Terrene is a little restaurant nestled between Midtown and the Central West End, just a stone's throw from the Scottish Arms. With an expiration date on the Groupon looming, it was our choice for a casual dinner on Friday evening.
Once again, we apparently have odd dining hour choices; arriving just after 6 found us in the company of one other couple and a completely bored wait staff. Completely bored and completely strange wait staff. A table runner brought us each glasses of water and about 20 seconds later our waitress, toting identical glasses of water, arrives at our table (for two only) sees the glasses of water and sets down the new glasses anyway. There wasn't an abundance of room, so I push the glass off to the side. Thanks to a boredom, the original glass never got below 2/3 full. The wine list and menus were at our table when we were seated. The waitress introduces herself, says "Can I get you something from the bar? Oh, by the way, we have a beer and cocktail menu too." Well, go get that shit! The seasonal cocktail/beer/soda menu was printed on something that resembled a golf scorecard, making this 30-year-old yearn for some reading glasses. They offered 5-6 original cocktails, two of which called for the same ingredient that the waitress proclaimed, "Oops we may be out, hold on" then returned and said, "Nope full stock I thought this was Tuesday!" Ok. Got that figured out.
We ordered pate for an appetizer, one of my top fav app dishes. It was pretty good. I glanced over at a newly seated couple who was enjoying their breadservice and although I was a little miffed that we were without, I didn't need the carbs anyway and went on with the pate, of which I finished 3/4ths. I ordered the special which was salmon and Tim ordered the burger. I was asked how I would like my salmon cooked (?) and Tim wasn't given the choice for his beef (??) I deferred to the chef on that one, and my salmon arrived in a manner I would call undercooked but it tasted fine so I gladly finished it. What my dish did suffer from was an odd combination of flavors. It had: spinach (good), quinoa(good), some white sauce (good) and balsamic reduction (no business being here). There was way too much going on here that the balsamic reduction just overpowered everything. Tim's burger was good; it was cooked medium-rare, which is a little rarer than either of us like burgers, but tasted good just the same.
Terrene also has a patio, which we probably would have checked out if we were only having drinks, but it is getting dark way too fast now so we stuck to the dining room. By the time we left (around 7) more folks had shown up waking the waitstaff up for a potentially busy night. The owner knew the couple seated next to us and never quite learned what an "inside voice" was so I caught bits and pieces of his "restaurant philosophy" which was just a bunch of bullshit that was ostensibly supposed to be impressive. All I caught was "rich kid whose parents gave him this space to open a restaurant." Jealous.
The website hasn't been updated recently, still featuring summer cocktails. You also can't see the whole menu because the webmaster didn't put a scroll feature in!
www.terrene-stlouis.com
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Wanna Taste?
The Taste of St. Louis was yesterday. Being a big fan of Chicago's taste and never having missed one when living there, I wanted to check out what St. Louis could do. I read somewhere that somebody (maybe Midwest Living Mag) rated this event the #1 Taste of event, ranking the huge Chicago event third.
First of all, this is not Chicago's taste, not even in the same class, maybe they paid off the magazine, who knows. I think it was a smart move to have this event in October, when the average temp is 75 and not 105, and having it downtown instead of Forest Park was also smart (and more convenient for us). Also, NO TICKETS! Cash was king.
There was a restaurant row of about 30 choices, which unfortunately leaned heavy on Italian dishes. I can only have so many toasted raviolis. I would have liked to have seen more ethnic places; we have a sizeable Vietnamese and Bosnian population here, yet no restaurant representation at the taste. Interestingly, there were several chain restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen. Pass. The wind had picked up real fall-like by the time we got there, killing any kind of hunger just to stay warm. What we ended up getting: crab rangoons, black bean empanadas, a smoked turkey leg, and a turtle funnel cake. Nothing too earth shattering there; at the Chicago taste, I get African goat rice and crap like that. No restaurant really offered a "taste" portion, so we filled up quite quickly.
There were two stages of music, which were ok. I guess Sister Hazel was headlining Saturday night-if they were any good-It's Hard to Say. There was the obligatory collection of small booths selling crap that makes you wonder, "who the hell buys this shit?"
The oddest part about the whole taste was their go green initiative EGS. They wanted you to place the compostable containers in one place, recycling in another. The organizes did make it easy by having all of the containers and service utensils compostable. I have no problem with all that. What was odd: THEY ONLY HAD CANS AT THE STREET CORNERS. Which made three total. I had to hunt and hunt for one of these cans and even asked someone who was serving food and even they had no idea where they were. I would be very very curious to know how many of those cardboard containers and forks ended up on the ground yesterday.
Will I be back? Not sure. We were entertained a few hours on a Saturday afternoon but the wallet was lightened quite a bit.
First of all, this is not Chicago's taste, not even in the same class, maybe they paid off the magazine, who knows. I think it was a smart move to have this event in October, when the average temp is 75 and not 105, and having it downtown instead of Forest Park was also smart (and more convenient for us). Also, NO TICKETS! Cash was king.
There was a restaurant row of about 30 choices, which unfortunately leaned heavy on Italian dishes. I can only have so many toasted raviolis. I would have liked to have seen more ethnic places; we have a sizeable Vietnamese and Bosnian population here, yet no restaurant representation at the taste. Interestingly, there were several chain restaurants like California Pizza Kitchen. Pass. The wind had picked up real fall-like by the time we got there, killing any kind of hunger just to stay warm. What we ended up getting: crab rangoons, black bean empanadas, a smoked turkey leg, and a turtle funnel cake. Nothing too earth shattering there; at the Chicago taste, I get African goat rice and crap like that. No restaurant really offered a "taste" portion, so we filled up quite quickly.
There were two stages of music, which were ok. I guess Sister Hazel was headlining Saturday night-if they were any good-It's Hard to Say. There was the obligatory collection of small booths selling crap that makes you wonder, "who the hell buys this shit?"
The oddest part about the whole taste was their go green initiative EGS. They wanted you to place the compostable containers in one place, recycling in another. The organizes did make it easy by having all of the containers and service utensils compostable. I have no problem with all that. What was odd: THEY ONLY HAD CANS AT THE STREET CORNERS. Which made three total. I had to hunt and hunt for one of these cans and even asked someone who was serving food and even they had no idea where they were. I would be very very curious to know how many of those cardboard containers and forks ended up on the ground yesterday.
Will I be back? Not sure. We were entertained a few hours on a Saturday afternoon but the wallet was lightened quite a bit.
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