Review: Sidney Street Café in St. Louis

Restaurant fans don’t come much more loyal than those who consider the Sidney Street Café their favorite St. Louis dining spot. Now almost 20 years old and working on a second generation of customers, the quiet, modest, self-effacing Benton Park restaurant won top honors in the Sauce Magazine Readers’ Choice Poll as the best overall restaurant in St. Louis.

The Guru first wrote about Sidney Street in the spring of 1985 and gave it a mixed review. Some dishes were exemplary, others left something to be desired, but the restaurant, shortly after making an initial impression as the Other Mother, showed signs of excellence ahead.

Loyalty, by the way, is more than just votes in the Sauce poll. A year ago, Sidney Street tied with Tony’s and Trattoria Marcella for top food rankings in the Zagat voting. In the current balloting, Sauce voters chose Harvest as No. 2, and Tony’s and Trattoria Marcella tied for third. And even a change of Sidney Street’s ownership at the end of last year made no apparent difference. Diners and voters turned out, and so did the Guru, who had a very good meal, even if it fell short of greatness.

Those who dined at (or in, or on) Sidney Street in the ‘80s, however, still would feel right at home today. The large, old-fashioned bar dominates the front room, and bare brick, dark wood and green tablecloths folded over white ones are still in place in the dining room, though some new, heavier tableware would be a nice complement to the china and crystal.
Small chalkboards, with appetizers written on one side, entrées on the other, still are the custom, and some of the dishes, like the stuffed mushroom appetizers, probably have never left. Servers patiently go through all of them, just as they did, listing ingredients and answering questions as they go. The Sidney Street staff is an excellent one; many have been there a long time, and they know the menu and the way the kitchen works.

The dishes are not quite the same as they were. Once upon a time, the mushrooms were stuffed with spicy sausage. Today, with a bow to lighter fare, the stuffing is shrimp and crabmeat, but the topping of cheese and sauce Mornay remains as a throwback – and a good one – bringing a rich memory of days of yore (whenever they were).

The menu is a little larger than it once was, but it remains heavy on meat and fish (more fish entrées than there were) and, surprisingly, there are no vegetarian entrées. Dinner still includes a couple of vegetables, and a choice of soup or salad, and there now are off-the-chalkboard specials. Most of the meats and fish are grilled or pan-seared. Some are roasted, but all are topped with a sauce or a glaze.
The lightly fried rolls in the bread basket, with excellent flavor and texture, are a signature item, and the ones of last week were less greasy than the ones of years ago. Honey butter, another longtime accompaniment, is good, but the combination is a little sweet to prepare a palate for dinner.

Some of the sauces add good spice to both appetizers and entrées, which have occasionally suffered from blandness in the past. Among the appetizers, the lobster turnovers had a nice note of tomatoes in a brandy sauce and a pleasing amount of pepper, plus a tasty phyllo dough crust. Small artichoke tarts benefited from two kinds of cheese and a delicious pie shell. A Down South Egg Roll, one of an assortment of cutesy names that demand an explanation from the server, involved a splendid, crisp, dry egg roll crust filled with sausage, some greens and sweet and not-so-sweet peppers that blended into good Cajun preparation.

The bell pepper soup had pleasant flavor and was light, guaranteed not to interfere with the appetite for dinner. Salad was a small but perfectly adequate portion, with a choice of house-made dressings, including a Caesar dressing that was described as having “light anchovies.” Perfect description, with a hint of the salty little fish that was not quite enough for me but probably would not have offended a non-anchovian. And the amount of dressing was just right – enough to add a touch of flavor and emphasize the quality of the greens but not so much as to leave an inch or so of liquid after the vegetables were gone.

There are more main dishes than there once were, and Halibut Sidney is one of the newer creations, or so we were told. It was a good creation, too, with a chunk of nicely cooked fish topped with a good fish sauce bolstered with a hit of garlic and a hint of saffron. Very tasty, and accompanied by rice that was not quite a risotto but came close and was heightened by some bits of lobster. Good asparagus and a broiled tomato added flavor, color and the knowledge that Mom would have been pleased because we ate our vegetables.

The other entrée was an off-the-menu special of beef brisket, slow cooked and accompanied by polenta, an apple slaw and some onion rings, piled into a good approximation of vertical food. Both meals were served in large bowls and had a professional, but not overdone, appearance. The brisket was tasty but in a large enough serving that the meat was getting tougher as the barbecue sauce was used up. The sauce was heavy on tomato but not too sweet. The beef sat in a bed of polenta that had good texture but so much cheese that it tended to hide the flavor of the corn. The apple slaw was OK but didn’t make the dish sparkle, though the handful of delicious, not greasy, onion rings provided some taste and a good crunchy texture.

The wine list is moderately priced, with a few from old friend Jack Cakebread, a fine auto mechanic and an aerial photographer before he became a winemaker, topping the list in terms of pricing. We worked from the by-the-glass list (we had a post-dinner commitment) and sampled an Argentine sparkling wine that was all right and a tasty California Zinfandel.

There’s usually sufficient parking on the street, but there’s a lot a short block to the south. Because of the Gravois-Jefferson intersection, it takes a couple of jogs to get there, but coming from the north or west, I’ve found it easiest to go south on Jefferson Avenue past Sidney and to make a left at the next corner. That’s Lynch Street, and a left on Salena Street takes you right to the restaurant.

An easy journey, and a worthy one for lovers of unchanging fare in a warm, comfortable setting.