51黑料

On a Saturday evening in the Grove, many answers are possible. On this Saturday evening at the four-month-old Grove restaurant Lucy Quinn, the answer hides behind a curtained glass partition. There, bathed in hot-pink light, you find Lucy Quinn鈥檚 smaller sibling, Little Lucy, a sleek modern diner.

These two restaurants share a chef and owner, Ben Welch; a namesake in Welch鈥檚 鈥淣ana,鈥� his maternal grandmother; and a study of soul food and Southern cuisine. Tonight, though, the vibes favor Little Lucy. Behind those curtains 鈥� and more easily accessed through the shared suite of restrooms 鈥� its dining room is packed.

Lucy Quinn鈥檚 sprawling dining room is much more sedate. Its occupancy isn鈥檛 my concern as a critic, but a laxness has seeped into the experience. When my wife entered the restaurant while I parked, she was greeted with 鈥淒o you have a reservation?鈥� instead of, say, 鈥淗ello.鈥� The exact same thing had happened to me on a previous visit.

Hiccups accumulate. Not enough sharing plates are delivered before the dishes arrive. The table is awkwardly cleared between courses because no one appears to be directing front-of-house traffic.

Welch鈥檚 cooking deserves better than this. A fixture of 51黑料 restaurants, Welch has been building toward this showcase for years. He first introduced Lucy Quinn as a pop-up in 2018 while he operated the barbecue restaurant Big Baby Q and Smokehouse in Maryland Heights. From there, he became the inaugural chef at the Midwestern downtown before that venue leaned into the nightlife scene.

In 2021, Welch was the executive chef of the new Wildwood restaurant Botanica, overseeing a menu that drew from both Southern and Italian fare. Botanica opened in October of that year, but Welch left the restaurant in January 2022 鈥� a month before he received a James Beard Award semifinalist nod for Best Chef: Midwest for his work there.

Recognition from the James Beard Foundation only heightened expectations for Welch鈥檚 next project while he searched for a location. He landed in the former Beast Butcher & Block complex, a similarly ambitious project in the Grove. Beast鈥檚 main restaurant became Lucy Quinn. Its small retail butcher shop and demonstration kitchen were fused into Little Lucy. Both restaurants debuted in late March.

Little Lucy, open daily and serving food late, is the more fully realized concept, a diner spun through Welch鈥檚 Southern sensibility. He splits the menu between sandwiches and not sandwiches 鈥� the literal names of the two categories 鈥� the latter corresponding roughly to appetizers, like a clever riff on creamy artichoke dip with the musky sweetness of collard greens replacing spinach.

There is a good burger (two drippy smashed patties with American cheese) and an even better brisket sandwich. Welch flexes his barbecue bona fides here. The shaved brisket is tender and juicy, its flavor rich with both smoke and its own natural essence. The sandwich is a cheesesteak via Louisiana and Texas Hill Country, the brisket, pepper and onions dashed with Cajun spices and slicked with pepper-jack queso.

New Orleans and Nashville meet in the fried catfish po鈥檅oy, which rivals the brisket sandwich as Little Lucy鈥檚 signature dish. This sandwich leads with the moderate heat of a candied-jalape帽o aioli, which lulls you into false capsaicin confidence ahead of the catfish鈥檚 rippling blast of no-fooling Trinidad moruga scorpion chili.

Little Lucy laudably avoids faux diner nostalgia. Fair warning: its prices are higher than a traditional diner鈥檚. The quality generally merits the cost. Still, charging $5 for a side of Red Hot Riplets in a bowl is a markup to make a sommelier blush.

Energy crackles across Little Lucy鈥檚 menu even when the restaurant itself is quiet. If you knew nothing about Welch, you would understand that the food here is fun, but also meaningful to its maker.

That energy dissipates at Lucy Quinn. Welch鈥檚 voice is lost somewhere between the kitchen and the dining room. The menu, its format and especially how the servers interpret it for diners, is the likeliest place.

The restaurant mainly features small plates 鈥� or 鈥淪outhern tapas,鈥� as one server described it to my table. This is accurate to a fault. Left to your own devices, you assemble your own conception of Lucy Quinn. Across multiple visits, through hits and misses, I struggled to finish the puzzle.

When the small plates work, Welch鈥檚 ideas snap into focus like the flaky crust of a hand pie shattering into a filling of succulent crawfish. The benne seed-duck fat milk bread delivers Parker House rolls with a beat you can dance to. Two beats, actually, in the accompanying spreads: sweet sorghum butter and piquant pimento cheese.

Even as small plates, some dishes work best as a nibble or two, too rich for concentrated focus: 鈥渕ac and cheese鈥� with gnocchi in a four-cheese mornay sauce or potato wedges thicker than steak fries, but triple-fried for the crisp exterior and cottony interior that often elude skinnier spuds.

Other plates are surprisingly underpowered. The sauce for New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp glistens with the butter you expect but delivers little of the seasoning, even salt. And 鈥渕odest鈥� should never be the first adjective that springs to mind when describing gumbo with smoked pork and chicken.

Little Lucy鈥檚 artichoke and collards dip would also stand out among these dishes, as would the diner鈥檚 bowl of intensely browned Brussels sprouts tossed with a preserved-lemon aioli. Lucy Quinn could also draw on its own brunch menu, where I enjoyed airy crab beignets and a plate of tart fried green tomatoes in a thin, crisp batter jolted by a candied-jalape帽o remoulade.

Lucy Quinn presents only four main courses, and fans of Welch鈥檚 prior work will look immediately to the Big Baby Q Pastrami. As they should. Here the chef stacks thick but succulent slabs of Big Baby Q鈥檚 signature smoked meat on a plate and accents these with zippy, verdant horseradish-creamed zucchini and a tangle of fried onions.

This is the moment when Lucy Quinn sparks to life. The dish is personal, surprising (thanks to that zucchini), and balances the upscale touches the restaurant鈥檚 ambitions demand with the unfussy pastrami punch of black pepper, coriander and ground mustard.

In comparison, the catfish and pork belly plates pay respectful tributes rather than risk inspiration. The fried catfish is properly crisp and tender, though not as thrilling as Little Lucy鈥檚 Nashville take; in Southern style, it comes with a side of spaghetti in a puttanesca sauce. The pork belly delivers crackling skin and sweet, fat-kissed meat, but no distinctive accents to outshine its sides of hot-water cornbread and collard greens.

For dessert, trust Nana. Nana鈥檚 Banana Puddin鈥� is a big bowl brimming with the sweetness of perfectly ripe bananas. Whole vanilla wafers float on the surface, and more wafers are mixed into the pudding. (Skip the slice of German chocolate cake, big enough to share among four of you, but dry.) It鈥檚 a rare instance where this restaurant answers the most pressing question of all: Who is Lucy Quinn?