Photo by George Mahe
In a late-afternoon post to his personal Facebook page, Niche Food Group’s Gerard Craft bid adieu to his acclaimed 12-year-old restaurant. The restaurant closed after service on Tuesday night.
The 10 Best New Cocktail Bars" in 2010 by Bon Appetit. Taste relocated to the Central West End in 2011, and niche moved to Clayton in late 2012 (before closing for good in 2015). The relocated Taste, dubbed Taste 2.0, was largely the work of chef Adam Altnether, who was responsible for the vision, the menu, and much of the construction. (Altnether is currently the co-owner of Elmwood X Pizza Champ in Maplewood.)
Photo by George Mahe
The main dining room at Taste in the CWE.
After having been closed for 15 months during the pandemic, Taste (also known as Taste Bar) was one of the last restaurants to come back online, finally reopening early this summer.
Courtesy Niche Food Group
Craft’s post reads, in part, “Like so many others in our industry, the past two years have led to countless pivots, and changes, and while we were hopeful to usher in a new era of Taste when we reopened in June, bouncing back was harder than we anticipated.”
Asked to elaborate, Craft said that the post-10 p.m. bar business "dried up during the pandemic and never came back" and that "Taste was geared for that segment and was not able to survice without it."
The lack of available labor played a part as well. "Not as many people want to work late night as they did before," he says. "We started seeing this before the pandemic and it's only gotten worse."
In a glass-half-full moment, Craft noted that during the same period, next-door restaurant Brasserie by Niche has been able to thrive and that the Taste space will reopen “very soon” as Brass Bar, serving light French fare, some cocktails, more wine, and desserts, a distillation requiring less staff than before, he says. The space can also be rented out for Brasserie’s private events, as soon as the upcoming holidays.
Despite the closure, Craft’s plate remains full: Bowood by Niche (in the former Café Osage space in the CWE) is slated to open early next month, and Fordo’s Killer Pizza (Craft’s middle name is Ford, and his longtime nickname was "Fordo") should open in the coming weeks at the Food Hall at City Foundry STL, where he remains culinary director.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional comments from Gerard Craft.
