Roam If You Want To

Savor's menu travels the world, but it certainly isn't easy to navigate

Comments (0) By Rose Martelli Wednesday, May 25 2005

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A staff of experienced, self-assured career waiters and waitresses could provide patrons with some direction, could guide them through unfamiliar ingredients and the dizzying array of choices. But so far, the staff seems green. When I questioned one server as to what "waxy potatoes," part of a wild king salmon entrée, meant, I was told what makes them waxy was that "they deglaze them differently."

On a previous visit, a waitress had pronounced caipirinha "caprani." Unassuring, and all the more so because our exchange owed to the fact that the caipirinha (a classic Brazilian, muddled-limes-and-rum concoction) tasted like cleaning solution and we wanted to send it back. Faring not much better was a Singapore sling that contained gin, cherry brandy, Cointreau, club soda and a couple fruit juices, yet still registered as lax and lifeless. A glass of white-wine sangria was tart and uplifting but would have done better with some fruit in the glass, not just a slice of orange straddling its rim.

Jennifer Silverberg

Around the world in one meal: Savor's menu is both exhaustive and exhausting.

Jennifer Silverberg

Around the world in one meal: Savor's menu is both exhaustive and exhausting.

Location Info

Map

Sip 'n Savor

286 DeBaliviere Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63112

Category: Restaurant > Coffeehouse

Region: St. Louis - Skinker/DeBaliviere

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Details

Mesclun salad $8
Oaxacan chicken mole $19
Sea scallops $23
Saag paneer flatbread $8

314-531-0220. Hours: 5-11 p.m. Mon.-Thu., 5 p.m.-midnight Fri.-Sat.

4356 Lindell Boulevard

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If we're going to globetrot through supper, whirl-winding our way through regions hither and yon, let dessert do what dessert was born to do: Bring us back home again. That doesn't mean every dessert must be all-American -- a nice little cannoli, or maybe some sweet-and-simple flan can always wind things down in comforting fashion. Many of Savor's desserts, though, appear hellbent on showing off for the sake of it, geography or simple pleasures be damned. Strawberry basil sorbet, a bacon-and-peanut butter truffle -- such items are just too smart for the room, really. Same goes for a red-wine gelato, which just tastes like somebody spilled some red wine in some gelato.

The menu's opening spiel reads, in part: "We at Savor hope to create a St. Louis neighborhood restaurant different from any other." Savor sure is different -- but striving toward such highfalutin aspirations while billing oneself as a "neighborhood restaurant"? That would require a little more cooking locally and a lot less thinking globally.