Photograph By Katherine Bish
By Christy Marshall
Photographs by Katherine Bish
Frazer Cameron wanted for years to open a restaurant. "It was always a matter of economics," he says in his soft "don't think I'll get too upset about much of anything" voice. Finally, in 1992, he quit his gig at the Schlafly Tap Room and found a space that had been vacated by a Mexican restaurant. The rent was $400 a month.
The price was right, and Frazer's Traveling Brown Bag (now just Frazer's) was born. But the Pestalozzi Street environs fell miles short of enticing. "There was a lot of prostitution around here," he recalls. "When my [then] partner would walk down to the Shell station to pick something up, cars would follow her down the sidewalk." Not that Frazer's debuted as anything ritzy. The plates were paper, the utensils plastic. But the food was delicious, and before you could say "creme brulee," the waits were running anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half.
The place was so popular that Cameron never bothered to put a Frazer's sign up. He still hasn't. "I'm trying to get past that," he murmurs, explaining that, now that the restaurant has expanded, competition in the 'hood has heated up—and signage is finally forthcoming. The latest renovation (of several) is the bar—a simple design, he says: "I just told Gary Setro of Capital Restoration that I have this arch from the Stix grammar school in the Central West End. Basically we gutted the space, put the arch in and built the bar around it." French doors went into the wall facing the street.
The floor's pattern is a continuation of a design Cameron installed himself 13 years ago. He dug through marble companies' Dumpsters (with the owners' permission, of course) and pulled out scraps. ("I was on a budget," he says, shrugging.) He arranged the odds-and-ends marble chunks in a mosaic on the floor, filling in the gaps with black grout. Now, for the addition, he has expanded the design but hired out the job, enlisting the help of local artists Janiece Senn, Mark Stephens and Ray Brewer. (The trio also worked their magic in the bathroom, a one-person facility with dozens of round mirrors set in glass bead-embedded black mosaic walls.)
The lounge area of the bar features a long banquette and several old Charles Pollack 1965 executive office chairs Cameron found in a used-furniture warehouse in Chicago. The rest of the restaurant reflects the yoga-disciplined, laid-back personality and eclectic tastes of its owner. One red-walled room on the first floor is furnished with masks from Cameron's apartment, which he shares with his wife of three years, real-estate agent Mary Kirkou. A second dining room, upstairs, is filled with pieces by local artists, including light fixtures created by glass artist Sam Stang and Jetsons-style tabletops designed by Jorge Martinez. Cameron wants Frazer's to guarantee a great meal at a reasonable price and to give his employees "the things I never had: an environment where there was no yelling or screaming, insurance for people who want it and a comfortable working environment.
"I put air conditioning in the kitchen."
1811 Pestalozzi, 314-773-8646, www.frazergoodeats.com
