The much-anticipated Idol Wolf will welcome patrons beginning next Tuesday, July 25. Located inside the soon-to-open 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis in downtown St. Louis, the restaurant and lounge promises a transportive trip to the Iberian Peninsula, courtesy of acclaimed chef Matthew Daughaday. Reservations will be accepted on Open Table beginning July 25.
The Atmosphere
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Part boutique hotel, part art museum, the 21c Hotel St. Louis is the result of a stunning restoration of downtown’s century-old YMCA building. The Louisville-based 21c Museum Hotel brand has properties in nine other markets throughout the region, including Kansas City, Oklahoma City, and Nashville. True to its name, the space is filled with original works of fine art from local, national, and global artists. These works adorn the restaurant and lounge space, located to the left of the hotel’s main lobby.
Beyond the art pieces, the restaurant and lounge are impressive works of design in their own right. The two distinct areas, separated by a beautifully textured wall of intertwining leather straps, feature a cobalt blue and rust color scheme, butcher block bistro tables, larger marble-topped round tables, and chairs and banquettes in both peacock blue and cognac leathers and tweeds.
The heart of the lounge is a large, semi-circular marble bar, outfitted with blonde wooden, globe-capped light fixtures and surrounded with cognac leather chairs. The two-story-high room offers views of the lobby and a tiny glimpse of the dining room, which is mostly obscured by the aforementioned leather strap wall. An impressive liquor selection and gleaming glassware fill the three-tiered wooden shelves behind the bar, where guests are invited to experiment with Spanish-inflected takes on classic cocktails.
The dining room has a more intimate feel, thanks to its pale coral-colored arched ceiling. Booths, which line both sides of the room, are upholstered in a moody rust, avocado green, mustard, and midnight blue botanical pattern, and the walls are made from a modern take on wood paneling. There’s also a billiard room, a 14-person private dining room, and an outdoor patio bedecked with string lights overlooks the Downtown West neighborhood.
“One of the great things about 21c [Museum Hotels] is that each restaurant has a different identity,” says Dylan Rauhoff, director of food and beverage for 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis. “This is designed to be a restaurant for the city, not just the hotel.”
The Menu
While the hotel describes Idol Wolf as combining “local and seasonal ingredients with Iberian sensibilities to create a memorable shared drinking and dining experience,” Daughaday has a less conceptual way of discussing the restaurant’s Spanish inflection.
“What’s funny is when I came on and we were talking about this idea, it reminded me more and more of the years I was at Taste,” Daughaday explains. “At Taste, we just put out dishes that sounded good. The menu was eclectic, but looking back most of it was Spanish. It was interesting to come to this realization that I had unintentionally been making a lot of Spanish food for a while, but it’s nice to be able to put it in its proper box. I think that shows people will get hooked on our food pretty easily, because these are flavors they already know.”
While creating the menu, Daughaday and Rauhoff began with the idea of the form that they wanted the dining to take. Not only is the shared-plates format the way that they both like to dine, but it also felt like the right fit for the type of place that they wanted to create—a dining room and lounge where people can come together and share cocktails, food, and conversation.
In that sense, guests are encouraged to order a variety of bocaditos (snacks) and tapas, ranging from Serrano ham, blistered shishito peppers, and watermelon gazpacho to beef cheek empanadas, squid ink rigate, and pattas bravas. Larger portions (think composed entrées)—such as seafood paella, a grilled barrel cut ribeye with garlic roasted mushrooms and glazed pearl onions, a pan-roasted black cod with leeks, zucchini, white asparagus and serrano ham beurre blanc—are also available.
The bar program takes its cues from Daughaday’s menu. Such cocktails as the PX Old Fashioned are given the Spanish treatment thanks to the addition of Pedro Ximinez sherry. Gin and tonics using Iberian flavors, as well as sangria, pair beautifully with the food, and the restaurant’s wine list consists of roughly 60 percent Spanish varietals.
“I feel like Spanish food has been the biggest hole in the St. Louis dining scene,” Daughaday says. “When we talk about having a thriving food scene in our city, that has to be represented.”
The Team
Daughaday made his name in the St. Louis dining scene while working for such esteemed places as Niche, Taste, Juniper, and his own restaurant, the former Reeds American Table. Now, at 21c, he hopes to replicate the hotel brand’s success with its restaurants in other markets while embracing the creative control that the hotel has given him. “I feel like I have a place to grow and learn but not sacrifice the quality of the food and not have the script written out for me,” he says. “It’s the best of both worlds, and I don’t feel like I had to sell my soul to do it. I still get to make food that I’m proud to put out there. I feel very lucky.”
While Daughaday and Rauhoff are excited about Idol Wolf and the hotel’s casual café, Good Press (slated to open in the coming weeks), they are even more excited about being a part of what they see as a St. Louis renaissance. Both note the hotel and restaurant’s proximity to CITYPARK, City Museum, the Enterprise Center, Busch Stadium, Armory STL, and City Foundry, which make it an ideal place for exploring all that the city has to offer. With all of the nearby development happening at once, there is a connection starting to be realized between downtown, Midtown, and Grand Center, they note, and they’re excited that their restaurant—and 21c Hotel St. Louis as a whole—can be part of that movement.
“For the first time, it feels like we are seeing this collective effort,” Daughaday says. “One project leads to another. Everyone I talk to is excited about downtown coming back up—they want it to come back up, and they want to be a part of it.”
