With Grand Tavern in the Angad Arts Hotel, chef David Burke steaks a claim
The new hotel in Grand Center that allows guests to choose their room by emotive color features a similarly bold dining spot.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Ritz Cracker Crab Cake Benedict with country ham, tomato jam, and a quail egg on top
A celebrity chef wanting to make a splashy entrée in St. Louis couldn’t get any splashier than the bold Angad Arts Hotel, where guests choose rooms by emotive color: blue for tranquility, green for rejuvenation, yellow for happiness, red for passion. In the restaurant, guests should simply order what they want; almost every dish is a well-honed favorite from one of David Burke’s other tavern-themed restaurants. Some items—such as the cheese-covered crab cake sliders (Ritz crackers act as the “bun”), hipster fries (with Parmesan, shishitos, and beef jerky), and “clothesline” bacon (torched tableside)—feel more apropos in the 70-seat bar, where local art is showcased above the booths (and an app connects guests to the artists). Around the corner, in the lipstick-red dining room, even the lowly chicken, brined in seaweed and then roasted, could become a signature dish. Or because Burke holds the U.S. patent on the process, consider a 40-day dry-aged bone-in K.C. strip served sliced with the meat cleverly reversed. It’s so much fun, you’ll be tempted to take a cheesecake lollipop (plucked from a lollipop tree) 12 floors up to the hotel lobby, where a set of clocks shows times in such real places as Silly, Belgium; Cool, California; and Saint Louis-du-Ha! Ha!, Quebec. The whimsy makes sense as The Grand Tavern/Angad Arts experience is decidedly unreal.
