Mattingly Brewing Co.

Erica Burrus photo - Michael (left) and Douglas Mattingly stand outside their Mattingly Brewing Co. at 3000 S. Jefferson Ave.

Mattingly Brewing Co. rides the wave
By Joe Bonwich - ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH - 07/24/2008

The big brewery news of the month notwithstanding, St. Louis restaurants seem to be riding a beer wave.

More restaurants than I can ever remember are building their beer lists with just as much care as was once shown to wine. The latest in this list is Mattingly Brewing Co., which also continues a long-running trend of charming rehabs of old corner taverns.

In this case, the neighborhood is Benton Park, and Mattingly's location at 3000 South Jefferson Avenue is an unrelated but reasonably matching bookend for another recently rehabbed space, Park West Grille, which is across the street about a block up.

Like Park West, Mattingly is a beacon on a stretch of block that otherwise ranges from uninviting at worst to drab at best. But with these two in place and other spaces with similar potential nearby, we could be looking at the early stages of a renaissance.

Mattingly plans to brew its own beer; in the meantime, it offers an eclectic selection of eight craft beers on draft that includes a hefeweizen, a pilsner, a porter, a stout, a bitter and three degrees of pale ales, capped off by the exotically aromatic Delirium Tremens, two or three of which will make even the most xenophobic bar patron forgive the Belgians for their pending takeover of Anheuser-Busch. (All beers are $4 save for the Delirium Tremens, which is served in a 10-ounce pour in a snifter for $6.50.)

The food menu offers a half-dozen small plates suitable for bar snacks or appetizers; similarly sized selections of sandwiches and salads; four on-menu entrees and four pastas; and a pizza selection consisting of four set-ingredient house pizzas plus build-your-own pizzas in either St. Louis, hand-tossed or Chicago deep-dish styles. We grazed through various categories and concluded that the food is competent but unremarkable.

Among the small plates, fried calamari came in a medium size portion of very uniform rings plus a few tentacle sections, springy rather than gummy, with a standard marinara and a heavy-on-the-lemon lemon-garlic butter as dips.

Roasted red pepper hummus had good, rich, red-pepper flavor, with no fewer than eight triangles of pita-style bread for gathering it up.

And Mattingly distinguishes its chicken wings by calling them pterodactyl wings based on their size, which is probably half again as large as most bar wings. The result is a slightly meatier wing that's still tender.

Among the main courses, we tried a pizza, a pasta and a specialty called Pinot Greeno Chicken. The latter item is a layering of chicken, spinach, mushrooms and onions with a glopping of melted cheese. The pinot grigio used in sauteing it seemed a bit of overkill, but as a gooey-cheese comfort food, the dish as a whole worked fine.

Mattingly's version of pasta primavera was more about whatever vegetables were around rather than spring vegetables, but the use of sundried tomatoes added a certain amount of depth. The primavera can be supplemented with shrimp or calamari; unfortunately, we chose the shrimp, which turned out to be a small portion of tiny bay shrimp that added little in the way of flavor or texture to the dish.

I also rated the pizza as average. We tried it in the form of a house pizza called the Texan, a 14-inch, hand-tossed crust with sausage, ground beef, pepperoni and bacon, with mozzarella and provolone as the cheeses. The crust was thin enough to fold over in the New York style, with a slightly crisp bottom. The cheese was fine but of the four toppings listed, pepperoni dominated, with sausage and ground beef there but not in abundance — and I really had to search to dig out little pieces of bacon.

As with most pizza and pasta places, this is no place to count carbs, as even dessert is heavy with starch products. Even the take-off on apple pie was more like a flatbread, with a decent layer of sweetened, softened chunks of apples as the "topping."

Flat-screens are on several walls, at one point showing an unusual juxtaposition of auto racing and a Pink Panther cartoon.

