Louie (on DeMun) 1-25-25

I would give this place a 4/5 stars. 

Just north of St. Elizabeth's hospital on DeMun nearWashington University looks like an area that would be restaurants and bars full of college kids.  But Louie is not frequented by college students.  It is full of upper class white people.  

The parking stinks in the area.  We drove around for a bit and happened to snag a spot on the street but had to park on 4" of ice left over from a storm 3 weeks ago.  

The restaurant is long and narrow.  It was overly warm in there, dark and difficult to read the menu, and quite loud and hard to hear. (Wow, don't I sound like an old person!)

One of the waiters (a big guy with a man bun) seems to be a favortie of many of the people who come here often.  He is greeted with big hugs.  He was our waiter.  He was fine but I didn't feel the need to hug him, LOL.  

We started with a cocktail and were given some foccia bread and olive oil.  It was OK.  The bread was cold and almost too tall.  The spices (a lot of pepper and oregano) on top of the bread were nice.  

Mike decided he wanted to try several things off of the menu, so he told the waiter, we were going to order more food than we could eat and take all the leftovers home.  Of course the waiter was happy.  We each had glass of their house cabernet which was Caburnio from Italy.  It was pretty good for $13 a glass. 

So, we each ordered an appetizer.  Mike ordered a margherita pizza and I ordered the grilled octopus.  I think Mike's order ended up being better.  The pizza was good.  The octopus was good, but it was only a couple of pieces of actual octopus and a lot of chick peas and fried potatoes.  Because it was so dark in there, I didn't discover the potatoes until I cut into them.  I thought they were octopus.  

For dinner Mike got the papardelle bolognese.  It was good, but I do think almost $30 is a bit steep for a rather small pasta dish.  

I got the chitarra with tomato basil sauce.  I'm not a huge basil fan, so it was good the basil was in large leaf form and I could just pick it out.  The pasta was like really fat buccatini or spaghetti.  It was just a little al dente and it was good.  

For dessert we split the carmelized honey ice cream sandwich.  I don't know what was in the actual cookie part but I tasted the honey and something fruity, like orange.  It was good and just the right amount for us to split. The cruchy bits sround the outside were some sort of homemade frosted cereal.  They were a yummy addition. 

Bistro La Floraison 1-11-2025

All in all I'd probably give this restaurant a 3.5 or a 4/5 

This actually used to be a French restaurant we liked.  It closed during Covid.  Then it sat empty for awhile and when it reopened...it was a French restaurant again!  

First the bad news...parking!  Parking actually is horrible.  When we went to this restaurant it was about a week after STL had 12" of snow.  So, the snow was piled up along side all the streets.  There are 3 acclaimed restaurants in the same block (AKAR, Wright's Tavern, and Bistro La Floraison).  They all share the same 15-20 street parking spots and if you don't get one of those...you are walking for a few blocks!!  Mike dropped me off at the door and then it took him a good 15ish minutes to find a spot and make his way back to the restaurant.  

Now, the better news.  This restaurant has a prix fixe menu that includes their good French onion soup AND an entree and a dessert.  That's what I got.  The entree choices were good...I had a hard time deciding between the mussels and the scallops.  

I had studied the wine menu.  We got a bottle of Crocus.  It was a Malbec.  That is close to a cabernet, so we knew we would like it.  

As I said, we both started with the French onion soup.  It was very good.  We had recently had French onion soup at Bread Co.  It is good, but this is totally in a different level!

I said earlier that I had the choice of mussels or scallops (among other choices).  I chose scallops.  I knew they were made with cauliflower (which I don't really like), but I LOVE scallops.  So, I was excited to see them when they arrived.  They were on a mixture (swirled prettily together) of 2 sauces (one was lemon and one was cream).  The cauliflower was roasted.  I tried to eat a couple florets, but I just don't really like it.  My biggest problem with the entire dish was that it wasn't warm.  I don't know if it was finished before Mike's entree, but it was nearly room temp by the time it was served to me and the cool sauces weren't great.  The fact that there were only 3.5 scallops was not great, but that is pretty norm.

Scallops entree

Chicken cordon bleu

Mike didn't go with the prix fixe menu.  He just ordered French onion soup and the chicken cordon bleu.  His entree was great.  It was served over some kind of greens, which he didn't eat and had a side of mushrooms (which I ate for him), but the chicken was awfully good.  It was hot and pretty juicy.  He liked the smokey addition of the ham and cheese.  

My prix fixe menu said that I would get a chocolate torte for dessert.  Mike and I decided we would split this.  Mike also got an espresso martini.  (Normally he would get a coffee or cappuccino, but they didn't have these choices).  He liked the martini.  

Mike's espresso martini.  

This chocolate torte was actually kind of laughable.  It was cut so thin we each only got 2 bites.  It was on a sauce of what tasted like chocolate milk and had a dolop of real whipped cream.  It was OK but was unbelievably small!