Review: 1111 Mississippi in St. Louis

Opening a restaurant in the midst of a glare of publicity is as tricky as trying to juggle all the restaurant's china. It's a high-stakes game with a lot of risk, and the road to glory is littered with despondent chefs, rusting saute pans, empty tables and enough bills to cover Lambert Field.

The ambition comes with immense pressure. It takes skill, luck and an ability to play poker with the likes of Amarillo Slim. Some restaurateurs open "soft," going for a month or so without any advertising or publicity, like a play in previews. Others have a pre-opening blare, with media events and parties for friends, neighbors, the beautiful hangers-on and assorted free-loaders.

The truly courageous go "all-in," in the poker terminology, sharing the few months before opening with a reporter or a television crew. It gives the restaurant pre-opening publicity and some sympathetic prose, and it tends to calm media criticism because it's important to justify the effort expended along the way. Former Saint Louisan Danny Meyer opened his Gramercy Tavern with a major magazine alongside for gestation and birth, and it worked like a charm. Rocco DiSpirito used a television network and more product placement than one can believe, and fell on his face. A new series is trying to pick up the pieces, but DiSpirito's adventures have become a disastrous reality show.

Paul and Wendy Hamilton seem to have succeeded with their 1111 Mississippi, named for the address of a rehabbed factory just north of Lafayette Park. Naming restaurants for their addresses has been popular in New York for a half-dozen years, but trends travel very slowly to Saint Louis. Ever since opening, the Hamiltons' restaurant has been one of the hottest spots in town. The 160 seats are filled twice on many nights, and the menu covers everything from full lunches and dinners to after-ball game snacks, desserts and drinks on Fridays and Saturdays, when the restaurant is open until midnight. A 10 o'clock close Monday-Thursday is before most baseball games end.

The cooking style is a blend of Northern California and Tuscany, perhaps an Italian bistro in Sonoma County.

Speaking of the 160 seats, popular enough to make reservations vital, the capacity will expand by 40 when the weather is proper for outdoor dining in a narrow space just north of the main entrance. There are two levels of dining; the Guru prefers the main level, which has a ceiling far, far away and plenty of space. Upstairs, the space is a little tighter, though a fireplace and a chance to look at the open kitchen are pleasant.

The wine list is extensive and nicely priced, with a couple of dozen by-the-glass selections a nice touch. Service is knowledgeable and pleasant, and the experience is a rewarding one. Given the major publicity push, the Guru responded by slipping in on a midweek night, making an unusually early reservation under another name.

1111 was handling the crowd well, but the meal, while good, was not as good as we had expected. The presentation was lovely, the portions huge, but Executive Chef Ivy Magruder sometimes let his creative desires get away from him. Conflicting spicing in some dishes had the emphasis going in the wrong direction, with the trim or the spicing dominating the flavor in the dish. The "wow" factor, very important to us, was absent.

In the Guru's opinion, it was too early to write about 1111. Listening to trusted friends (there are only a few out there), and based on our visit, we pulled back for a couple of months, preferring to let Magruder and the Hamiltons work out some kinks before doing a full evaluation.

We did remember the tender, succulent braised rabbit with its creamy polenta and mushroom broth. It's a marker of the restaurant's courage to make rabbit a signature dish, but it works perfectly and was a star of success. The Napoleon was a glorious dessert; the rest of the meal was satisfactory, but not much more.

A second visit was a strong turn to the positive. Ribollita, a Tuscan bean amd vegetable soup with white beans and Swiss chard, which looks like beet greens because of its red stems, but which has a flavor somewhere between beet greens and spinach. The beans had a slight feel of al dente and there was a good warmth to the soup. It probably will leave the menu for the summer, but should return in the fall.

Butternut squash bisque also worked. A Caesar-style salad, with excellent romaine and a handful of anchovies, the salty little fish that has come to define Caesar salads. The anchovies are not a regular on the salad, but a polite request will bring some, if there are any in the kitchen -- and the Guru considers anchovies a vital ingredient in any Italian restaurant kitchen. 

Working from the bistro fare section at the bottom of the menu, we enjoyed a pair of dishes, the pepper-grilled Sonoma steak with a fresh, tangy hollandaise sauce that showed a good touch of tarragon. The menu offers a choice of slaw (cabbage, carrots and beets), seasoned french fries or potato salad alongside, but the server had discussed a daily special that included "braised beet mashed potatoes," and we had to try them. Dark pink in color and smooth in texture, the potatoes were splendid, and the sweetness of the beets a pleasing touch that did not try to dominate.

Another winner, a vegetarian dish, was an eggplant roll, stuffed with spinach, goat cheese, pine nuts and sweet bell peppers. Rich and beautifully balanced so as to give each of the flavors a chance to predominate, the dish showed eggplant at its best, slightly charred for more flavor and texture. The nuts were a perfect boost of texture and trhe cheese brought a creamy, slightly tart flavor that shone over everything.

A more recent visit was a mixed bag. Some dishes were superb; others were less exciting, like the roasted mussels that were exceptionally bland and not enough bacon in the dish to provide what should have been some exemplary flavor. The juice was excellent, bolstered by a delightful cilantro pesto. Oysters had a similar problem. Large and probably from the Gulf, whose oysters have far less flavor than those from colder water, the bivalves were overcome by an extremely intrusive and tangy mango-peach sauce and too heavy a hand with the Japanese bread crumbs called "panko." Mashed boniatos, a South American yam, didn't add much. Too many ingredients in a conflict that was never solved.

Entrees were outstanding. A trout stuffed with a crab couscous was delicious, the fish perfectly cooked and the crab and couscous just enough to add a little flavor without distracting from the trout. The fish sat on delicious wilted Swiss chard, and was topped with an onion marmalade which almost got in the way. A pasta dish with shrimp and scallops in a light tomato-vodka-cream sauce also was very good, the pasta on the hoped-for al dente manner and the seafood nicely cooked.

The 1111 menu offers caramelized brussels sprouts, and the Guru loves brussels sprouts. Cary McDowell made a magnificent version when he was at Liluma, but 1111's were almost inedible. The sprouts should be small and tender; these were large and tough, maybe undercooked, but that's not a sufficient excuse.

A bottle of Liberty School chardonnay went nicely with the dinner, and the glass list allowed for the tasting of an excellent Burgundy from Georges Latour, a Spanish sparkling wine for an aperitif and a barbera that was dazzling with the ribollita.

Desserts were brilliant. The Napoleon mentioned above is almost a banana brulee, layers of puff pastry so crunchy they may have been dusted with sugar and crisped undr a broiler. The interaction between texture and taste was peerfect.

The old St. Louis favorite, gooey butter cake, is here, too, in a version that is perhaps the best in town. Think of a torte, in one layer, dense and with an interior texture similar to that of the underlayer of pecan pie. Yes, it can be that rich, and it is here, where the freshness and obvious use of high-quality ingredients turn a good dessert into a great one.

1111 is a good restaurant, and it will be a better one. It still has a few creases, but between the Hamiltons and Magruder, a good ironing board and a skillful ironer should erase those before they become any sort of major problem.