Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Butterflies taste with their feet. When you stroll into Table, this sort of information—lots of it—is scrawled on a series of chalkboards, along with the day’s specials. It makes for interesting reading as you wait for a table. You can also speculate: With whom will you be sharing that table? Seating here is a mostly communal enterprise. There are a few two- and four-tops; the rest of the seating is on either side of long tables that resemble a banquet setting. If this makes you uncomfortable, loosen up. It’s pleasant, actually. And it makes it convenient, if your tablemates are easily distracted, to filch bites from their plates. Given the quality of the kitchen’s fare, it will be tempting.
You’ll remember The Stable, the restaurant occupying this space before. Apparently, it lost its lease on the article—and the S in the name—and the new owners made the place into Table. The setting is familiar. Lofty ceilings add a sense of space. A concrete floor makes for lively acoustics that are mostly friendly and fun, not annoying and raucous. It’s all literally in the shadow of the Lemp Brewery.
The menu is chaotic, but pleasantly so, with sections like “Hoof” and “Beak.” It helps to know that the offerings are an array of tasty little plates. Every diner is going to want about three of them for a full meal. Other than that, it’s best to go with a group and just jump in.
Among those offerings that best serve as starters, you won’t regret the smoked butter. A ramekin of gently tannic sweet butter, redolent with woodsy fragrance, is ruinously rich. The bread, from Companion, is crusty and light. The butter and accompanying head of roasted garlic are a grand way to get dinner going. Mussels are another worthy starter; they’re steamed in a tequila-flavored sauna, with a touch of fresh mint and lemon. Foie gras is rendered into a paste-like pâté. It’s a good thought—the jumble of pistachios and goat cheese spattered with chocolate balsamic vinegar is perfect—but the puréed texture costs it some of its luxurious goodness.
Using cornbread for panzanella presents a Southern twist to this salad, the cornbread cubes tossed with green tomatoes and arugula. Speaking of green tomatoes, they’ve never been better than in another salad, one of spinach; they’re rendered into cornmeal-battered, deep-fried “croutons” and sprinkled over the greens, along with mozzarella and buttermilk dressing.
If there’s a protein preference at Table, it’s pig. Porky gets plenty of love, from fried pork tenderloin sliders to pork-cheek ragu. Country “ribs” are actually taken from the shoulder; they’re boneless, meaty, and beautifully pink at the center. A barbecue sauce tinted with red wine adds a snappy smack, and the slaw is refreshingly spicy. Shoulder, sausage, and bacon crowd the cassoulet, a meal unsurpassed on a winter evening.
There are few words sweeter in culinary English than “suckling pig.” With expectations high (and given the other offerings here), the dish was a trifle disappointing. The meat—its golden, crispy skin intact—is chopped too finely for diners to appreciate the taste and texture. And roast pig needs carbs to exploit it; instead, it’s presented here with lettuce leaves, meant to wrap around the meat in a kind of taco, as if those lettuce leaves are somehow going to make those oily-sweet cracklings less extravagant.
Pork belly is available here—and entirely worthy—braised in a reduction of maple syrup, orange juice, and cider. Pork belly was to 2012 what pork ears, we predict, will be to 2014. If that image is less than appetizing, think of them as splendidly crispy, meaty, deep-fried pork rinds. They arrive atop a tumble of flash-fried kale (arugula is also used some nights), along with a fried egg that breaks open and gushes all that sunny yolk over the meat. Delicious.
Beef gets some attention. There’s a flat iron steak daubed with amaro mustard, as well as beef ribs grilled à l’orange and scented with smoked black tea. Your cow craving will be more happily satisfied, though, with a hunk of beef-shank bone. It’s roasted until the marrow turns to a creamy, beefy butter that you’ll dig out and savor, along with an unusual parsley salad.
There are moments when the menu is more like a chef’s tasting. So it is with a splendid duck confit, the duck lightly barbecued, chopped, and mixed with curds of blue cheese and bacon crumbles, then shoveled into halves of an apple roasted with cider. Or with “escargot” that is actually a rough purée of Ozark-grown shiitakes stuffed into snail shells. Or with fluffy fritters of sweet corn, paired with ricotta and a maple-syrup dip.
For dessert, each option just seems better than the last. Good: the chocolate graham cookies with house-made vanilla-bean marshmallow fluff. Better: the chocolate pâté with blackberry mustard. Best: the Frostie root-beer float.
The wine list is small, but balanced and nicely varied. Consider some liquid alternatives, though. Many of the ingredients for a dozen mixed drinks are exotic: lemon-basil sugar, caramelized honey, blackberry mustard. And as the menu puts it, the “hooch” in them—like Buffalo Trace bourbon, Lismore Scotch, and Cointreau—makes it worth working your way through the list. Beers, available on draft and in bottles, are both local and foreign, the latter including some interesting selections that pair nicely with the offerings here.
The pace is relaxed at Table. The crowds are inevitable. And the food? Butterflies would be tramping all over it.
The Bottom Line: Small dishes loaded with a panoply of unusual, inevitably delicious kitchen inventions are served at communal tables.
1821 Cherokee
South City
314-449-1888
Dinner Wed through Mon, brunch Sat and Sun
Average Main Course: It’s small plates, so plan on spending about $30 on dinner, not including drinks.
Reservations: Affirmative.
Dress: The menu is breezy and casual; one’s attire may follow suit.
Chef: Cassy Vires
