For a restaurant to be successful in a less-than-optimum location requires a hook, a gimmick, at least one attraction significant enough to overcome the obstacle. When Ron Gordon, a seasoned restaurant owner and operator, opened Zydeco Blues in late-2014 at 1090 Old Des Peres Road (formerly a Rib City and Rick’s Cafe Américain before that), he figured that Cajun/Creole food bolstered by live music several nights a week would be sufficient to lure a consistent dinner crowd. Apparently, it did on the weekends, but “was crickets during the week.”
The bad news: Zydeco Blues closed at the end of May.
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The good news: The new restaurant tenant has an even better hook than Zydeco did.
Brian Walsh has been collecting St. Louis memorabilia for over 40 years—and not just ho-hum Busch beer trays and last year’s bobbleheads. Instead, he’s amassed rare and unusual items from the St. Louis World’s Fair, Gaslight Square, long-forgotten shoe companies, and every historic brewery in town.
Combine a small museum’s worth of local artifacts, St. Louis-themed food, and a man’s desire to own his own restaurant, and Walsh figured “it’s now or never…it has always been my dream to share all this…to turn St. Louisans on to St. Louis history.”
And so it is: Circa STL will open in Des Peres Square later this summer.
Walsh began collecting collectables when he was a teenager, starting with sports memorabilia, “and only things from St. Louis.” First the Cardinals and Big Red, then the Flyers, Braves, Browns, and of course, the Blues and Rams.
“What began as a hobby turned into a sickness, really,” Walsh laughs. Since their house is already bursting with stuff, he quipped that “ I can now add only as much as my wife allows me to…which isn’t much.”
Brian’s wife, Sheila, is (we can only guess) a willing partner in the venture. Cindy and George Degnan (former owner of George’s on Clayton in Chesterfield) are partners as well. Both Brian and Sheila Walsh have prior restaurant management experience and Sheila will run the front of the house.
Walsh boasts about artifacts procured from the Lemp stables, unusual items from the 7-Up Company, and an 1890s-era bar from Germantown, Ill, that will find a home along a long wall at Circa.
The Walshes see the opening of the second Rosalita’s Cantina (in the former Casa Gallardo space later this fall) as a synergistic boon to Circa’s business. Rosalita’s is a monster, 400-seat space that should attract a lot of renewed attention to Des Peres Square, once a very busy center.
Circa’s menu will showcase original-recipe Luigi’s-style pizza (one of the first in St. Louis to be served on a rectangular tray and cut into squares); the toasted ravs will be oversized and wrapped in wontons, not rolled dough; pork steaks will be served as sandwiches; and BBQ burgers will be topped with cole slaw, just like at Ed’s White Front Bar-B-Que, the legendary north St. Louis institution dating from the 30s’. Familiar, but unusual stuff…you get the picture.
Staying true to St. Lou, Circa’s beers will be strictly local corporate and craft selections. Walsh would like to keep the wine selection at least regional as well.
We asked the collector if he had enough memorabilia to periodically change up the artifacts at Circa STL, then realized immediately we’d asked a dumb question.
“We could do that,” he said, “but as it is, it will take people several trips just to absorb all that’s there. Circa will be like going to a St. Louis history museum and then not having to say, ‘Now let’s go grab a bite to eat.’”
