I made reservations in December for us to go to Tony's near Valentine's Day. I knew it would be that busy. It wasn't when we arrived (the only time I could get was 5:30). Fancy diners eat later than we do.
Just a crazy side note. When we had arrived and were seated with drinks and bread, a guy comes over and starts messing with our table. It was Mike's friend Antoine. He was just messing with us. He is a "fix it" man in North County by day and a water guy/table busser by night. He is probably our age and still isn't any higher than a bus-boy at a place like this. That shows who our friends are. We aren't friends with the high society people...we are friends with the bus-boy type of people!
I don't have photos from this dinner because it is just such a fancy place that there isn't a phone visible in the dining room. It would look rather crass to haul a phone out and be taking photos of the food. I KNOW that there are people who have done it, as there a photos you can see online.
This restaurant is just in a different class from the other fancy restaurants in St. Louis. It is VERY "old school." First, they don't have any female waiters. (There were only 2 female employees in the whole place. One was at the registration desk and one was an African American lady in the coat closet...pretty stereotypical!). And, they don't just have "waiters." They introduce the "steward" and the "captain" and then there is the "maitre d." There is also a general manager type person who walks around and talks to each table and personally thanks you for coming and shakes your hand before you leave. It is A LOT of personal attention.
I get all the people confused. I think we were seated by the "captain" or the "maitre d." We were then greeted by our "steward" who is like the food waiter. He greeted us the menus and told us the bread basket and waters would be out in a minute. The bread basket is not like many other places. It has probably 6 or 7 different kinds of bread...all the way from sweet bread with raisins and pistachios in it to Italian bread, to a crunchy bread that was nearly a cracker. Nice...if you like bread. I do.
We said we'd like to begin with a cocktail. Then the "steward" who is in charge of bar drinks came over. We saw him for anything that had to do with bar drinks...but not wine...that was different. I ordered my typical vodka Collins and Mike ordered a gin and tonic. When he brought the drinks, Mike's tonic water was in a little single serving fancy bottle, which the steward cracked open and told Mike to tell him how much to pour in, so that Mike could control the exact potency of his drink and be assured that his tonic water was fresh. Very fancy.
Then our food waiter came over and described the specials for the night. Mike and I looked at the menu for awhile while enjoying our drinks. We asked the waiter questions about items 2 or 3 times and he was super helpful. Mike saw a veal dish he was interested in, but he'd rather had Veal Saltimbocca. The waiter said that all you had to do was ask.
The wine list...OMG. We didn't want to feel like crazy poor people, but the lowest wines on the whole list were the only ones in our price range. We chose a red blend for a price over our price range, but we didn't do anything crazy. There were wines in the $1500-$2000 range!! The whole time we had wine...only certain people came and refilled our wine...kind of like only certain people were "trained" in handling wine.
To begin...Mike started with a Tony's salad. It was a typical Italian salad with salami, heart of palm, vinaigrette. He said it was good, but he ended up only eating 1/2 of it because it was too big and he wanted to be able to eat his dinner.
Mike's 2nd course was a manicotti. It was filled with beef and mushrooms (Mike doesn't typically like mushrooms but these were diced so small and mixed with the beef and the cheese that really they just made the mixture more moist). It was covered in a white sauce that Mike thought was really good...not too heavy. He really enjoyed this manicotti.
I began with some shrimp risotto. It was very good. It was super creamy and rich and went well with the red wine. It could have been my whole dinner.
For the main entree, Mike had a trio of veal. These pieces of veal had been pounded thin and cooked in a brown gravy sauce with pancetta, sage, and fontina cheese. He said it was very good, but he wished there had been a little more cheese (that was what he told the general manager when he came and talked to us later and shook our hands and thanked us for coming). With the veal Mike had a side of pasta in a brown sort of gravy sauce and an arancini rice ball.
I had the lobster and shrimp pasta. It was all about the sauce. So many people put seafood pasta in a sauce that covers the taste of the seafood. The sauce can't be bold, or cheesy, or super spicy. It needs to be light and made with seafood broth and some wine. It can have some spice, just not too much. Tony's got it right. It was a wonderful dish.
Neither of us finished our entrees, so that we could try some dessert. I ordered a chocolate torte. It was OK. It tasted like they had a 100 of them in the back and they just plated them and put whipped cream on them. The whipped cream was super homemade. Mike got a toffee torte with whipped cream. He really liked his. Mike ordered his standard cappuccino after dinner. I tried an after dinner liquor. I ordered an Italian port. It was sweet and good. It comes in a tiny little wine style glass and you sip it. It totally goes with dessert.
We were probably there 2.5-3 hours. This is pretty typical of a restaurant of this level.
The overall rating for this restaurant...probably not worth the cost. Its food and drink are over double the other fancy restaurants in St. Louis. Since they moved from the Tony's downtown to Clayton the restaurant is considerably smaller and all the wait staff seems a bit more "hovering." The food is good, but it isn't over 2x as good. You can go other places and have a fancy evening and not pay this kind of money.
