Take It To the Bridge

We were invited to a happy hour(s) on Friday night to a newish bar, Bridge. Bridge is owned by David Bailey, of Chocolate Bar fame, and being a big fan of the Chocolate Bar, I was looking forward to checking it out.

Bridge is located on Locust Ave, next to some strange Bridal shop and a branch of Left Bank Books, in a revitilized area of downtown. Bailey probably was banking on attracting some of the Left Bank patrons- doubtful the bridal shop patrons, but who knows-by making an up-scale lounge, with 60-some beers on tap and at least twice as many bottled. The bar has a shot-gun style set-up with a long bar on one side and really nothing in the rest of the downstairs except a long hallway leading to the restrooms. Most of the seating is upstairs, and we were lucky enough to land a small lounge area with love seats and little tables made out of tree trunks.

Bridge has a limited menu, mostly finger good and meat and cheese plates. The finger food, however, is "kicked up a notch" with four or five kinds of nuts sprinkled with various chiles and savory spices. Although we didn't try any, they also have popcorn with about five different spice combos, including chai. I thought that sounded interesting. We ordered two different cheeses a la carte, one of which was quite odd, and the jalepeno summer sausage, not exciting but good. The cheese boards all include foccacia and dried fruit. Another meat option is smoked duck, which I got to sample from a friend's plate.

This is definitely an intimate place; most of the seating is for two or four and we were kind of the beaten path in the lounge area, which seemed to be only one of two places that held more than four patrons. The service is above average and Tim commented on the background soundtrack, which he enjoyed. This was a nice place to chill on a Friday night.

http://www.thebridgestl.com/