Two or three weeks early, the mercury has spiked into the 90s, with a triple-digit heat index. Manchester Road, never the sanest of thoroughfares, has turned positively kamikaze, with rush-hour traffic alternately impersonating a parking lot and the Indy 500. Humidity-stricken, pedestrians slouch along its sidewalks in search of solar surcease, and the valet-parking attendant stationed at the intersection of Manchester and Sutton Avenue, who's already wearing knee-length black shorts against the thermal onslaught, rotates his torso in a vain effort to keep his red polo from clinging.
Within the restaurant at the northwest corner of that intersection, happily enough, reigns both figurative and literal cool. With a long, weary sigh, I commandeer a small, round-topped table just inside the lounge, beside one of its quartets of 6-foot-high windows, beyond which Maplewood continues to melt. Recorded jazz, meanwhile, murmurs throughout Monarch Restaurant & Wine Bar like the first uncertain snow of late autumn or early winter.
After ordering a cocktail and an amuse-gueule, I study my surroundings. Earth tones predominate. The latte-and-mocha color scheme of the marvelously staunch metal-framed chairs matches that of the walls, a barista's palette, really; the mocha recurs in my tabletop and in the heavy drapery.
From the spacious, irregularly polygonal bar, more of the coffeehouse-colored seats stand with an angular uniformity that suggests the use in their placement of a protractor. Beyond them, shadowed by one of his juniors, bar manager Ted Kilgore*, who (not unreasonably, all things considered) suggests a new-millennial jinni, is inventorying the stock, surveying his bar almost molecule by molecule.
Directly, my waitress delivers my drink, a Pegu cocktail ($10), ordered more or less on a whim. (Despite these dire times, if we forgo whims even amid the serenity of a stylish lounge after a long, hard day, why continue to live?) Monarch's compact, brown drink menu, which sports a stylized butterfly that looks leaflike, lists the cocktail's ingredients as Angostura and Regans' orange bitters, lime juice, curaçao, and Martin Miller's London dry gin. It sounds interesting, and for the nonce, that's more than enough.
Strictly in the interests of scientific inquiry, I eye the cocktail for a time. Silvering the cone of the stemware is a film of frost. The libation itself seemingly glows with a carnelian light. From vigorous shaking with cracked ice, it also appears to froth, and a lime disk only slightly larger than a half dollar cants near its apex.
Then, gingerly, I sip. Tempered by the bitters and the curaçao, the gin's juniper bite conspires with its legion of other botanicals―the Martin Miller's Gin website specifies orange and lemon peel, coriander, licorice, cinnamon, cassia, nutmeg, angelica, and orris root―to stoke a gorgeous, soothing heat deep in my throat, even as the strained remnants of the ice fuzz my upper lip and vaporize. Just as swiftly, Mr. Miller, a grizzled toff resident in the west London district of Notting Hill, becomes my new Favorite Mad-Dog Englishman.
Directly after the first waitress brings my drink, a second serves a goblet of ice water and, in a mocha basket of heavy wire, focaccia and rolls. Following another sip or two of the Pegu cocktail, I spread butter from the accompanying ramekin across the warm flatbread; the first bite tastes as silken and seductive as a new lover's caress feels. I wolf down one slice and follow it with a second before reacquainting myself with something approximating decorum.
My gaze drifts once more to the bar, whose contours an overheard soffit matches, even as it supports some incongruously funky polka-dot cylindrical pendants. There, a brunette in a white skirt angles one long, long leg down to the hardwood floor, and discretion suggests returning my attention to the booze and the bread.
At that point, fortunately, a third server arrives with my snack, which the appetizer menu describes as "Smoked Cracklins'" ($4). Monarch, praise be, excels more with apps than apostrophes. Bowered among several celery stalks, the cracklings or cracklin's―but most emphatically not "cracklins'"―occupy a white bowl bearing the establishment's lepidopteran ensign. The morsels of fatback range in size from mere slivers to slices as large as (for want of a less gauche comparative) Fritos. They crunch sinfully and exude a smoky, mildly vinegar tang, offset by the crisp saintliness of the celery. In short, an irresistible blend of vice and virtue.
By the time the cracklings and celery have vanished, I've ordered another Pegu cocktail, and my first server has presented it with praiseworthy alacrity. A few gulps of ice water cleanse my palate enough, I hope, for a fitting reintroduction to the drink.
Subsequent research, incidentally, reveals that it should more properly be called the "Pegu Club cocktail" for historical reasons. The libation originated in a British officers' club by that name in the seaport of Rangoon (now Yangon) in the Asian nation of Burma (now Myanmar), sandwiched unenviably between India to the west and China, Laos, and Thailand to the east. The club throve during the late Victorian era, at the height of English colonialism; indeed, Rudyard Kipling dallied there, albeit somewhat before he introduced the world to Mowgli of The Jungle Books and the title character of Kimand won his Nobel. The club's liquid namesake enjoyed similar popularity before lapsing into obscurity after World War II. The present embrace of "heirloom" libations, of course, has returned the Pegu Club cocktail to the attention of discerning tipplers everywhere.
To that return, have U.S. military woes in Afghanistan and Iraq, with their IEDs and PTSD and other acronymic agonies, contributed by making Americans naively nostalgic for the era of pith helmets and jodhpurs? That question, embarrassingly, never occurs to me as I sip my second Pegu Club cocktail and watch more heat-related Mancunian madness. A momentary lapse? Yes, of course. Sometimes, though, sanity hinges on just such lapses―and at that moment in Monarch, whether one references Victoria or Louis XIV, despite the peasant sorrows of day-to-day life, I'm feeling, with each sip, increasingly regal. -- Bryan A. Hollerbach
____________________
*At the time of this visit, Kilgore hadn't yet announced his intent to jump from Monarch to Niche (1831 Sidney Street, 314.773.7755).
Monarch Restaurant & Wine Bar, 7401 Manchester Road, Maplewood, MO 63143 • 314.644.3995
