Esca in the Delmar Makers District 9-13-25

 I'd give this small restaurant a 4/5

OK, full disclosure, I'd never heard of the Delmar Maker's District.  It is just an area on Delmar east of the Pageant.  Right now it is VERY close to all the demolished homes from the May 16, 2025 tornado.  

So, Ben Poremba is the chef/owner of 3 restaurants on Delmar: Esca, Nixta and Florentin.  Each is a different style of restaurant.

Esca is geared toward Mediterranian food.  The restaurant is very small.  The inside only holds 12 tables.  There is a nice patio with another 8-10 tables, but on the night we visited, it was 95 degrees outside, so most people were inside. 

Mike and I both commented that the menu may be Mediterranian, but there really is nothing inside that distinguishes the space as any specific type of food.  It is just a typical city restaurant in a fixed up old building...wood floors, exposed brick.  The semi-open kitchen is nice.  Mike enjoyed watching the dessert station.  

We started with cocktails and an order of their signature bread and butter (which you have to order and pay for, by the way).  Then Mike ordered a salad.  We ended up splitting this as it was actually too big for one person.

They have a sommalier who we think was also in charge of some other aspect in the kitchen most of the time.  He did come out and present our wine.  Speaking of the wine...their wine list is all French and Italian.  We ordered an Italian whose region we were familiar.  It was fine.  It just would have been nice to have a regular old Californian cabernet. 

For dinner Mike ordered the special, which was lasagna.  It was a very pasta forward lasagna.  There were about a dozen layers of pasta!  There was meat (beef and sausage) in there and there was ricotta cheese, but there was almost no sauce.  Maybe it had all been absorbed by all that pasta.  Mike said it was good.  I would have needed a lot more sauce.  

I got the grilled octopus entree.  It is served with chickpeas, celery, oregano and chili spices.  It had an celery/olive oil drizzel on the plate.  The octopus was very good.  It had been grilled well and wasn't chewey at all.  The rest of the dish didn't have a lot of flavor and there wasn't much to it.  I liked the dish but yearned for a more substantial side dish. 

After dinner we each decided to get dessert.  Because the restaurant is small we had been very near to a singular girl who dined alone and then had 2 desserts at the end because she couldn't decide which one she wanted.  Both of her desserts looked good, so we decided to each get something and not split one. 

I got an olive oil cake with strawberries that had been masurated in balsamic vinegar. There was a quenelle of a sweet almost frosting like substance on top. It was also topped with fresh cracked black pepper. It was really yummy.  The cake was a little dry but the strawberries really helped with that. 

Mike had an ice cream sundae with cocoa nibs and chocolate sauce. 

 

Overall this was a nice dinner.  The food was interesting but not amazing enough to make us feel like we need to come back.  The menu is very small and doesn't seem to change that often.  

Also, on a side note, they add 16% to the bill for an automatic tip and then ask you to please add more.  Just a little pushy.  

Sam's Steakhouse on Gravois in St. Louis 9-5-25

 I would give this place a 4 out of 5.  

We went to Sam's for Mike's birthday.  He wanted steak.  We were seated in the "Piano Bar" section of the restaurant.  Since the full title of the restaurant is Sam's Steakhouse and Piano Bar I guess they believe most people want to be in the piano bar part of the room.  Mike said he wished we would have just been in the regular dining room.  I'll have to remember and ask for that the next time.  

At about 6:30 (we arrived at 6:15) a guy began singing (not overly loudly) in a corner to music coming from a computer...so I don't even think that really qualifies as "piano bar."  LOL  It is louder in this part of the restaurant because there are quite a few people crowded around the bar. 

There were 2 bartenders who also were the wait staff for this section of the restaurant.  Ava, our waitress was nice, but also had to constantly rush back to the bar and do her bartender duties.  

We had cocktails and Mike ordered the sampler appetizer.  I ate the crab cake (it was very good and full of crab) and Mike ate the rest (cajun shrimp and toasted ravioli.  

When we order wine we used to order more worldly wines...French, Italian, Australian, South African.  But in the past 10-15 years or so, we've really honed in on only American/Californian cabernets.  Years ago we were fascinated by a wine called Chateauneuf du Pape and the whole story behind it.  It was when the Pope's residence moved years ago (for a short time) to the Rhone Valley in France.  That is why they can call it that name.  Fifteen or more years ago we couldn't afford this wine, so we always passed for something cheaper.  Well, tonight we saw it on the wine list and it was about the same price as the cabernet we would have ordered.  So, we ordered it. 

It was fine, but it wasn't as good as the cabernets we've been drinking recently.  It has a nice taste, but it has no complexity and absolutely no finish.  It was nice with dinner, but not worth the price.  Oh, well, now we can say we've had this wine and go back to our cabernets.

We each had a salad.  They were nothing exciting.  The croutons were house made and a little greasy.  They also didn't have a very wide variety of salad dressings.  Mike wanted honey mustard and ended up with plain old Ranch. 

For dinner Mike had the filet with a baked potato.  He said the filet was nicely cooked but it was awfully small for the price we paid. 

I had the sea bass.  It must have been lightly floured and then seared as there was a crust on it.  I was afraid that it would be dry because you have to cook it for a few minutes to get that crust, but it wasn't. It came on a bed of tasteless spinach.  I, too, had baked potato.  

Obviously we like this place as we have returned 6 or 7 times over the years.  It is not perfect and the food is a little overpriced, but it is a nice steakhouse if that's what you are looking for.