And I didn't know whether to laugh out loud or feel old at the promotional literature on the table asking us to "relive the glory days of Washington Avenue" during Mattingly's regular Tuesday night event featuring a "bartender and former go-go dancer" from the old Tangerine restaurant. Personally, I think Washington Avenue still has the potential of even better glory days ahead of it.

So, for that matter, does Jefferson Avenue, especially as it gets the chance to participate in the brew-pub craze. House-brewed beers will be a good next step, but I'm really hoping that Mattingly will tighten up its menu when those beers arrive and perhaps even set up some explicit food-and-beer pairings.

(First photo - Meaty and tender "pterodactyl wings" are bigger than the usual pub wings; Second photo - Delirium Tremens is served in a snifter at Mattingly Brewing Co.; Third photo - Fried calamari arrives with marinara and lemon-garlic-butter sauces; Fourth photo - Apple pie resembles a flatbread-style pizza with sweetened apple chuncks as the topping)


 

Brothers pour $1M into Jefferson Avenue microbrewery, offices
Developers see continued growth for Benton Park neighborhood

By Jim Merkel
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 10:18 AM CDT

A $1 million project to renovate a 100-year-old commercial building on South Jefferson Avenue just north of Arsenal Street continues the improvement in that area.

Douglas and Michael Mattingly plan to open a restaurant-microbrewery in a building at 3000-08 S. Jefferson Ave., along with a copy center and two temporary offices for contractors and businesses wanting space for a few hours or days. They also plan to rent out three renovated storefronts and three second-floor apartments.

The project is one more improvement in a once-moribund part of South Jefferson. Among the other improvements to the area are the Luvy Duvy Cafe, 2321 Arsenal St., the Park West Grill, 2917 S. Jefferson, and a small market that will soon open nearby.There is a great potential for the area, Douglas Mattingly said. Jefferson is a nice, wide street with a high traffic count, he said. "The momentum is there for rehabbing the area," he said.

Nonetheless, since the Mattinglys bought the building early last year, some neighbors have raised concerns that the microbrewery and added parking might bring noise and disruptions to nearby residences.

The city dealt with much of that when it required the Mattinglys to build a fence around the 20-vehicle parking lot they wanted to build behind their property. The city limited hours at the outdoor patio the brothers want behind their planned Mattingly Brewing Co., at 3000 S. Jefferson.

Dan Guenther, who represented residents who live just east of the property, said the changes the Mattinglys had to do represent an improvement over what was originally proposed.

"We just want to make sure that it's not loud and rowdy," said Guenther, who lives in the 3000 block of Indiana Avenue.

Guenther said that when he moved to the area about six years ago the whole area was mostly vacant. "As neighbors and business owners, we're thrilled that more people are considering moving to the neighborhood."

Joel and Stephani Steele, parents of two toddlers, recently moved into a house on Indiana Avenue behind the Mattinglys' property recently. They have their own concerns.

"I'm OK with the microbrewery back there. I don't necessarily want there to be live music out there until 3 a.m. out on the beer garden," said Joel Steele.

Another neighbor, Dale Wohler, said he is fine with the microbrewery. "They're rehabbing it, redoing, bringing revitalization to the neighborhood," he said.

Doug Mattingly said he was satisfied the microbrewery would be a good neighbor. The outdoor patio would close at 10 p.m. on weekdays and probably won't be open much later on weekends, he said.

Both of the Mattinglys have a strong interest in the microbrewery and started with home brewing about seven years ago. The two, who are engineers by trade, started talking about starting a microbrewery around 2003.

"A hobby became a business," said Doug Mattingly.

They've hired a manager for the brewery, Matt McMullen, and are hiring a brewmaster.

When they open, their microbrewery will have the capacity of making batches of 124 gallons at a time. They plan to brew a variety of craft ales, including India pale ale and a stout. Pizza will be a specialty in the microbrewery, which will have a capacity of 50.

"St. Louis some time ago used to be the capital of craft brewing. We think it's well on its way to being so (again)," Douglas Mattingly said.

Last updated: Sunday, January 11, 2009