Sneak Peek: Gerard Craft’s Cinder House, opening at the Four Seasons Hotel-St. Louis August 29 (UPDATED)

Until the official opening, the restaurant is open to hotel guests only.

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The menu graphic evokes flame, smoke, and embers, indicative of the cooking methods used at Gerard Craft’s latest endeavor, Cinder House, which officially opens to the public at the Four Seasons Hotel St. Louis on August 29. Cinder House replaces Cielo, which had served breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the hotel since its inception a decade ago.  

The restaurant, bar space, and kitchen were reconfigured, and a handsome outdoor bar overlooking the river and the Arch was added, all in about 90 days—pretty quick work by restaurant standards.

“It was ready—it had to be ready,” Craft says, referencing the hotel’s commitment to open the restaurant in time for the 100th PGA Tournament, recently held at Bellerive Country Club.

Last weekend, Cinder House served a limited menu to hotel guests, which it will continue to do until August 29, when it opens to the public.

“Chefs from all over the country were here for one of the private events last weekend,” Craft says, “including celeb chefs Roy Choi and Joe Flamm from Spiaggia." Each chef was stationed under a different pool cabana and served up different items, a sight that impressed Craft and was within the hotel’s vision for the future.

Several years ago, when the decision was made to update Cielo, the only restaurant within the hotel, rumors circulated that it would become a steakhouse. “It was to be Q1 next year and then Q1 the following year,” says Four Seasons spokesperson Chloe Caylor. But general manager Apler Oztok envisioned something more dramatic. Oztok’s idea: Invite a local chef to take the foodservice to the next level, someone who could attract regional and national attention to the property. “And who better than Gerard Craft?” he said.

Craft’s original idea was to do interpretations of global barbecue, based on the idea that all cultures have cooked something over wood. “Then it morphed into the foods of my youth, which was a lot of South American food,” cooked by his childhood nanny, who was Brazilian. “A huge chunk of the menu happens to be from that area and that era, because it came easy,” he says. “It didn’t start out that way, but after a year of strategizing, it ended up that way.”

And while he was familiar with such popular items as feijoada and moqueca, he'd never dealt with them on a professional level. “I used to call coxinhas [co-SHEE-nyas] ‘chicken nuggies’ as a kid,” he says of the chicken-leg-shaped crouquette, “but I never thought about how to make them until a few years ago.”

Traditional feijoada calls for all the ingredients cooking together, but the version that Craft remembers “is a little more formal, where everything is cooked separately: rice, the beans we cook with ham hocks, braised smoked pork belly, braised pork cheeks, braised beef, and served with orange segments, topped with farofa," or lightly toasted cassava flour with butter and add-ins. “The Brazilians put farofa on everything,” Craft jokes.

Another likely hit will be moqueca (pronounced mo-KEH-kah), a Brazilian fish stew with African roots. The chef notes that “Brazilian food was influenced by both Europe and Africa, which, if you think about it, is the basis of American Southern cooking as well. The Brazilians, they cook soul food.”

Craft’s version of moqueca includes coconut milk, lobster broth, lime juice, grilled octopus, fresh snapper, fingerling potatoes, and head-on prawns, plus seasonal vegetables.

One appetizer—Dia’s Cheese Bread (named after Craft's nanny, whom he credits for his love of food) resembles a version that was served at Niche, Craft’s former flagship restaurant. A board includes cured meat, pickled vegetables (shallots pictured), whipped lardo, and four nuggets of melt-in-your-mouth, cooked-to-order cheese bread. And it's gluten-free, because Brazilian cuisine uses manioc flour instead of wheat flour.

Addressing the rumor that it was he who was going to open the steakhouse, Craft says, “Well, we have a nice steak section—a heavy meat component in general— and the wood-fired grill addresses the whole grilling culture in South America. But this is probably as close to a steakhouse as I’ll ever get.”

The aforementioned grill is a beast—with open grilling areas to either side, a plancha (flat-top grill), hanging racks, and a "burn box" used to burn down wood to useable coals. 

