A new day has dawned at Lucas Park Grille -- and it starts with a $40 wagyu steak.

And then there was the Kobe beef. The printed menu revealed that this is, in fact, American wagyu beef, which was fine, considering the extravagant price of the Japanese product. As it is, the rib eye at Lucas Park Grille costs $40. It is ten ounces, served off the bone. I ordered it on the rare side of medium rare.

(I have since found at least one wagyu aficionado online who recommends that, no matter what your usual preferences, you must order wagyu very rare.)

Jennifer Silverberg

With bold dishes like Kobe rib eye and roasted venison, Lucas Park Grille is heating up the Washington Avenue culinary scene.

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Lucas Park Grille

1234 Washington Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63103

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: St. Louis - Washington Avenue

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Details

Lucas Park Grille
1234 Washington Avenue, 314-241-7770.
Hours: Lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. daily, Dinner 5-9 p.m. Tue.-Thu., 5-11 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 5-9 p.m. Sun. (Bar open till 1:30 a.m. Tue.-Thu., 3 a.m. Sat.-Sun., 1:30 a.m. Sun.)

Foie gras $15
Ahi tuna $26
Venison. $26
Wagyu rib eye $40

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More About

• Jason Bayle
• Kevin Willmann
• Edwardsville
• Eating Out
• Meat

Was this the most tender steak I have ever eaten? Not especially. But it was pretty tender. And the flavor was incredibly complex, sometimes nutty, sometimes mineral, sometimes, well, other. A pleasant rosemary-zinfandel jus gave the dish a solid backbone, and the sides, a potato-celery root gratin and caramelized baby carrots, were nicely understated.

Is it worth $40? That's harder to say. I tend to prefer a chewy bistro-style steak, the kind you can find at Atlas or Franco for roughly $20. I don't know that the wagyu rib eye was twice as good as one of those. But steak aficionados shouldn't hesitate to give it a try.

While I'm at it, if you like foie gras, I recommend Bayle's take: a generous slab of seared foie gras with a handful of toasted marshmallows (smaller than standard size, but larger than breakfast-cereal size) and blood-orange wedges. It's a riff on the Southern classic ambrosia fruit salad. It's a playful study in softness, too: the soft and supple liver, the soft and pulpy orange, the soft and chewy marshmallow. And it tastes great on a piece of toast.

Even if you don't like foie gras, you'll have to admit that it leaps off the menu compared to the other workhorse appetizers: mussels, escargot in puff pastry, chicken turnovers. I tried the crab cakes, which were decent, heavy with Dungeness crab, but served with a ho-hum tartar sauce.

Bayle tells me he wants to serve food that conveys a sense of joy, that a restaurant serving very good food "doesn't need a quiet, slow-jazz kind of feel." He certainly has chosen the proper venue. It has its drawbacks, however. Service is a crapshoot, sometimes scatter-brained and always stretched thin as the bar crowd grows. And as electric as the atmosphere can be, there's something distressing about looking up from the dessert menu to find yourself eye-to-cheek with somebody's wiggling ass.

This was a friend of the lovely bride-to-be dressed all in white, with tiara and wand. She and her bachelorette party were taking over the area where we sat, with at least two dozen young women (and even a few men), all of them dressed in white.

In my dreams, each of them orders the rib eye, rare, and eats it with her bare hands.

Have a suggestion for a restaurant the Riverfront Times should review? E-mail ian.froeb@riverfronttimes.com.