Savage sister restaurant, The Lucky Accomplice, is slated to open this summer

As the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the temporary or permanent closures of many small businesses, including Savage chef-owner Logan Ely’s restaurant, he and his team have been hard at work preparing to open The Lucky Accomplice, a sister restaurant of Savage, at 2501 S. Jefferson Ave. in St. Louis this summer. 

“Obviously, we were moving forward with this before all this stuff happened anyway,” Ely said. “But I think we have a really great team in place right now, and we wanted space for all these people, all of our managers, to expand into and take on new responsibilities and challenges. I also wanted a more casual place in the neighborhood for our neighbors and everyone to come and grab a beer or a cocktail, have a really nice dinner or lunch, or swing in for a snack.” 

With 40 to 45 seats including the bar, The Lucky Accomplice will feature a more casual, a la carte menu that will include meat – unlike Savage. The mentality of supporting farmers as well as humane practices toward animals and minimizing food waste will remain the same, however. 

“We will have the same kind of mindset where we will buy what the farmers have and we’ll support them 110%,” Ely said. “We will serve meat, but we will be very picky with the animals we choose, how they’re raised and who is raising them and what they’re feeding them. In general, it’s a bar/restaurant, it’s casual, it’s approachable, but we’ll still maintain those standards and still go by our thinking at Savage, which is we’re cooking what people have.” 

Despite the COVID-19 crisis, Ely said, he and a small team are still hard at work doing the construction themselves and don’t plan to slow for the time being. 

“I wake up every day and come here to build the restaurant,” he said. “There’s just a couple of us that are doing 90% of the work here. Right now, I’m putting up drywall and building the wall and that kind of stuff. For me, I show up every day and do the same thing. I probably have more time than I normally would [due to the 30-day stay-at-home order currently in effect].” 

While the long-term effects of the pandemic remain unclear, Ely has hope for what lies ahead, especially for local restaurants and bars.

“The future is uncertain, but I think that when this all does blow over – and it will – people are going to be pretty eager to go out, be sociable and hang out,” he said. “[They will] probably realize, more so than they did before, the importance of restaurants, bars and places where you can go meet your friends and do these things while having good food and drink.”

Brenna Sullivan is an editorial intern at Sauce Magazine.