Cinder House will initially offer four steaks—flank, filet, bavette sirloin, and a prime 16-ounce ribeye (Craft’s favorite cut)—all served a la carte and accompanied by three sauces (a chimichurri, chimi-rojo hollandaise, and mole). Some dry-aged steaks (including a 32-ounce porterhouse) will appear as occasional specials, and a dry-aging chamber is in the works, "so a more consistent dry-aging program may yet happen,” says Craft.

Entrée prices hover in the high $20s and low $30s, similar to Brasserie, Craft’s popular bistro in the Central West End, a pleasant surprise in a richly detailed, top chef–run restaurant in a high-end hotel. There’s even a cheeseburger on the dinner menu, served on a brioche bun with fries for $15.

Cinder House’s breakfast menu consists of traditional American breakfast fare, along with a few eclectic dishes and nods to Brazil. Examples include brown butter scrambled eggs with house-made toast and arugula and a brioche French toast PB&J. There’s a breakfast version of the feijoada, as well as feijao tropeiro, made with black beans, duck sausage, and kale, topped with farofa.

The lunch menu is a pleasant surprise, with its composition and pricing (skewing closer to $10 than $15). Craft understands that most people (even foodies) tend to eat differently at lunch than dinner, and while many award-winning chefs won’t kowtow to simplicity, Craft’s midday menu leans toward more basic fare: burgers, tacos, lobster rolls, chicken sandwiches, BLTs... “The things all of us like to eat at lunch while vacationing or sitting around the pool,” says Craft. “I’ve found that most people just want something familiar and quick at lunch, like a Cobb salad. I love Cobb salads. Places with fancy lunch menus struggle with items like that. Ours is basic but not entirely predictable.”

The décor is neither basic nor predictable. The front desk is faced with Brazilian Amazonite granite, a design element that’s repeated in the other service areas but more importantly at the bar, where the long expanse shows the stone’s movement and depth of color, extending to a near-seamless waterfall edge and then down again.

The colors are repeated in a series of leather couches and banquettes, which tie together the bar and the dining room, so the spaces transition gracefullly. A bespoke set of shelves creates a division, albeit a subtle one. Sasha Aleksandr Malinich of R|5 Design Agency was responsible for the design, artwork, and finishes, drawing inspiration from the mountainous regions of South America. Different shades of blues and greens—in the upholstery, the granite, on the textured plaster walls, even the plates—are reminiscent of the colors found in the marble caves of the Patagonian Andes.

On the newly designed Sky Terrace Outdoor Bar and Lounge, the existing fountain became the focal point for acres of soft seating, outfitted with low tables and removable end tables for drinks and noshes from the poolside (a.k.a. lunch) food menu. In the cold months, the water element becomes a communal fire pit.

To either side of the primal feature are long banquettes with a different but cohesive vibe. Above the tables are pendant lights and kiwi vines to provide a bit of shade. (Fingers crossed, they'll be producing fruit by this time next year.)

No less dramatic is the new outdoor bar overlooking the river and the Arch. Made of manufactured stone, the bar top contains blue and green shards that echo the natural stone indoors. Heated from above, the bar is destined to be a three-season attraction.

All in all, there are “346 seats—not that I’m counting,” says Tommy “Salami” Andrew, who along with executive sous chef Michael Fricker, Pete Slay, and Joe Simonic form the nucleus of the kitchen. Sardella general manager Bess Kretsinger Heffernan is also at Cinder House, along with Porano general manager Alejandro Molina, who's also helping out. “To say I have a powerhouse team behind me would be quite the understatement,” says Craft.

Reservations are being accepted at Cinder House for the official opening day, August 29. Until then, the restaurant will be open only to guests of the Four Seasons. If you want to get a sneak peek at what will likely be one of the best new restaurants of the year, consider that well-deserved mid-August staycation.

Editor's Note: UPDATE Cinder House has elected to accept a few outside reservations (limited menu, limited times) before the 29th. Check here for availability.

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Photo by Kevin A. Roberts

Cinder House

999 North Second Street, St Louis, Missouri 63102

314-881-5759

Breakfast, 6:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. daily. Lunch, 11 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. daily. Dinner, Mon - Sat: 5 p.m. - 10 p.m.; Sun: 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.

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