By Alexi Zentner
If you are a wine drinker, and if you ignore the $50 St. Louis Strip, your wallet is going to love this place. That’s because the markup on wine, taken from the Market part of Lucas Park Grille & Market, is way lower than at most restaurants, with perfectly decent bottles starting at $16. Jazzy music, high tables and chairs and a full menu in the bar area give you a great place to enjoy your wine if you can’t get a reservation for the quieter, romantic dining room. The food, while not fabulously creative, is very well prepared; everything was of an equally high caliber. This place is solid. The only off-note is the service, which, while friendly, is a little overly familiar for this caliber of restaurant, and the servers’ plastic name tags seem odd when contrasted with menu items like the Maytag blue cheese-stuffed tenderloin medallions with leek hay, charred tomato merlot reduction and Lucas Park Grille steak sauce (which, by the way, is wonderful). Lucas Park Grille is just another new reason to make the trip to Washington Avenue.
1234 Washington, 314-241-7770, www.lucasparkgrille.com, restaurant from 11 a.m.- 2 p.m. and 5-11 p.m. daily.
