Think your Mother’s Day was a successful celebration of Mom? How’s it compare to Alec Schingel’s, who named a whole restaurant after his?
Robin (7268 Manchester) is the culmination of several of Schingel’s pop-ups over the past couple of years. It fits into the bustling Maplewood dining scene like the Duck Dance at a St. Louis wedding. Situated in the space that was most recently The Benevolent King, Robin is housed in a cozy, vintage storefront with a bistro feel and an open kitchen that dominates the back.
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On one side, the bar beckons with just four intimate seats and an equally small but cool selection of hipster beers and cocktails, including a house original: the martini, stirred with “washed” gin, which in this case means infused with the juices of giardiniera. A brief wine list is carefully crafted; prices are more than fair.
The wheels on Robin’s bus spin on an idea that’s fairly unusual for St. Louis: entirely prix fixe of four courses and with a menu so limited, a quartet of diners can cover it entirely.
First, though, a word about the bread. Charging for bread service might seem chintzy—but it’s worth every penny and a splendid way to get things going. A thick slice of “porridge” bread is hearty, with an aroma like a bakery’s just-opened oven, and composed of wheat, oats, buckwheat, and rice.
A well-crafted starter, the trout filet has a meaty succulence of mushroom curing, its delicate flesh soaking up the mushroom flavor. An emulsion of green tomatoes and horseradish add intriguing layers. Chilled batonnet matchsticks of celeriac, apple, and endive are stacked atop a puddle of crème fraîche with pecans, creating a light and lively salad. Finally, lobes of cold chicken liver are paired with beet jam along with fragile toast points for dipping, an innovative take on pâté.
We’ve never had a Minnesota “hot dish,” but if it’s anything like the one at Robin, then we’re ready to move there. With the most understated menu description in town, it’s clearly a standout among the second courses. Imagine a healthy scoop of Rice Krispies atop mushroom soup. Wild rice is toasted to bring out maximal crunchiness, and the soup underneath is rich, thick with oyster and enoki mushrooms. The rice soaks into the broth; every bite has a different texture. Don’t linger or even speak when eating this—it demands your full attention to get the full range of the recipe.
Dorothy’s Potatoes is a salad that would be at home at any picnic. Potato chunks are tossed with sour cream, a blend of herbs, and bubbles of trout roe. Sunchokes in a brown butter bath are OK, but the soup’s spectacular.
Two of the three “main courses” are real winners. A dozen things can go wrong in the kitchen with duck breast. None of them occur here. Instead, a slab of the breast comes off the sauté pan with the luscious layer of skin exquisitely browned so the fat dribbles into the meat. It looks beautiful and tastes better. Skinny roasted carrot fingers and a dollop of shelling beans in the thickened duck juices bring it all together.
“Schnitzel” is like “beach”: Some are better than others, but have you ever really experienced a bad one? At Robin, a glowing crust that’s the color of perfectly fried chicken wraps around a medallion of hammered pork tenderloin so tender it tastes like veal. Braised cabbage, oven-softened apple chunks, and puckery mustard combine with perhaps the best German dish in the city. We tried the roasted cabbage, the third main course selection. It’s roasted cabbage. Enough said.
Neither of the two desserts will disappoint. The vacherin (think of it as a meringue) tastes of rhubarb, ginger, and lemon verbena. It’s frothy-fine. The sweet-potato tart, though, pungent with black walnuts, is firm as ice cream and explodes with creamy sweetness.
A brief note about portions: One approaches the subject as one would discount car brakes—with trepidation. We sophisticates, after all, revere plates artistically occupied by calories so scant they’d leave Barbie doll appetites wanting. We came to eat, however, and we’re at a restaurant, not a museum. And, yes, we understand food cost. That said, portions at Robin tend toward the, ah, exiguous. Please, sir, may we have some more?
And finally, “seasonality” is to lots of restaurants nowadays what artificial intelligence is to the tech crowd—it has a near-magic attraction. Frankly, our ancestors thought modern food preservation was magic; they adored food out of season. But we get the idea, and at those rare places like Robin where it’s done thoughtfully, it has its charms. Every dish we tried on an evening in early March tasted of a chilly, rain-soaked, Midwestern late winter, when one is delighted to be warm and inside. This kind of talent is often attempted, though almost never as well as here. We anticipate a return to see what the rest of the year tastes like.
