Early last month, Bill Cardwell stood in the still-unfinished space of his new project, BC’s Kitchen, and took obvious enjoyment in detailing the restaurant’s focus on serving the Lake St. Louis community. “It’s like Lewis and Clark. There’s nobody out here. I mean, there’s homes here, but no business structure. But a business group like Davis Street Land Co. wouldn’t invest the millions of dollars in this project if [there wasn’t] a need. And that’s happened all over St. Louis,” said Cardwell. “It happened in Frontenac 15 years ago; it happened in Clayton 21 years ago. If you would have asked me two years ago [if] I [was] going to do a new restaurant, I would have told you flat-out: no. I was looking for an exit strategy. I’m 58 and I’d like to retire someday.” But this was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, and now Cardwell, one of St. Louis’ pioneer restaurateurs, is once again forging into uncharted culinary territory.
I see you have a wood-burning oven, like at Cardwell’s at the Plaza. Will the menus be similar? There are similarities in some of the dishes, but there are only three dishes on this menu that we serve at Plaza Frontenac – the calamari, smoked shrimp and our chicken stir-fry. Everything else is different, but it’s not necessarily new food. It’s food that people will understand but done with good ingredients, local produce, sustainable meats and seafood. But we’re not doing cutting-edge cuisine. [We’ll be serving] food that people are comfortable with.
The name itself, BC’s Kitchen, conjures up images of home cooking. The flavor that I want people to have is if I were to invite them to my home for dinner. Some people like the fact that they are seeing the action [in an open kitchen], some people don’t want to see it. To maximize the space, it lends itself to this openness.
This is a huge open kitchen. But it’s with a certain refinement. Where we are now, this is the main dining room. It’s going to be very nicely carpeted, fine fabric booths, free-standing couch-style booths here, this nice stone wall … now, this is a semiprivate room, but even when you’re in here, when someone goes through the door into the kitchen, you’re going to get a glimpse of the kitchen.
What do you think diners take away from the experience of being part of the action? It’s casual-comfortable. When you come to someone’s home, where is your time spent? You may actually sit down at the dining room table to have dinner, but everybody hangs out in the kitchen with their cocktails, with their wine, around the kitchen counter, talking. On a bigger scale, that’s what we’re trying to do.
So are you doing a lot of wines by the glass, cool cocktails … Yeah, specialty cocktails. We’re doing a fairly large pour on our wine by the glass – an 8-ounce carafe. We’re trying to do wines that are priced right. We’re keeping the selection fairly small, to about 60 bottles and, top end, about $65.
How did your experience at Cardwell’s at the Plaza, and before that at Cardwell’s in Clayton, inform the way you created the concept for this new location? Everything throughout your life has an effect on what you do. For the demographics and the economy and for people’s dining style … 90 percent of the people that I know eat out three to four times a week. I want this place to be for those kind of people, that they find something they like, that they come back a couple of times a week, that it’s not, “Oh, I really like it, but we can only afford to go there for a special occasion.”
You can spend a lot if you want or a little if you want. Basically. We’re doing a Monday through Sunday feature every night. Monday night – my wife and her family are from New Orleans – we’re doing red beans and rice with a grilled pork chop. We’re using Camellia red beans from New Orleans. Friday night is my mother-in-law’s Creole shrimp. Saturday night is beef night – it was for me growing up as a kid – so we’re doing prime rib. Now, people say, “prime rib?” But with good beef, a homemade popover and great starches … Sunday is fried chicken all day. There’s a steak night, spaghetti and meatball night is Wednesday. … We’re going to have Niman Ranch spare ribs on the menu all the time, so we’re doing that as a feature on Tuesdays.
The company that developed Plaza Frontenac is also developing this property, The Meadows at Lake St. Louis. They came to me originally; they said, “We want you to do a casual restaurant out there, maybe burgers.” I was like, I don’t know if I want to do burgers …
No Meisterburgers? Yeah, there’s Meisterburgers on the menu. It was six to eight months of negotiations to decide if it was a doable project. When we decided it was doable, I just started putting it together. John Kennealy and I – John is my executive chef and business partner – we’ve known each other for a long time, and we’ve been talking about this for about 16 months. [The developers and I have] been about 24 months in the planning process.
This isn’t a small project – you’re putting a lot into planning the space. We’re making the space as nice as we can within a fairly limited budget for 2008. I don’t think it’s how much you spend on build-out that makes a restaurant great. It’s going to be a bright space …
Homey and comfortable. Yeah, approachable. Using stone and slate and granite and the wood oven. … In the wood oven we’ll do pizzas and a few other items. On this end we’ll have stools so you can sit at the counter.
The kitchen really is on display. When chefs are working right next to customers, they have to behave themselves. A little bit, yeah. I have a notorious reputation for using not-so-great language. … But I think it’s great. There’s nothing hidden. If somebody comes to your home for dinner, they’re in your kitchen.
This article appears in Aug 1-31, 2008.