Mainlander Supper Club to reopen in the Central West End in October

One of St. Louis’ most popular new restaurants is reopening in a new home next month.

Mainlander, the acclaimed supper club from partners Blake Askew and Gordon Chen, is slated to reopen at 392 N. Euclid in the Central West End on October 2. In addition to Mainlander, which serves a hyper-seasonal prix fixe menu that changes each month, the space will also be home to a second concept, The Jujube Inn, which is slated to open October 15.

Askew and Chen started Mainlander as a pop-up dinner series before opening the restaurant in its original brick-and-mortar location in July 2023. The immersive dining experience has earned critical acclaim both locally and nationally in the years since, including a semifinalist nod for the James Beard Foundation’s national award for Best New Restaurant in 2024. Askew and Chen noted the need to scale up their concept to reach more customers when they announced Mainlander’s move.

Here’s what to know before you go.

The Space

When the building that previously housed Salt + Smoke—and for decades before that, Duff’s—became available following a fire in January 2022, they jumped at the opportunity. Mainlander itself takes its name for a ’70s-era Polynesian-themed Clayton restaurant, so Askew says the historic Duff’s space felt like the perfect fit for the restaurant’s next chapter.

“At the very beginning, and even when we were doing pop-ups, Mainlander has always been about reaching back into the past and being nostalgic for a period of dining in the United States, particularly St. Louis, that was a formative time for American dining,” Askew says. “Recognizing the past and being nostalgic for something that we never experienced. Duff’s is such a storied restaurant in St. Louis and represents that time and, particularly, this neighborhood so well that it was on our radar before we even had the opportunity to take this space. It was very exciting that we could become more ourselves and more fully realize our concept in a space that is physically tied to that period.”

Askew and Chen were able to be involved in the building’s restoration to rework it in Mainlander’s image while still honoring its history. Immediately upon walking in, for instance, diners will be greeted with an image of the Duff’s crew from 40 years ago. Askew hopes that anyone who dined at the original Mainlander will feel like they’re back in the old restaurant, as they took care to create a similar atmosphere full of vintage pieces. While the new Mainlander location will be able to accommodate more diners than its previous space, it’s not a dramatic shift; the space offers seating for 27 customers, up from 19.

“It’s not like we’re becoming a huge restaurant,” Askew says. “We’re still a very small place. This move is more about moving to a location that can better accommodate what we do. When we were down the street, we kind of worked around what we had, and this is more designed for how we like to operate.”

The Jujube Inn

Arguably the biggest change is the addition of The Jujube Inn, a casual bar and lounge located just off the main kitchen that will seat about 20 guests. Askew and Chen describe the concept as “tipples and tidbits,” serving a small a la carte menu of rotating bites and creative cocktails, along with a short and highly curated beer and domestic wine list.

The menu at The Jujube Inn will complement that of Mainlander, featuring “American fare with a nod to the mid-century with a distinctive Taiwanese flair.” This is the first time Askew and Chen will be offering an a la carte menu, which will exclusively be available for walk-ins—no reservations accepted.

The bar menu will bring back favorites from Mainlander’s previous seasonal menus and will likely always offer the namesake Mainlander cocktail (an evolving riff on the Mai Tai). On The Jujube Inn’s food menu, diners can expect to see items such as dumplings, chive boxes (a Taiwanese street food), and a stir-fried noodle dish made with fresh rice noodles from Wei Hong Bakery. Askew stresses that, like the menu at Mainlander, the bar menu will constantly change, driven by seasonality and local ingredients.

“The bar is just like the supper club,” he says. “There’s no real rules. Everything we do is dictated by what’s available to us and what we’re inspired by that day. We hope that people will come back often and try new things.”

Reservations

Mainlander will offer dinner seatings at 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Reservations are $93 (including draft beer, soda, and coffee or tea upon request) with the option to add drink pairings (cocktail, wine, or spirit-free) for $38. Dinner and drink pairings must be paid for at the time of reservation.

Mainlander will begin accepting reservations on Resy at noon on Wednesday, September 17. Going forward, reservations for the following month will be available on Resy on the first of each month at noon. (November reservations, for instance, will open at noon on October 1.) No gratuity, tip, or surcharge of any kind will be added to any bill at either Mainlander or The Jujube Inn.

“We have never relied on tips to our employees, ever, and we never will,” Askew says. “And that is probably the biggest difference between this bar and every other bar in town—the people working here will not be relying on tips, and when we present a check to people, there won’t be a line to add a tip. It’s really core to our values. It’s a whole can of worms on that subject, but simply put, we believe it is our responsibility to provide a living wage for our employees, and we don’t think it is the responsibility of our guests.”