Cinder House comes to the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis

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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts

Though it’s true that renowned chefs around the world have lent their expertise and names to hotel restaurants, the phenomenon is still a rarity in St. Louis. It’s fitting, then, that the city’s most famous chef has partnered with the city’s highest-profile hotel to create Cinder House, which overlooks the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River from its eighth-floor catbird seat at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis.

It’s logical that much of the cooking at Cinder House is done at a 14-foot wood hearth, its smoldering embers adding an aromatic char to a 16-ounce Prime ribeye that arrives with a lagniappe of three sauces. Not so obvious is the emphasis on Brazilian dishes, until one realizes that it was Craft’s nanny, Dia, who kickstarted the chef’s love of food. A paean—a pão de queijo Craft calls Dia’s Cheese Bread—is made with gluten-free tapioca starch and served with cured ham, whipped lardo, and pickled vegetables so you can build little sandwiches the way Craft used to do.

The chef takes such Brazilian staples as feijoada for a spin, cooking each ingredient separately to intensify the flavors, and the open-fire grill adds smoke and intensity to the components in the fish stew, moqueca. Breakfast is traditional, with nods to Brazil. At lunch, Craft eschews the esoteric, opting instead for burgers, tacos, and lobster rolls. Enjoy them outdoors at long banquettes, under the shade of fruit-producing kiwi vines. Inside, the shades of blue and green are reminiscent of the ice caves of the Patagonian Andes. Welcome to the Cinder House dichotomy: very cool and very hot. 999 N. Second.