Review: Nathalie's in St. Louis

Editor's note: Nathalie's has closed.

If you’ve been inside the stately mansion at 4356 Lindell Blvd., you know it exudes elegance, grace and even a splash of eccentricity. For much of the 20th century and into the 21st, it was the Mayer Funeral Home. More recently, it was home to two short-lived restaurants, Savor and Salt. Some six months ago, building owner Nathalie Pettus gave up playing landlord and opened her own restaurant in the fancy manse. Drawing from the staff at Overlook Farm, her Clarksville inn and farm, she brought in chef Jimmy Voss, who previously worked at Duff’s for nearly 40 years.

The interior layout of Nathalie’s remains as lavish as before. I recommend booking a table on the second floor for the sole purpose of sauntering down that magnificent staircase in the front parlor.

Granted, Nathalie’s opulent décor of crisp, white tablecloths, red napkins rolled into silver rings, red roses in silver vases and elegant chandeliers bucks the current barnwood, exposed-brick, reclaimed-whatever trend. The caveat? Don’t expect to gourmandize on similar opulence.

Farm-to-table is familiar now, but never has it been as personal as it is here; most of the organic produce, meat and even fish (tilapia raised in fish tanks) used at the restaurant comes from Overlook Farm. Even a few of the morel mushrooms featured one evening as a limited-edition bruschetta appetizer were foraged there.

But what to do with what was presented? Instead of the typical hand-eaten bruschetta, spears of grilled asparagus and an entire meaty morel lay draped across a slice of grilled bread. A disarray of chopped morels and shallots with bits of scallions were scattered to the side. Everything rested in a pool of golden liquid, in which, I assumed, the mushrooms were sauteed. It was all delicious, but only after tackling it with a knife and fork and reassembling the components into manageable bites.

In both composition and visual appeal, the clunky, muddled presentation portended things to come.

It starts with the menu itself. It was heavy and clunky – a book, really – bound and embossed with the restaurant’s name, reminiscent of the unwieldy menus popular in formal restaurants 20 years ago. What was between the covers also felt dated, as if trendy ingredients like quinoa and kale were plugged into concepts from 1994. When Greece (moussaka al forno), Brazil (feijoada) and Spain (zarzuela de mariscos) share the same page, there’s no unifying theme and, more than likely, something will suffer.

In my case, it was the moussaka. In the middle of the plate sat a mound of red paste consisting of thick-cut eggplant, tomatoes and hard-to-taste ground lamb topped with over-browned feta Mornay. Encircling the moussaka were smaller mounds of incongruence: matchstick carrots and zucchini, quinoa, Swiss chard and a tumult of broccoli and Brussels sprouts. If the intent was a playful culinary mash-up, what arrived looked more like a paintball fight. With too many flavors and too much texture, the components lacked logic. And grass-fed lamb and farm-fresh produce or not, I’m still trying to figure out the $28 price tag.

At $26, the same was true for the small, boneless chicken breast (billed as bone-in on the menu) teetering atop a few roasted potatoes, braised leeks and sauteed greens. Snippets of charred broccoli seemed as if they were tossed on the plate as it left the kitchen. The entire meal rested in lemon-garlic sauce that, while savory and tasty, contained stark, naked cloves of garlic. The biggest misstep was the branch of wilted, cooked thyme draped over the breast, as if plucked from the cavity of a roasted bird and used as garnish.

Both dishes came off as homestyle to the point of messy, something that should not happen at these prices and in this setting. The farm steak didn’t fare much better. The cut varies depending on availability, and this night it was a 10-ounce rib steak – a boneless rib-eye. It was fatty, well under the medium-rare temperature I ordered and devoid of the expected characteristic char, inhibited by the soggy Asiago cheese-horseradish with which the steak was encrusted. Once again, excessive pan jus overwhelmed the dish’s visual appeal.

At least diners haven’t lost the bread service battle here, as they have elsewhere; at Nathalie’s you get an assortment of baguette, pumpernickel and gluten-free mini corn muffins, all wrapped in a red linen napkin and served in a silver bowl to boot. More positive notes: a carrot-ginger soup of the day satisfied with the nutty warmth of cumin and sharpness of ginger, while a flatbread of manchego and goat cheese hit the spot with briny Kalamata olives and linguica sausage, all under a nutty, spicy romesco sauce. The lemon curd tart, three buttery-crispy almond shortbreads topped with creamy, zingy lemon custard interspersed with clouds of whipped cream, was a big hit.

Farm-grown blueberries made for a lovely personal-sized pie, complete with flaky crust and lattice top, along with a bite of house-made vanilla ice cream served in a Chinese soup spoon. But the thin smear of red jam underneath the pie was something you might have seen at Charlie Trotter's two decades ago. The ice cream used for the peppermint pie was made in house, but the dessert suffered from muted mint flavor, ice crystals and a bright green hue. And speaking of mint, I did a double take when a mint julep and hibiscus mojito martini arrived garnished with a puny, bruised, brown-around-the-edge mint sprig apiece.

You have to applaud Nathalie’s for focusing on homegrown, local ingredients. But with so many dishes feeling dated and looking improvised, it’s hard to match what’s on the plate with the extravagant environs. You can’t play it both ways.

Where
4356 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, 314.533.1580

Don’t Miss Dishes
Manchego flatbread, lemon curd tart

Vibe
Fun, over-the-top, almost bordello-like opulence, yet casual and comfortable service. Be sure to check out the upstairs bathrooms.

Entree Prices
$20 to $32

When
Dinner: Wed. to Mon. – 4 p.m to midnight