We're not sure where it started or when exactly it became a thing, but lately restaurant crawls seem to be all the rage in St. Louis. Pub crawls we understand. But restaurant crawls? Aren't those just glorified progressive dinners? We've been over progressive dinners for a few years now, so what's the appeal of a restaurant crawl?
On April 24, Gut Check tagged along on Dishcrawl's first St. Louis gastronomic adventure on Wash. Ave. to find out.
As we reported back at the beginning of April, Dishcrawl is a fairly new organization that has just arrived in St. Louis to host restaurant-hopping adventures. Dishcrawl ambassador Sara Graham chose Washington Avenue downtown as the first spot in town worthy of gourmet food tastings en masse, and as the date of the first crawl got closer, she released more details about the places the group would be visiting.
A few days before the event, Dishcrawl STL revealed on its Twitter that the featured restaurants would be the Dubliner, Mosaic and Robust, with a Kakao Chocolate nightcap at Mercantile Exchange movie theater.
Guests met up at the Dubliner (1025 Washington Avenue; 314-421-4300), where they were greeted by Eddie Neill, partner at both the Dubliner and Café Provencal. Neill talked about the similarities and differences between Irish food (like the kind served at the Dubliner) and French food (which he serves up at Café Provencal). He also informed diners that everything they would be tasting was sourced from local farms.
The offering from the Dubliner was a charcuterie platter with liver pâté, wild mushroom pâté, a pâté called "Cheek to Cheek" (clever, Dubliner) and pork rillettes (which is similar to pâté). The pâté par-tay was served with toast, whole-grain mustard, pickles and olives.
This first meal immediately set the tone for the entire event. Midwesterners, beware: You will be eating pâté. For Gut Check, this was a pleasant surprise. For some of the other diners, not so much.
Find out where we went next...
