Tejas Grill and Cantina
By Joe Bonwich
Of the Post-Dispatch
02/26/2004
 Steve Gontram offers both bold and beautiful at his new outpost in downtown Clayton.
Tex-Mex, Southwestern and similar cuisines aren't exactly trendy anymore, but Steve Gontram and his posse have found a way to keep them fresh.
Gontram is best known for Harvest, the "new American" restaurant in Richmond Heights that, during the first eight years of its existence, has gained both local and national critical acclaim. Branching out, however, holds many risks, as both diners and investors discovered when Gontram opened with great fanfare - and closed less than six months later - a New Orleans-themed restaurant called Beaux Coo in the Seven Gables Inn in Clayton.
For his new Clayton outpost, Tejas (rhymes with local favorite-son golfer Jay Haas, if you put the emphasis on his first name), Gontram has any number of good things going for him from the outset. The space itself has an established reputation as a Tex-Mex spot, having housed Ramon's Jalapeno for more than a decade. In a smart piece of marketing to retain the prior crowd, Tejas kept Jalapeno's old phone number.
Gontram himself was in Tejas for both of our visits, but when he does choose to commute back to Harvest, he has executive chef Eric Erhard - a veteran of Annie Gunn's, Crazy Fish and Cafe Mira - in the kitchen and general manager Rich Gantner out front.
The home-on-the-range atmosphere is driven, so to speak, for the full length of the meal, from the cowboy mural in the bar area to the tumbleweed accents on high shelves in the dining room to the make-your-own-s'mores desserts, where a small brazier substitutes for actually building a small campfire on the tabletop, no doubt in deference to code compliance.
When the first line of the menu welcomed us "to cowboy heaven," we worried that the cutesiness might get a bit overbearing, but the rest of the meal settled into a nice level of professionalism - no "howdy, pardners" or any similar silliness from the staff. Most important, Gontram and Erhard make the most of the Southwestern foundation to build some excellent dishes.
Consider, for example, the braised beef cheeks. This is a seldom-seen cut, which comes from the cheeks of the cow located above the neck and, when cooked properly, has both a rich flavor and a texture similar to short ribs. Not only were the flavor and texture correct at Tejas, but they were complemented by a smoky "chile mop sauce" and braised greens with a tangible tang, all atop a fairly neutral polenta to help collect the diverse flavors.
For fish, Tejas was the first place locally that we'd encountered the herb called hoja santa, also known as the root beer plant, whose unusual medium-green leaves were used as a cooking wrap for snapper, providing a combination of licorice and mint flavorings at the edge of the fish. Refried beans are frequently a negative stereotype of Mexican-American adaptations, but here they worked well as a neutral agent, almost in the same role as a mildly flavored potato dish would for a Continental meal.
Steaks and chops come "from the campfire grill," with the top end defined by a giant bone-in ribeye steak at $32, but with the list also including the uncommon cuts of a tri-tip, from the bottom sirloin in the hind quarter, and a flatiron steak, from the top blade of the shoulder. We went with the flatiron, which, like the beef cheeks, was a meat dish for diners who enjoy sinking their teeth into a meal, "chewy" in the good sense of the word, with a full-bodied beef flavor.
Among the appetizers, the chile relleno illustrated that Tejas also does well at tweaking Mexican-inspired basics, in this case using a good, moderately hot poblano chile as the wrapper with additional spice from house-made chorizo as the main stuffing. Completing the dish is the substitution of the fuller body of Manchego, a sheep's cheese, for the milder cheese found in many common versions.
The dessert list is fairly short, with four choices in addition to the s'mores. The banana coconut flan took the basic custard and added tropical flavors, but really amplified the banana by serving a broiled slice alongside that concentrated the banana flavoring in the same way a crust is achieved on a creme brulee. A square of dark chocolate layer cake used the classic Mexican technique of accenting the chocolate flavor with chiles, albeit ever so subtly.
The wine list is thoughtfully subdivided to accommodate the difficult task of pairing wines with spicy cuisine, but inexplicably those categories are not carried over to the listings of wine by the glass. Seven premium margaritas with fresh-squeezed lime juice are also offered, as is an extensive list of more than two dozen tequilas, available as individual brands or in flights of three.
Our servers were well versed in the intricacies of exotic herbs and meat cuts, and service was generally crisp, although the unkempt restrooms showed a lack of attention to detail that should never occur at a restaurant in this price range. And although not universally loud, the close placement of many of the tables makes private, quiet conversation somewhat problematic.
But the stated goals of big, bold food are nicely met, and many of the ingredients and flavor combinations are new adventures, at least for our Midwestern location.
Tejas Grill and Cantina
44 North Brentwood Boulevard
314-862-1414
Menu: "New Texas cuisine," a hybrid of Tex-Mex and other variants from the American Southwest.
Atmosphere: Cowboy murals, tumbleweed accents and other reinforcements of the Texas theme, but much more tasteful than kitschy.
Entree prices: Flatiron steak, $19; braised beef cheeks, $19.50; hoja santa-wrapped snapper, $18.50.
Wine list: Mainly in the $20-$50 range and divided according to food matches, with 14 by the glass.
Hours: Lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner, 5-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday; bar menu, 2-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10 p.m.-midnight Monday-Saturday.
Smoking: In the bar.
Wheelchair access: Rest rooms accessible, but tight spacing of tables makes dining room navigation difficult.
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