Creole With A Splash Of Soul — Restaurant in St. Louis

Please embrace yourself, because my review is a long critical criticism.

My mom and I are from Chicago. We can me to this establishment hoping we could get in before 530PM according to Google that's the time they close on Sundays. Once we arrive the front door says they close at 8pm. There were about 5 tables with people there. Only two of those tables people had their food. We were told to wait 15 minutes to be seated, we said no problem.

A waiter came to us and told us what they had left available on the menu, because they were out of mostly everything. We said we will take what they have available. Which was pork chops, chicken, Mac n cheese, mashed potatoes, & red beans and rice. Before he could seat us, the waiter jumps up runs outside and comes back in, and said someone or something tried to break his car windows. I don't know, just odd.

We sat and order our food. We were asked what did we want to drink we order lemonades. The lemonades came in two different glasses. My momma had a bigger glass than me. It's a whole bar front with no bar beverages such as alcohol in this restaurant.

I go to the bathroom the first bathroom (unisex)was so DIRTY. Floor dirty, toilet seat dirty, no paper towels, no toilet paper on the rack. Second bathroom which is the women's bathroom was better just needed a little upkeep.

I get back to my seat and overhear that the food we order was given to someone else as a take out order. Not only did customers started walking out because the service was slow and barely any food available prior to this happening to us why continue to take orders? So we had to reorder our food. The cooks kept coming out to say sorry with gloves on. It wasn't making sense that the cooks were bringing out our food and not the waiters.

The waiter told my mom and I that they encourage customers to come early because they sell out of food within the first two hours. That's very problematic if your hours of operation is 12-8pm like your door sign says. How can you make money if there is not enough food to serve and no true bar selection for hours of operation? Sundays you can not order from their regular menu, although they give you the regular menu to look at. You can only order their Sunday dinner on Sundays. No appetizers or anything else.

Back to the cook, whom offer us peach cobbler for the mishap and long wait. What we thought was a nice gesture we was charged for it. The tricky was, we would be charged for one cobbler and get a discount on it. Not a discount on the meal(s) but on the pie that supposed to complimentary. I ordered smothered pork chops with Mac n cheese and red beans and rice. Since my food was given to someone else the red beans and rice was no longer available. I could go on how dirty the staff clothes were. I would not recommend this place. The food was good, but extremely poor service and old furniture. (Another story)

Ps. The reason why this restaurant runs out of food so quickly, because they are not portioning the food correctly. Mom ordered baked chicken, she got a breast, thigh, and a wing. That's too much meat for...

I've never started a review with DON'T GO! but today is a day of firsts. What an unfortunate and disappointing experience this was. I called weeks ahead to make a reservation for a party of 17. I was traveling from Kansas City MO with my church and looked forward to supporting a black-owned and woman-owned business. We actually received two referrals to eat here. We arrived a few mins before our reservation. The table was not set up for our party. Once ready, we commenced to provide our orders from the menus we were provided while being told that multiple items were not available to order including no desserts at all because it wasn't the Sunday brunch. Odd but we moved forward. It took over an hour before anyone's food came out however, all orders were not brought out at the same time. We were told there were only two cooks to support our orders. While most of the food was pretty good, the catfish was overcooked, the asparagus was overcooked. One person in our party did not get their full order. The waiter said it's a large party so it would take a while but more than an hour and a half to get food! Most of the receipts were wrong. My receipt included an overcharge for an item and I was told that the system had updated but the menu didn't. The waiter still seemed to expect that I would pay until I refused and requested to speak to the manager. I later found out the owner was present. She was one of two that prepared our meals. Once finished, she never approached our table to apologize for the service or mishaps. Once she finally did come to speak to me about my receipt, she fixed it however, when I was rung up it was still at the higher, incorrect price. As she was called over, I expressed my dissatisfaction and actually disappointment with their service considering that we had reservations and had traveled over 4 hours to come to her establishment. She finally apologized however, she also said that we, her customer should understand that it takes time when you have a large party. My response was, she should've been equipped to support our party, especially with advance notice. Her response was that she shouldn't have taken our reservation. I don't understand why it's our fault that she couldn't handle our party's size. She was rude and again, didn't care much about our dissatisfaction with the service. It took over an hour to process our receipts. There was one waiter for two tables and 17 people to take our order and process our payment.

I would not recommend supporting this owner or this restaurant. I suggest kindly that she get the staffing that she needs. There were some customers that flat out left because no one came to take their order. Start again, there's potential but the delivery comes up way too short. Poor service and...

We did not dine in - got carry-out, photos attached. There was a couple waiting when I walked in, and still when I walked out, but I had ordered by phone, and mine only took a few more minutes to be ready. Service was...I'll say "very casual", which did not particularly inspire me, but I had no particular complaints.

We got gator tail nuggets as our appetizer. The batter is really crisp, and the meat was tender and lean, though the batter was so crisp that many of the smaller "nuggets" were just batter with no meat in them (still tasty, though). I didn't care for the sauce, but my wife loved it. They have enough spice that you'll feel it a little.

The beans and rice were well seasoned but not spicy - my finicky 12yo ate them with zero complaint. There was lean shredded pork in them, very nice.

My wife got spicy hot wings that were quite good - in her own word, awesome. I had one, and can't argue.

I got the shrimp étouffée and added crawfish. It was glorious - had almost as much bite as I want in my creole, which is to say it cleared my sinuses and "warmed my heart". It's the half-gone dish with the spoon in the photos, as I went through it pretty fast, before the wife got pics.

We also ordered a gumbo. It was good, we ate it all and enjoyed it, but this one was odd to me; it's the photo with the long curls of andouille, and had plentiful shrimp, large pieces of beautiful chicken breast, strips of red pepper... but I expect a big bowl of filé-thick, hearty, stew with a dark roux base and traditionally high vegetable content, with lots of onion and celery and okra, with a scoop of rice in it. There was no okra that I saw, the soup was not dark or thick as I expected, and it was poured over a really big plate of rice.

There was a LOT of rice in most of the dishes. That said, even the rice was good, not overcooked or cheap.

Portions were plentiful and we had to finish it the next day. Having overnight to set, the grease made itself evident (honestly, you should expect from this sort of cuisine) but it was still very good, in the way that well-seasoned food gets better when given a few hours to marinate in its own contents.

The recipes confused me a bit, but it's clearly fusion, and we will be ordering from...