For years, the restaurant inside The Westin St. Louis has been hiding in plain sight.
Not anymore.
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Clark Street Grill, the hotel’s main restaurant for the past 16 years, closed in mid-December to be renovated, expanded, and rebranded.
Quattro Trattoria + Pizzeria will serve simple, high-quality Italian fare: sharable plates, hand-tossed individual pizzas baked in a 700-degree oven, a selection of properly portioned pastas (both fresh and dried), hand-made gnocchi, and the requisite steak and seafood entrées.
“Many Italian-themed restaurants simply serve their guests too much food,” says executive chef Josh Wedel, who’s been with the restaurant since its inception. “Considering the restaurant’s new name, association, location, and demographics, the last thing we wanted to do was overstuff people before they headed off to the game or out for the evening.”
One might think a 1-pound meatball would run counter to the chef’s intentions. The signature dish is designed to be a sharable and is thus cut into fourths, as is its counterpart, the same meatball stuffed with tagliatelle, an inside-out pasta dish as it were.
The price points—entrées priced in the teens—reflect the ample-but-not-opulent portion sizes. There will be different menus for lunch and dinner (more sandwiches at lunch and more entrées at dinner), but Wedel says many items will cross over.
The rectangular bar (formerly a 10-seat hideaway) now occupies a center pivot position. The bar’s 30 seats overlook the action at Busch Stadium, less than a block to the east. (The stadium’s “literally a crosswalk away,” quipped a representative.)
The tall, east-facing windows (once part of the original lobby) are now prime-time, stadium-facing seats in the bar. Several windowed offices were also relocated, both expanding the stadium panorama and allowing for a quieter, semi-private, carpeted room with soft seating. Concrete columns were faced either in warm woods or sleek black veneers. The ceiling was lowered in spots, pleasing to the eye…and the ear.
But the most dramatic (and logical) addition was converting a utility door (located almost on the corner of Clark and Eighth) into an entry door leading directly into the bar, delineated by an awning. In other words, it’s no longer necessary to traipse through the hotel lobby to access the hotel’s restaurant and bar. Fans spilling out of Busch Stadium (or off the Stadium Metrolink stop) could easily spill into the new door at Quattro.
The bar will feature local craft beers, Italian wines, and (here’s a twist) several Italian-inspired cocktails prepared tableside (including Negroni Classico and Aperol Spritz). Using beverage carts instead of food carts adds to the service level but with fewer moving parts. “Once those carts start rolling, I bet they keep rolling,” predicts Wedel.
The new dining room, divided by a screen and some modern sculpture, has reclaimed some of the former bar space. The open kitchen remains, but “the whole space is so much brighter and lighter that it seems new, too,” says Wedel.
Quattro has been designed to appeal to several demographics. Hotel guests wanting reasonably priced Italian dining close to home, business people in search of a higher-end lunch or happy hour spot, a respite before and after games that’s a titch more civilized than other nearby options, and a destination in a growing downtown restaurant market—even on the nights when the Cardinals aren’t in town.
Quattro Trattoria + Pizzeria is expected to open on April 4.
