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It's the week of the flying saucer here in St. Louis...and two saucers have landed.
Last Saturday, Chipotle opened a unit in the infamous and former DelTaco "flying saucer" building at 212 S. Grand, adjacent to the SLU campus.
A far more interesting sighting is the long-awaited arrival of the Flying Saucer Draught Emporium, the seventeenth unit of the 18-year old chain of craft beer and food emporiums founded by Shannon Wynne. Relish reported on this particular landing back in May of 2012, and pretty exciting news it was, as it was the first national restaurant to commit to downtown St. Louis (in a non-hotel location) in recent memory.
Similar to when a Betazoid gift box appeared in the Transporter Room of the USS Enterprise, 80 beer taps and over double that number in bottled beer offerings have finally materialized here: The Flying Saucer will open at 900 Spruce (the former Cupples 9 building) March 6, at 5 PM.
Back in May, Wynne cautioned readers that although his Flying Saucers have TV's, they are not sports bars, "so don't expect to see your favorite Cardinals on the wall. That's not us; it's not what we do." What is on the wall are plates, lots of plates, interspersed with beer memorabilia (see below). An easy wall covering, plates are both decorative and inexpensive. Co-owner Larry Richardson said that customers often bestow upon them a favorite plate, hoping it will be worthy of permanent placement somewhere in the Saucer. "Plates are cheap," remarked Richardson, "especially when they are given to you."
Above the plates is the Ring of Honor, honorific plates awarded to those who have sampled 200 unique beers. A list of beer offerings and their descriptions are available online (updated daily) and on 2 kiosks inside the Flying Saucer. Ring of Honor plebes can get credit for three beers per day--no more. The program was designed, according to Richardson, not for macho purposes but rather "to help demystify and educate our customers about craft beer. Most units have 1200-1400 people who have gone through the program."
Even if you're not a Ring of Honor member, you can use the kiosks to, in Richardson's words, "sniff around the different, constantly-rotating offerings."
Having eighty beers on tap requires order and organization, so the customer can grasp such an ominous number. The first bank of taps begins (from the left, above) with the East Coast beers, drifts into the Midwestern beers, and then the local beers and regional beers; the second bank of taps (below) begins with Colorado, covers the West Coast beers, and finishes with a dozen or so foreign beers. Sam Wynne, assistant beer director and son of Shannon Wynne, said that "21 of the beers--a quarter of the tap beers--are from Missouri...which is an unprecedented amount for any of our markets," adding, "I was amazed at how many good beers Missouri--and especially St. Louis--produces." Wynne is qualified to make such a claim--he's a Certified Cicerone, one of only several hundred in the country.
The tap walls are backed by rows and rows of shiny pennies (look closely above)--a curious, clever, attractive, and inexpensive design element. (When I asked radio guy John Carney if perchance he knew the reason for this, he quipped: "Because it's cheaper than nickels?")
Richardson mentioned that craft beer "is not a fad...it's simply a better product, and better products tend to stay around." And craft beer is the focus here; mainstream beers are not. The Flying Saucer welcomes the mainstream beer drinker--"even embraces them," according to Wynne, "because we know we have a better substitute for what they're used to drinking."
The walk-in cooler (left) is 45-feet long, with short beer lines and a time-tested 60/40 ratio of CO-2 (the carbonator) to nitrogen (the driver) "that we get from our own nitrogen harvester installed on the roof." Beer lines are drained and cleaned every two weeks "not only to respect the beer," Wynne said, "but to maintain a sanitary product. This is what we do, so we are very adamant about it." When designing a new Flying Saucer, Wynne said "the beer cooler is placed first, then we build the rest of the space around that."
Beer aficionados often geek out on glassware. Here, Wynne added some sanity: "Although shaker pints (right) are hated on in the cicerone community from time to time, they are the industry standard and that's what people expect. Stemware glasses are appropriate for certain beers, to unlock aromas, and we'll use them for about 30% of the beers." Logoed glasses (for beers like Chimay) will be used whenever possible. "Schlafly uses a beer-specific glass for their Kolsch," Wynne noted, "so we'll salute them and that style by using that glass as well."
The Flying Saucer has seating for 200 indoors (booths, lots of stools and bar rails, some soft seating) and another 100 on the covered patio, located a hundred or so yards away from Busch Stadium. A wall of windows facing the patio can be opened, effectively bringing those sights and sounds indoors.
The menu consists of pizzas, burgers, salads, and sandwiches. That portion of the proceedings will be covered by SLM's dining critics at a future date. Our plate, meanwhile, may well be of the Ring of Honor variety.
