Lunch, dinner and especially breakfast at Watercolors Café make for a full palette at West County’s version of Thelma’s Diner
By Dave Lowry
Photograph by Katherine Bish
As the demise of so many beloved neighborhood restaurants has poignantly illustrated, the loss of good local eateries is an unfortunate trend. Pat’s, famed for its chicken livers, is still in operation on the edge of Dogtown. Goody Goody continues to serve classic blue-plate specials in North St. Louis. But many neighborhoods are without a “gathering spot” restaurant, a place where everyone might not know your name, but they’ll have a pretty good guess that, if it’s Thursday morning, you’re going to be ordering the Western omelet with a side of hash browns. Which makes the recent opening of Watercolors Café in Creve Coeur a noble and ambitious enterprise. The goal here seems to be to create a good restaurant that is also a convivial neighborhood kaffeeklatsch.
The early line on Watercolors was that it was trying too hard to be too much. A breakfast spot. An informal lunch place. A modestly upscale dinner restaurant. To some extent, the criticism is accurate. A look at the menu reveals a kitchen that’s all over the place. But, like a good oldies radio station, while some of the selections are Bee Gees bland and predictable, there are enough classic highlights to keep you tuning in.
Among the most successful main courses are simple, short-order selections, traditional American favorites served on garishly tinted Fiestaware that will make you long for the happy days of bomb shelters and the Kefauver Commission. Thick rounds of hamburger are decidedly above average; they have the juicy taste and texture of never having been pre-seared and are full of flavor ($5.49).
Meatloaf here has not yet received iconic status but appears swiftly headed that way. A slab of it is baked, then charbroiled and dressed with a Burgundy-mushroom sauce ($9.99). This just might be some of the best meatloaf in the area. A 12-ounce Kansas City strip steak with red wine garlic butter ($18.99), a 10-ounce bacon-wrapped filet ($25.99) or a ribeye smothered in a glistening sauce of mushrooms, cheese and chopped onions ($19.99) will further satisfy the carnivore.
Some of the seafood selections work well. Crab cakes served with a rémoulade sauce are flaky and have a decent flavor and texture, spicy with onions and green peppers ($22.99). The clam chowder ($4.29) obviously came from a packaged base but was quite creditable compared with other local versions. A white-wine and lemon-butter sauce is perfect for the charbroiled swordfish ($18.99), but other sauces should be avoided. Enrobing shrimp in coconut batter and serving it with a pineapple dipping sauce is crustacean vandalism ($17.99). Tuna charbroiled is an excellent treatment but avoid the “blackened” option, a waste of this delicious fish’s subtle flavor ($16.99). “Tutta mare” is not only misspelled on the menu, it is misbegotten, so heavily sauced that the angel hair pasta seems to swim, and the seafood consists of a few scattered shrimp and dice-sized chunks of fish ($13.99).
The mushroom caps are fine ($5.99), the onion rings a little more so ($4.99), but other appetizers are average. Do not, however, neglect to order the house-made potato chips, an addictively delicious mix of russet, purple and sweet potatoes, sliced thin and deep-fried, making for a warm, salty side that is worth a trip to Watercolors all by itself.
As a breakfast spot, the place shines. Omelets are fluffy, folded with everything from spinach to fajita-seasoned chicken to avocado and salsa (most $6.99). Two-egg breakfasts come with country ham ($5.99), pork chops ($6.29) or chicken-fried steak ($6.29), all up to the finest in diner standards. Along with cheese blintzes ($5.99), there are stacks of pancakes of every variety—including the famous Chicago-style Swedish version ($4.99). Recommended: the egg sandwich, with a generous portion of scrambled eggs, along with a slice of cheddar and your choice of ham, sausage or bacon, sandwiched between thick slices of buttered and grilled sourdough bread ($5.49). Many breakfast selections come with a choice of hash browns or the house-seasoned potatoes. Definitely go with the latter, a hash-house treatment with chunks of fried potatoes mixed with finely chopped green peppers and onions.
The Key lime pie is authentic and suitably sour-sweet and custardy ($3.99). A gingerbread Belgian waffle is staggeringly sweet; even splitting an order, loaded with ice cream and a sticky, chunky apple topping, will test your dining mettle ($4.99).
Watercolors sits on the longtime site of Wade’s, which closed to be replaced briefly by a forgettable Chinese place, then became a mysteriously underachieving KC Masterpiece franchise. Just south of the Monsanto campus, the site is difficult to access from the south due to the divided highway of Lindbergh. The mood is homey: An atrium with plenty of windows circling a big fireplace is happy and comfortable, and booths are roomy and padded to encourage leisurely meals. The bar sits off to the side. A bright lemony interior is accented with big murals of a vaguely Caribbean theme, making for a kind of incongruous “Thelma’s Diner meets Jimmy Buffett” atmosphere.
Service here is diner-style friendly; regulars refer to most of the staff on a first-name basis. The owner is constantly on the scene. One night we visited just after an electrical outage that had affected much of Creve Coeur. When we noted that the potatoes in the chowder were a bit too firm, the owner quickly took the blame, acknowledging that, because of the outage, the potatoes might not have cooked as long as they should have. It’s this kind of refreshing honesty and lack of pretension, as much as the quality of the food, that makes for a successful restaurant. Creve Coeurians—Creve Coeurites?—are lucky to have Watercolors Café, which has both.
Watercolors Café
Address: 611 N. Lindbergh
Times: Breakfast and lunch daily 6 a.m.–4 p.m., dinner daily 4–10 p.m.
Phone: 314-569-0900
Average Main Course: $15
Dress: As you would in much of life: comfortably but presentably.
Reservations: Necessary only for parties of eight or more.
Bottom Line: A slice of meatloaf heaven in a spiffed-up diner setting that also boasts some of the best breakfasts around.
