house-made whipped cream—one of the best desserts I've had in months. So good, in fact, that when the end of days does arrive, that little highball glass of sugary goodness will likely be part of my flash-before-my-eyes, last-moment-on-earth montage.

Bottom Line: It's an anomaly, successfully riding the culinary line between pub and gastropub.