Consumers’ dining habits are changing, but our love of Mexican food is still going strong. The newly opened Sobremesa in the Streets of St. Charles (1650 Beale St., Unit #130) taps into the spirit of the times with a casual dining experience featuring flavors inspired by the California-Mexico border.
With Sobremesa, the Tilford Restaurant Group has replaced the long-running, bar-focused taco joint with a welcoming eatery where families and friends can pause and linger over favorites such as fajitas, enchiladas, and quesadillas—with build-your-own options for entrées and margaritas alike.
Here’s what to know before you go.
The Atmosphere
The Spanish word sobremesa describes the practice of sitting around a table after the meal is finished, enjoying conversation and good company. Adam Tilford and his brother, Jason, had this in mind when they redesigned the Session Taco Joint location in St. Charles.
“We were looking to make it a very comfortable space that plays into the Mexican comfort food menu,” Adam Tilford says.
In collaboration with SPACE Design and Construction of St. Louis, the Tilfords and their team opened the bar area, added colorful tiles, hung new light fixtures, sanded down tables, and replaced a solid wall with a see-through divider full of eclectic finds from Gringo Jones Imports in South City. Sobremesa’s owners and staff did much of the work themselves, from placing tiles to painting.
The result is a sunny corner restaurant with brighter colors, lower seating arrangements, and refreshed artwork. Even the adjacent arcade area, The Streets Arcade (now managed by ECL Gaming, which owns the games) has been updated, with popular options such as Whack ‘N Win and Down the Clown available for family fun—and offering children who might get antsy during a sobremesa the chance to win prizes while burning off a little energy.
The Menu
The Tilford brothers fell in love with Mexican food during three childhood stints in San Diego while their father was in the military.
Adam Tilford says one of the biggest benefits of the transition away from a taco-centric menu was the chance for Jason, the restaurant’s head chef, to get back to his roots. “We’ve owned and operated Mexican restaurants since 2004,” Adam Tilford says. “There are many more authentic experiences available now than there were when we started Tortillería and Milagro Modern Mexican.”
Jason Tilford and Matt Quintero were able to play into customers’ deeper knowledge when they developed the menu. They take full advantage of the wood-fired grill—the kitchen’s most unique feature—to cook the margarita chicken for the towering sandwich and strip steak to be drenched in chimichurri butter. The fajitas come straight from the grill to a sizzling platter, then go straight to the table with peppers, onions, and all the usual fixings plus tamarind pasilla butter, a trendy Mexican-inspired seasoning blend of sweet tamarind, mild pasilla chiles, and spices such as paprika, coriander, and onion powder.
The chefs have also put some playful touches on the menu. One is the volcan shrimp, a pile of crispy rock shrimp and fried jalapeño rings tossed in Cholula aioli. Another is the chilito rellenos, jalapeños stuffed with chorizo and cheese, then lightly battered and deep-fried to tender-crisp perfection.
Asked for his favorite comfort food, Adam Tilford is quick to mention that he thinks of enchiladas as a go-to dish for Sunday night dinner. But he’s also partial to a riff on two classics merged into a singular appetizer of spinach-artichoke-queso dip: “You marry those two together, and it’s so good,” he says.
Taco-lovers have a choice of fish tacos with crispy wild hake, ground beef tacos in crunch corn tortillas, or street tacos with onion, cilantro, and a choice of steak al carbon, pork carnitas, chicken asada, or chimichurri Harvest Shreds (a local plant-based protein).
The Sobre Your Way menu section allows customers to assemble a combo platter with those same protein options in crispy or soft tacos, quesadillas, tostadas, enchiladas, burritos, or mini chimichangas.
Cocktail favorites such as margaritas, mojitos, and sangria are approachable but high-quality, using all fresh juices and high-quality spirits like the Withered Oak Amburana rye whiskey from 4 Hands, says Josh Laney, director of operations at Sobremesa and beverage director for Tilford Restaurant Group.
Laney is excited to offer simple-yet-fresh options such as machine-mixed frozen piña coladas and N/A daiquiris, as well as a choose-your-flavor margarita adventure in which customers can pick the flavor (strawberry, pineapple, passionfruit, mango, jamaíca), rim (salt, sugar, Tajín, black Hawaiian salt, pink Himalayan salt), and tequila or mezcal.
Cocktail carryovers from Session Taco Joint include the signature paloma, made with private-label agave spirit, fresh lemon and lime juices, agave nectar, grapefruit bitters, and Urban Chestnut Brewing Co.’s grapefruit Radler. The N/A menu also has some familiar mocktails, including a Soberita, Pretty in Pink, and the Piña ‘Not Quite’ Lada.
The restaurant has a fully stocked bar and a selection of beers on tap, including local craft brews from 4 Hands and Urban Chestnut. And those who love the custom-brewed Session Taco IPA from 4 Hands can rest assured, Laney says, that it will still be on tap.
The Big Picture
Sobremesa is part of a larger refocusing for Tilford Restaurant Group during 2026. Adam and Jason Tilford have retained three locations of their original concept, now known as Session Taco Joint, in Soulard, the Delmar Loop, and suburban Kansas City. The joints are bringing back some of their most-requested menu items, including barbecued duck tacos, braised brisket tacos, huitlacoche empanadas, and Mexicali cheese curds.
They also recently rebranded a former Session Taco location in the Central West End to Lapez Mod Mex, highlighting Mexican cuisine through modern interpretations of traditional dishes. (A similarly rebranded location in metro Kansas City closed in May, and the company elected not to renew the lease on a space in Kirkwood.)
Sobremesa marks a perfect midpoint between the high-end Lapez and the bar-style Session Taco Joints, Adam Tilford says.
On a recent afternoon, Sobremesa team members assembled ahead of a soft opening were relaxed and jovial. Many have deep experience with Tilford Restaurant Group. For example, Laney, who was hired as a bartender at the CWE taco joint in 2016, recently returned to the company after a brief time away. During his first stint with the company, he hired Jianna Calvillo, who is now the assistant general manager at Sobremesa.
A newcomer is general manager Steve Sarver, who says he has worked in plenty of full-service restaurants—enough to recognize when his mindset aligns with the owners’ mentality, as it does with Sobremesa.
“It’s been a challenging few years,” admits Adam Tilford, alluding to a 2022 fire at their Central West End restaurant and a trademark lawsuit over their taco restaurants’ previous name. “But Sobremesa complements the nearby businesses in St. Charles—and with the upscale food at Lapez and bar food at Session, Sobremesa hits the right balance.”
Sobremesa
📍1650 Beale St, Unit #130, St. Charles
📞636-442-1620
⏰11 a.m.–9 p.m. Sun–Thu, 11 a.m.–10 p.m. Fri & Sat
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