So our pal McKinsey, over in Kansas City, has been trying, off and on, for a couple of years now to get reservations at Justus Drugstore—which is hard to do since they don’t take them. Since it opened in 2007, over in Smithville, outside KC, the restaurant has drawn raves. It might be a slight exaggeration to call it a Midwest version of The French Laundry. But not by much. Using local foods whenever possible, the chef, Jonathan Justus, concocts culinary magic and the lucky first come first served members of his ever-expanding fan club line up for a seat.
That’s why, when our editor here wanted to know if we’d like to attend one of the hot “Dorm Room Dinners” that was going to be helmed by Justus and his sous chef (with an assist by Niche exec chef Adam Altnether), we accepted faster than we’d normally accept an invitation to a dinner where someone else is paying. Which is pretty fast. It was a chance to try some of the most inventive cuisine being presented in the country, and to get in a one-up on our KC friend. Life’s rarely that sweet.
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Dorm Room Dinners are one of those oddball dining experiences that came about almost two years ago, one which will eventually become a big fad and for which some jackass chef in San Francisco will claim credit. But it started here. Local lore has it that chef Kirk Warner (who captained the kitchen at King Louie’s) was hanging out at 33 Wine Bar, talking with owner Jeff Stettner, and claimed, probably after hoisting a few, that he could turn out a good meal using nothing more than what might be found in a typical college dorm: a crock pot, micro-wave oven, and an electric skillet. He did. Since then, St. Louis chefs have been wrestling one another for the chance to take up the challenge. Tickets to these events go like ringside seats at a Paula Abdul vs. a grizzly bear fight.
If you haven’t been to 33 Wine Bar, you should know its roughly the size of a middling West County clothes closet. It accommodated the 43 of us who had reservations, but just barely. The guest list was loaded with local chefs, and some of the gratin of the St. Louis food scene, and so we sat around and did damage to a good bottle of Les Cousins pinot noir, talking, and we learned that the lifelong nickname of our editor’s new, impossibly gracious wife is the name of an incurable neuromuscular disease that afflicts ungulates. You can learn a lot over a bottle of pinot noir. Then the first course arrived.
It was a tangle of pulled pork balanced atop a crunchy handmade potato chip, along with arugula sprigs, and a mildly sweet mulberry reduction. If there is a better way in our book to begin a meal than with this remarkable amuse bouche, it’d have to include all three Kardashian sisters.
Next up was a deviled pullet egg, about a third the size of a regular chicken egg—pullets are entry level chickens just getting the whole egg-laying thing down. The yolks were deviled with a puree of smoked perch that lent a unique faint—and delectable—seafood flavor, and a dribble of inky Missouri paddlefish eggs on top. Paddlefish eggs taste much like the sevruga caviar you probably had a lot in your dorm room back at State U, though they’re a trifle less salty. The combination of the smoky perch puree and the luscious, slippery crunch of the paddlefish eggs were a near-perfect combination.
No one who lived through the late Seventies could hear of a “bass terrine” without thinking of the legendary “Bass-o-matic.” The terrine, though, was a take on the classic British salmon terrine, the bass pureed, molded and chilled, then cut into French fry strips and deep-fried with a just faintly garlicky crust that made up the “fish” course. The course was presented in a red and white checkered origami-folded box that looked like a pasteboard take-out tray in a fast-food joint. A couple of frilled paper cups of shallot tartar sauce and smoked tomato puree for dipping didn’t hurt things at all.
“Lunch” followed, a cleverly presented course in a molded container with a plastic cover that looked exactly like the Lunchables boxes for kids at Schnucks. The only difference was we can’t find any Lunchables that have a whispery-thin slice of house-cured bacon, corned beef tongue, and a rabbit terrine topped with a squirt of grainy, piquant homemade mustard; plus, a tumble of house made crackers and a dip of mascarpone/herbed goat cheese/shallots and a “farmer’s salad” of goat cheese/frisee/red peppers/pickled jalapenos. Wow. Maybe the Monaco Schnucks has ‘em.
At this point, we were beginning to get the idea. We seriously wished this guy had been our roommate back in college, instead of one we had, with the Hello Kitty bed sheets and the Santeria altar on his bookshelf. Then we got the main course that sealed the deal. It was a Swanson’s Hungry Man TV dinner, packaged the same way, with a picture of the contents printed on the plastic label. Inside, a big chunk of wagyu beef chopped into Salisbury steak, covered with a wild sunchoke and mushroom gravy, accompanied by a precise-to-the-millimeter brunoise of carrots in a smoked maple butter sauce, and a dollop of mashed potatoes that were somehow scented with corn.
A dessert, a chocolate brownie layered with an orange Jell-O shot and a squirt of Bavarian cream, was almost an afterthought. We had to eat it quickly; the 8:30 seating for the evening had grown tired of milling around outside 33 and had gone from pounding on the windows to gathering scrap lumber to start a fire and smoke us out.
As far as we know, Dorm Room Dinners will continue here in St. Louis. If you don’t have a generous editor, your best bet would be to start hanging out at 33 Wine Bar, talking with Jeff and working words into your conversation that might be the secret password to getting an invitation. We’d go with “vol-a-vent,” “beurre composé,” or “micro-greens.”
(Photo credits–or in this case, debits–go to George Mahe.)
