By Christy Marshall
Photograph by Anne Matheis
For months, everywhere descendants of the Kammerer family went, people said the same thing: "I hate what they have done. I am so sorry."
The Kammerers owned the legendary Busch's Grove for years and years—until they shuttered it and then sold it (for $3 million) on Valentine's Day 2004.
News flash: Cancel the pity party. Though the amalgam of the new exterior of the old Busch's Grove defies accurate metaphor—I.M. Pei meets Martha Stewart? The front and tail of a leopard with the body of a cow? Angelina Jolie's head and legs with the middle of, say, a Rams linebacker?—the interior is spectacular.
As Busch's Grove executive chef Todd Weisz says, "Nobody builds an $11 million restaurant. Nobody."
Nobody, that is, but Lester Miller, the proprietor of the new Busch's Grove.
Entering from the parking lot, through front doors fitted with Lalique crystal pulls, you see a sushi and raw bar on the right (with a tank filled with 250 pounds of live Maine lobster), and on the left, a two-part bar (mingling section with banquettes and then the main bar, complete with bandstand).
Straight ahead is the Cove Room—a spacious dining area ornamented with 8,500 pieces of Missouri granite suspended by fishing line from the ceiling (a $100,000 piece of art), flanked on the side by four "cabins"—private dining rooms for 10, lit by Holly Hunt candle chandeliers ($10,000 per). Each cabin (also called "cabana") awaits diners behind unfinished barn-style doors. The dining room, with its ceiling insets of twigs, is flooded with light, in part from a panel of glass around the perimeter. Through the glass you see the newly installed white clapboard siding of what the designers would like patrons to think is the old Busch's Grove. (It isn't.)
It's all a matter of contrasts between the old and the new, explains Dominic Gasparoly, the interior designer and co-owner of GWDesign in New York. "The main idea was to bring life to Busch's Grove, keep the history living—the cabins, the Grove Room spirit—and then, obviously, since this is 2005, use more contemporary elements," he says.
In a nutshell, the history: It was built in 1860 as a saloon and stagecoach stop, owned by John Busch and first known as Woodlawn Grove. Busch passed it on to his son, Henry, who brought in a partner, Paul Kammerer. It stayed in the Kammerer family until they shut it down on Valentine's Day 2003 (one year to the day before they sold it).
"The intention was to have the landmark building be the masterpiece because of its history," Gasparoly says. "What we have done is work around the building .... There is a contrast between the two different times and two different aesthetics."
The conceptual design was done by the Rockwell Group in New York; local architect Jay Schloessel of ACI/Boland architectural firm did the drawings; Musick built it. The restaurant seats 360, has a staff of 140 and several dining rooms: The Cove Room; the more formal Grove Room (with paintings, Baccarat crystal sculptures and a two-floor wine cellar holding 5,000 bottles of wine); a private dining room complete with a strip of fire in a wall fireplace, named after Miller's friend and Thompson Coburn attorney, the late Millard Backerman; and the aforementioned cabins.
The new Busch's Grove is, as Weisz says, "not your father's Busch's Grove." Kenny will no longer park your car. The ladies' room is no longer a place to avoid. This, says Miller, is "something St. Louis has never seen before."
And for Gasparoly and his partner, Khalid Watson, it was a great gig. "With that kind of budget, it is very rare, even in New York City, to have the full freedom to do whatever you want to do," he says. "Most of the projects have some sort of limits. In this case, the owner was really a businessman, and his idea was 'Let's bring life back to Busch's Grove. You do whatever you want, but it needs to be a hit.'"
It is.
Busch's Grove, 9160 Clayton Rd., 314-993-0011
