1 of 7
A breakfast sandwich
2 of 7
Coffee options at the Living Room
3 of 7
Phillips doin' the pourover.
4 of 7
A "sweetbread" stuffed with cinnamon-apple mixture.
5 of 7
An asparagus gallette with luscious melted Fontina and smoked Gouda.
6 of 7
A view of the cafe's interior
7 of 7
From left, Chris Phillips, Nate Larson and Jordan Howe run the show at the Living Room / Arthouse Coffees
You open a cafe. You sell coffee. You sell coffee brewed in the styles the industry is embracing: pour-overs, siphon-pot coffee, cold-pressed concentrates, and so on.
You sell food to go with the coffee. It's a small menu, but an ambitious one. You work for months perfecting each recipe. Your buttery asparagus galette is damn good. The “daily spreads” you plate next to hunks of toasted baguette come in flavors like sun-dried tomato pesto butter and chunky mixed-nut butter. Your peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookie (right) is, according to one customer, “so good I like to get high before I eat it.” No comestible is an afterthought.
And all this goodness, all this serious food and coffee is served in a compact cafe run by a non-profit that hires employees with disabilities to work under the tutelage of bakers and baristas.
In a sloppy and desultory world, Living Room has a way of approaching every aspect of the restaurant industry with laser focus. It is, in a word, a sleeper.
Late last year Living Room joined the cool kids in Maplewood, where so much youthful energy has remade stretches of Manchester Road and Sutton Avenue into a destination axis of restaurants and shops. The café is in the same building as gourmet butcher shop Bolyard's Meat & Provisions (the former Black Cat Theatre).
Within Living Room’s compact kitchen, baker Nate Larson is plating up a surprising array of menu items. His daily specials board might feature a panzanella salad with a brown-sugar vinaigrette, caramelized-onion quiche, or a rustic apple-honey-nut galette made with honey from the café’s own hives.
The cinnamon roll French toast (below) is super-sweet. (It’s served with real maple syrup, but using it might be gilding the lily.) It’s paired with peppered bacon that’s been baked rather than skilleted, to be less greasy.
A warmed asparagus galette is made with smoked Gouda and Fontina and the broiled cheeses, sautéed onions and asparagus make for a luscious landscape of hummocks and crevasses supported by a retaining wall of buttery crust. The galette is crowned with a fluffy salad of arugula tossed in a citrus vinaigrette.
“Sweetbread” is Larson’s name for a toasted pocket of sweet dough stuffed with a variety of fillings. You might find dulce de leche with mixed nuts or cinnamon- apple peeking out when you slice into these happy rolls.
A breakfast sandwich comprised of sliced hardboiled egg, white cheddar and pepper bacon on a baguette makes for a quick meal.
A lunch item, Larson’s charming bento box is basically a farmer’s lunch made cute. One recent combo included Bolyard's andouille sausage, a chive-and-onion Cotswold cheese, a French bread roll, red grapes and house-made spiced nuts. It must be said that the andouille was a symphony of pork and spices; great stuff.
Scones arrive from the kitchen in flavors like blueberry, apple-cinnamon and savory bacon-spinach.
The peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookie, as noted above, is a riot of rich chocolate and peanut-butter flavors competing for dominance on the tongue. It’s intense.
Given all his talent, it’s surprising to learn that Larson is self-taught.
“I’ve actually learned a lot from watching Kitchen Nightmares,” he said. “I’ve learned to keep things simple, and not to overthink or overdo it.
“My vision was to make dishes that complement the flavors of the coffee, with simplicity,” he added. “I wanted the food to be delicious, uncomplicated, in generous portions and affordable.”
The coffee is where this all got started. Living Room began as Arthouse Coffee, headed by roaster Chris Phillips and cafe manager Jordan Howe. These guys are, like so many others we’ve encountered in the coffee business, passionate and highly caffeinated java zealots.
At Living Room, you are invited to get an idea of what you’d like to drink by smelling the ground coffees in glasses on counter.
Then, you choose your drip method.
Have you ever heard a barista speak of coffee containing tasting notes of, say, blackberry, lemon, caramel or molasses? It is much easier for mere amateurs like us to actually detect these flavors if the coffee is brewed via the Kyoto drip tower, explained Phillips. That’s a cold-brewing method that takes an entire day to brew a batch, drawing out depth from the grounds drip by precious drip. It’s so strong and delicious, it can put you off the comparatively weak coffee you might be used to, permanently.
If that’s too intense, you might opt for the siphon pot, which works like a French press, but uses a cloth filter to eliminate the sediment that sometimes passes into the coffee with that method, said Phillips.
The Chemex pourover, which has gained great popularity in these parts and beyond, is an option, too.
Java junkies who need something stronger than any of these options may opt for Bitts cold-pressed coffee concentrate. This very slow-brewed drink is mixed in a 1:1 ratio with water or milk for an intense coffee rush. It's served from a nitrogen tap system like a Guinness.
The experienced types at Living Room, however, sometimes just order it on the rocks, like bourbon. If a normal human drinks it straight, he or she experiences earth-shattering revelations from the divine, followed shortly by a nap with the discovery of drool at awakening.
“I tell people it's extremely high-octane stuff,” said Larson. “Don't be a hero.”
Arthouse / Living Room has bottled Bitts, and is doing a brisk sales in the take-home variety, too.
“Bottled cold-press coffee concentrate has become a staple in the coffee scenes in cities outside St. Louis,” said Phillips, “but so far we’re the only ones to offer it here.”
Fans of Arthouse may have seen the roasters' boss “brewcart” at various farmers markets around town. It’s a solar-powered, rolling cart mounted with an espresso machine, an integrated pour-over range, and Bitt's cold-press coffee on tap. The brewcart has enabled the guys to do go mobile; on one memorable night, they collaborated with the bartenders at the Fortune Teller Bar to create a group of coffee cocktails.
Readers of food blogs like this one are used to tales of outrageously tasty sandwiches and fancy coffee, but it’s not often you learn about a business that caters to epicureans while serving a greater purpose.
“We choose to hire people who have barriers to traditional employment,” explained Larson. “For instance, we might hire someone who has endured a brain injury.”
The opportunities come via Bridges Community Support Services, which owns
the café. It’s an unusual arrangement, and a humbling reminder that some of us do good while we do everything else. Surely, all of us can.
Living Room / Arthouse Coffees
2808 Sutton
314-899-0173
Tue -Sat: 7 a.m. - 3 p.m.
