For more than two decades, Bob Brazell has been a force in the St. Louis culinary scene, demonstrating an impressive range that spans from the area’s most lauded fine-dining institutions to beloved neighborhood dives. Now, after a five-year hiatus, his most popular brand, Byrd & Barrel, is back and ready for a vibrant new chapter. The man behind the chicken suit recently chatted about his passion for the restaurant business and how it inspires his plans for the future.
Where do you think your passion for cooking comes from? Growing up, my grandmother was an amazing cook. You’d go over to her house for Christmas, and she’d been cooking for two days and had enough food prepared for 300 people, even though there were only 10 of us coming for dinner. I also used to always hang out with my mom in the kitchen and would help her out all the time… I have friends from high school tell me they remember us drinking a Natty Light back when we were 17, and I said, “Man, I want to own restaurants one day.” They tell me, “You did it.” It’s so awesome to hear that.
Find the best food in St. Louis
Subscribe to the St. Louis Dining In and Dining Out newsletters to stay up-to-date on the local restaurant and culinary scene.
You started working in restaurants while in high school, as a dishwasher and then cook. What were those early experiences like? My first gig was at Orlando Gardens, working as a dishwasher. One morning I showed up, and the chef was in the kitchen by himself. I don’t remember the circumstances, but it was something where everybody called off, probably because of bad weather. He was spinning like a top with three ovens open at the same time. I walked to the dish pit, and he snapped his fingers at me. “Uh-uh, you are with me today, kid.” I made a ton of the St. Louis staple mostaccioli… Later, I watched as the waiters came in and put the mostaccioli in trays and placed it on the buffet line. At that point, I was back in the dish pit, so I peeked out and saw people eating what I made. I thought, This is really cool. It’s what I want to do.
You worked in some of the most important restaurants in St. Louis. What was that like? In my first week of [culinary] school, I begged Nate Hereford for a job at Niche. We talked for five minutes, and he asked me if I had my knives. I couldn’t believe it, but I realized he was telling me I was going to start right then. I worked eight hours that day, cleaning mushrooms and picking herbs; it was the time of my life… I remember going into Monarch to work for Josh Galliano; the talent in that place at that moment was unbelievable. That was the time of my life and the best kitchen experience I ever had.
You later worked at Prime 1000, Pi, Juniper, and with Simon Lusky, helping open Athlete Eats (now Revel Kitchen). How did you finally take the leap to open your own place? I had been looking to open something on my own and was talking to Jason Deem, who I got to know while working at Athlete Eats. He owns a lot of buildings in the Cherokee Street neighborhood and does a ton for that community. He’d heard that I had left Athlete Eats and called to tell me he had a building he wanted to show me, so I met him at his co-working space, Nebula, which was across the street from a half-burned-out Popeye’s. As we started walking toward it, I said, “Man, I’m going to kill you. Are you messing with me?” He asked me to be open-minded, so we walked in and literally half the building was burned down. It was filthy; the roof was caving in. But we believed in the area and the concept.
That concept, Byrd & Barrel, was an instant success and was having a great run when the pandemic hit in 2020. Why did you close something that felt tailor-made for the way people were eating during that time? Within those five years that Byrd was open, my business partners and I made Tamm [Avenue Bar] what it is, purchased the Tenderloin Room, and had this plan to expand even more. Every dream I’d ever had about being in the restaurant industry was coming true. Then the pandemic happened, and I thought I was going to lose everything. Luckily, I had my business partners, Ben [Strake] and Rick [DeStefane], and we made the tough decisions together. One of them was to close Byrd because we were leasing the building. We owned the Tamm property and had all these other employees to take care of… In the long run, it was the right decision because it meant we were able to pay all of our employees. It was really hard, but when it was all over, we came out on the right side.
You always felt that Byrd would reopen. Why did it take so long? Once the pandemic hit, we realized that the goal is to own the asset. You never know what’s going to happen, but if you own your building, at least you have that to fall back on. That’s why we shifted our focus to buying existing businesses and improving them to keep them going—places like the Tenderloin Room, Nick’s Pub, SoHa, Tamm… We need these places; they are part of our culture… With Byrd, we were really close to opening in a building on Hampton, but it just didn’t work out. We still had it going in Enterprise Center and knew it would come back one day, but we just weren’t sure where. When Nomad closed at Tamm, we spent two days tossing around ideas for what to do with the space, and then we just looked at each other and said, “We have to do Byrd.” Why start a brand-new concept when we had one in waiting? Still, because of everything else we have going on at the moment, I wasn’t sure right away if I could do this. But when word leaked out about us possibly reopening and the public response was so big, I thought, All right, this is pretty cool. Anytime people show so much appreciation for what you do, it means you are doing something right.
With Byrd open again and your other places going well, what’s next? It’s been amazing bringing Byrd back. I truly feel that if 2020 didn’t happen the way it did, that train would have stayed on the tracks, and there would be three or four other locations around St. Louis. It would be nice to get that path back—I think it is a concept that we can expand on. I also love the fact that all of our other concepts are in these little communities. St. Louis is very much like that, and we want to keep opening places or keep places going that people appreciate. At the end of the day, we are a restaurant or a bar, and people are making the decision to come and spend money with us. If we can greet them when they walk in the door and do the best we can for them while also taking care of our people, then that’s what matters.
