With no announcement and little fanfare, Gerard’s restaurant closed last night after over 24 years in operation. The restaurant was located in the Colonnade Center in Des Peres, at the end of a long strip of businesses that ran perpendicular to Manchester Road.
Contacted last week, owner Gerard Whatton told SLM that proposed improvements to the center had a lot to do with the closure. “I was looking at a tremendous increase in rent,” he said. “I saw all this coming a few years ago. I had a good run.”
Prior to opening Gerard’s, Whatton was head waiter and wine steward at Al Baker’s for 21 years. When Baker's closed in 1993, Whatton wanted to open a place with the same elevated level of food and service. Offering a continental menu that included fresh seafood, prime beef, and a substantial wine list, he opened Gerard’s in early 1995.
Whatton’s wine list grew to be one of the largest in the city, at one time boasting 600 selections. The restaurant garnered the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for 14 years in a row, until Whatton stopped applying for the award several years ago. Referencing the list in his 2010 review, SLM’s Dave Lowry wrote “it’s pointless to describe it, save to say if you remember the prepubescent joy of the Sears Wish Book, you have the idea," and noting that prices ranged “from the noticeably warm to the blistering.”
Gerard’s offered an old-school dining experience and served classic dishes that swayed toward Italian cuisine as the years passed. Whatton wistfully mentioned that "people no longer support fine dining" and that most people’s “dinner experience now resembles the more casual lunch.”
Even though fine dining had a long-term grip on Whatton, “it was time,” he said—but also time to go out on his own terms. Instead of an extended goodbye (as in Bill Cardwell’s three-month-long slow exit in late 2018), he decided to notify a few friends and good customers of the closure. “That way, I knew I’d have food and adequate staff,” he said. “There’s nothing worse than having the final days be scattered and chaotic. I didn't want that to be my guests’ last memory.”
