Louie — Arcade Kitchen

The first time I went to Louie in Clayton’s DeMun neighborhood, I almost walked past it. The sign outside is that understated. But it belies the restaurant’s grand interior.

Upon walking in the door, diners are met with a view of bold floral wallpaper on the opposite wall. Look to the left and you see the real attraction, a spacious bar that nearly takes up one half of the dining room. A large wood-fired oven sits just past it.

It’s the type of dark, glamorous bar you would see in an Esquire photo shoot or maybe as a quick interior establishing shot in a Bryan Fuller show. The bar, by the way, is reserved for walk-in diners, delivering on Louie’s promise as a neighborhood spot, unlike so many restaurants merely modeled after such democratic establishments.

Owner Matt McGuire formerly operated King Louie’s, and at one point, he ran front of house of Gerard Craft’s Niche Food Group. As a St. Louis transplant, I never had the opportunity to eat at King Louie’s. However, St. Louisans talk about it like a high school crush they never truly got over. It’s the “one that got away” for an entire city.

McGuire enlisted Sean Turner, who has worked at Brasserie and for Jonathan Benno in New York, to helm the kitchen. The menu is modest, a handful of starters, four pizzas and eight entrees–roughly half being pasta dishes.

A limited menu like Louie’s works in a kitchen’s favor more often than not, and it does here. The menu isn’t expansive but each dish is executed precisely, including seasonal entrees like this summer’s sweet corn ravioli.

I’ll get to the sweet corn ravioli, which, if Instagram is to be believed, was a hit. But it’s the humble roast chicken that keeps me thinking about Louie. Chicken is often an obligatory menu item—an appeasement to 37-year-old picky eaters who can’t stomach the thought of trying duck or finding a mushroom in their pasta.

The roast chicken at Louie isn’t treated like an obligation, though. After one bite, I could tell that the chicken was brined—as I swear by dry brining my chickens (3 parts kosher salt, 2 parts sugar and 1 part brown sugar, fyi). Ian Froeb’s review confirmed my suspicion. Brining the bird keeps it juicy and injects flavor into it that would otherwise be difficult to achieve. It’s well seasoned, to the point that even my salty-palated fiancée approved.

The combination breast and thigh is seared, rendering the fat for perfectly crispy skin, then tossed in the wood-fired oven for a satisfying kiss of smoke. The menu says it comes with jus, but that rivals the restaurant’s sign in terms of understatements. It’s more like a side of soup—which is not a bad thing in this case. The jus is comfort concentrated, the pure essence of an expertly roasted chicken.

The sweet corn ravioli is another seemingly understated dish that reveals itself to be much more. The elements are minimal—fresh summer sweet corn made into polenta, cheese and in-season cherry tomatoes—but the dish tastes like summer in a bowl.

I also tried the Roman gnocco, which is not your typical potato-based gnocchi dish. Instead of little pillows of potato-dough, the Roman version is a large semolina dumpling that almost melts into the accompanying pork ragu, which are both slathered in béchamel and pecorino.

The pork chop is another favorite of Louie diners, although I haven’t had the chance to order it yet. It’s a bone-on chop served in truly Flinstonian portions. Judging by the plates I saw coming out of the kitchen, they look to be roughly 10 times the size of those weak-ass, pancake-thin pork chops you get at the grocery store.

Even simpler than the chicken or ravioli, the prosciutto di Parma is stunning in its austerity. Prosciutto di Parma, Parmigiano-Reggiano and extra-virgin olive oil. That’s it. That’s the dish.

But that’s all you need when quality prosciutto—salty, and almost sweet, streaked with fat—is shaved paper-thin and topped with shards of nutty, crystalized Parmigiano-Reggiano and rich olive oil.

The drink menu offers cocktails, but if there were ever a time and a place to swig a glass of wine you can’t quite pronounce, it’s dinner at Louie. The wine list is well-rounded and offers a decent selection of Italian wines from appellations throughout the country. It’s one of the few places in St. Louis where I can count on ordering a glass of Valpolicella, my favorite wine.

By now, it’s probably a food media cliché to invoke the idea that something simple is more than meets the eye. You’ve seen it in other reviews and on The Mind of a Chef and Ugly Delicious. I know I’ve done it before, and most likely, I’ll do it again because it’s a tidy motif to structure a piece around.

But, you know what? Sometimes there’s no use fighting something that’s so plain to see. The food, rustic Italian, with no hint of modern molecular gastronomy flair or overly tweezered plating is simple, and it’s better than a great deal of restaurants in St. Louis.

And, luckily, there will be a spot for you at the bar, as long as you don’t miss the sign.