Off the Rack

If The Tuxedo Room's food and service don't improve, it'll be curtains.

Comments (0) By Ian Froeb Wednesday, Jan 3 2007

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The wine list includes a few affordable bottles — especially from Australia and South America — but many selections fall into the splurge category. This isn't too surprising, considering that the Tuxedo Room also houses a paid-membership cigar room.

I don't like to mention service unless it's exemplary. Time cures most problems in new restaurants, and St. Louis has few restaurants where the service is meant to be a part of the show. But when bad service impacts my experience as often and as negatively as it did at the Tuxedo Room, I have to comment.

Jennifer Silverberg

Back to rehearsals? The food (and service) at the Tuxedo Room lacks finesse.

Details

The Tuxedo Room
522 North Grand Boulevard, 314-898-0400.
Hours: Lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. daily. Dinner 4:30 p.m.-1 a.m. daily (Limited �Terrace & Bar� menu available 11 a.m.-1 a.m. daily)

Ahi Center-Cut Tuna Tartare "$11
Crab cakes $16
Six-ounce "Tux Cut" Filet $22

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When my fiancée and I arrived before our friends, we were told "to belly up to the bar" while we waited — even though the dining room was almost empty and there were clearly no seats available at the bar. A busser was offended when she realized one of my dining companions wasn't going to finish a good, but large, salad: "What's the matter? You didn't like it?" Coffee was poured from the dregs of a carafe, then not replaced when a fresh pot was ready mere moments later. Upon leaving one night, the valet — a welcome necessity in Grand Center when both the Fox and Sheldon Concert Hall host events — pointed to where he had parked my car and handed me my keys.

I might not have minded had the food been memorable. But the Tuxedo Room seems less interested in being a great restaurant than in exploiting a great location, riding the kitschy trappings of Broadway "glamour" — the costumes, the caricatures, a water tank in which floats a bottle of "bubbling" Champagne — rather than focusing on the fastidious attention to detail in the kitchen and on the floor that can make a diner feel glamorous, if only for a few hours.

As such, the Tuxedo Room made little impression on me. I didn't laugh. I didn't cry. If nothing else, though, it was better than Cats.

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