Tour de Toast: Panorama at the St. Louis Art Museum

In this ongoing series, Ann Lemons Pollack investigates brunch options in St. Louis—and an occasional breakfast joint for good measure.

Perhaps at this time of year, there aren’t many brunchers in search of sunlight. Nevertheless, sooner or later we’re all bound to need it. Panorama, in the new-ish addition to the St. Louis Art Museum, has a whole wall of windows facing northeast. High ceilings add to the feeling of airiness, and somehow the room has been engineered, surely quite deliberately, to keep noise at a reasonable level. (Hurray!) Goodness knows there are days when Sunday midday is best observed in a dark room, but here is the antithesis of that.

The kitchen has been led for the past several years by Ivy Magruder, probably best known to St. Louisans from his years at Eleven Eleven Mississippi and Vin de Set. His menu gives equal weight to lunch-y salads, sandwiches and breakfast entrees, a nice balance especially since brunch is offered on Saturday as well as Sunday, and runs until 3 p.m.

Appetizers are generous in their servings, and it’s not difficult to imagine someone choosing the gnocchi with braised rabbit for a light entree as well. It was tempting, but instead we went for the baked brie with a reduction of merlot and hibiscus, a not-altogether-successful choice. The cheese was only partly melted, and the reduction sauce was wan, lacking much acidity and that flowery note that hibiscus adds. Crosscut slices of grilled baguette came with it, but it was hard to pay them much attention when the soft, warm, freshly-baked rolls that had arrived a few minutes earlier sang a siren song. The accompanying butter, sprinkled with a little Himalayan salt, chimed in.

It’s an unusual day when bacon and eggs lures this frequent brunch-goer, but attention, as Arthur Miller wrote, must be paid when pondering Panorama’s options. Basil-cream cheese scrambled eggs both soothe and excite, the fresh basil adding near-sweetness in the aroma and the cream cheese tenderizing the eggs. The bacon, thick and smoky, felt indulgent, and the potatoes? Ah, the potatoes! The menu calls it red potato-candied onion hash. The onions had been browned to caramelize the sugars that naturally occur in them, the potatoes both chunked and smashed, and the mixture put onto a grill to brown. Very well-seasoned, they would have done well left almost on their own for a main course with only an over-easy egg to keep them company, so good were they. The multi-grain toast looked and tasted like regular white wheat, but the blueberry conserve that came on the plate saved the day for that component .

“Grits” is such an unfortunate-sounding name. It’s softened only slightly when the Southern pronunciation gives it two syllables. It sounds, well, gritty. If you like polenta, though, you’ll like grits, and if you want an introduction, head for the shrimp and grits here. If you’re already a shrimp and grits fan, drop by to see your friend wearing a new outfit, so to speak. It’s not so much that Magruder’s kitchen has totally rethought the dish, as it is that he’s magnified flavors and changed the presentation a little. This is not a tidy, formal plate, but casual, the grits forming a cushion for the shrimp, the sauce packing a punch with forward flavors of the Cajun-Creole holy trinity of celery, onions and bell pepper and bits of spicy andouille sausage, all with a little smoked Gouda cheese that’s melted into the sauce by the time the dish arrives at the table. The phrase “exciting comfort food” may give cognitive dissonance but that’s exactly what this is.

A query about a half-order of French toast caused pause, and then our very competent server agreed. (Either this is fairly common or we started something; we saw two more half-orders by the time we left.) A 2-inch length of baguette is hollowed out some and the cavity filled with a cream cheese mixture studded with cooked apples. After the bread is cooked (grilled? Flash-baked?), a v-shaped wedge is cut out, allowing the filling to show itself and gracefully ooze onto the plate as crème anglaise is ladled on. Again, here’s a French toast that really doesn’t need the accompanying maple syrup. With one quibble, it’s delicious – and that is that the outside of the bread is so tough that a knife and fork had much difficulty in cutting it up. Perhaps a longer soak in the batter might be in order. Otherwise, it’s a thumbs-up.

Good coffee, always a plus, and a very spicy bloody Mary, plus a blood orange mimosa that’s quite dry and with an appealing, very faint bitterness, assuaged thirst. Bonus points for the remarkably comfortable chairs.

While brunch begins at 10 a.m., when the Art Museum opens, things don’t seem to get busy immediately, so it’s also a good choice for early brunchers. And it’s one of the best high-end spots in town for people-watching at brunch. Service, from front to back, was good. Guests can park in the underground parking garage; the $15 charge for non-members is dropped to $5 when the brunch receipt is presented at one of the Information Centers in the museum. (There’s one very near the entrance to the restaurant.)