Fleur STL Elevates Classic St. Louis Diner Fare

Tim Eagan stands just to the side of the grill in his open kitchen, bent nearly in half over the entree he's assembling, hands steady and eyes laser-focused on the plate as if he's performing complicated, life-saving surgery. One hand holds a stainless steel ring mold, which the other fills with layers of different ingredients, one by one, taking care that each layer is perfectly formed. Once its contents reach the top, he carefully removes the mold, revealing a perfect, multi-colored and varying-textured stack of ingredients, which he pats with his hands to make sure everything is in place. After inspecting every inch of the dish, he gently ladles a rust-colored finishing sauce over the stack so that it cascades beautifully over the top and pools around the bottom of the dish, then finishes it with a golden-battered onion hay garnish that is piled so high it defies gravity. It's the sort of care — even fussiness — reminiscent of Carmy's flashbacks to his fine-dining days in The Bear.

And this concoction Eagan so painstakingly prepares? It's a slinger.

In many ways, Eagan's representation of the St. Louis diner classic is quintessential. Its base is two hamburger patties seared on a grill and topped with potatoes and an egg, then smothered with cheese and chili that tastes shockingly like Steak 'n Shake's. In other ways, it's the antithesis of the form typically slopped together by an overworked late-night cook barely hanging on as he stares at a printer filled with 30 tickets placed by 3 a.m. drunkards. That Eagan can be both of these things shows not only his versatility as a chef; it shows why his restaurant, Fleur STL (622 Chouteau Avenue), is one of the most exciting places to open in St. Louis in the past year.

Like Eagan, Fleur STL is both the embodiment of and the counter to the classic St. Louis greasy spoon — an homage to, yet a reimagining of, its predecessor, the iconic Eat-Rite diner, which operated on the corner of Chouteau Avenue and North Seventh street for 85 years. Eagen knew he wanted to honor its legacy in some form when he took over the building in 2021, but there was no way to simply dust off the floors and open up, business as usual. Though only shuttered for a year prior to him taking over the space, the building was in a state of utter disrepair — he tells horror stories of the sort of remediation he had to do to the place, including a foot-high pile of fossilized cat litter that had been placed under the kitchen equipment to soak up the decades of grease.

A renovation of this magnitude called for a rethinking of what the diner could be. Fortunately, Eagen had already teased out ideas for such a place. A veteran chef who got his start running hot dog carts in Home Depot when he was 16 years old, Eagan had been eyeing a tiny old building in deep south city around the time the pandemic hit with the thought of converting it into a cocktails-and-charcuterie spot. He'd even chosen the name, Fleur STL, and was sketching out details for the place when a friend posted a photo of the old Eat-Rite diner, which had recently been boarded up. Immediately, the wheels in his head started turning, and before he knew it, he'd changed his plans from a south city cocktail bar to a downtown diner.

As he was renovating the space — an undertaking which lasted roughly two full years — Eagan worked out in his head what an elevated diner would look like. Drawing from his extensive experience in upscale dining — Benton Park West Grill (which he owned), the Ballpark Hilton, the Sheraton Westport — he realized that he could do justice to classic greasy spoon fare by giving it a fine-dining chef's treatment. Like his slinger, dishes such as biscuits and gravy embody this approach. Here, flaky, layered biscuits, cut into a square shape, are almost like shortbread, their cloud-like interior a beautiful contrast to their buttery, crisp exterior. Homemade sausage gravy — so often glue-like when done on the cheap — is luscious but delicate, balanced with the sage flavor of breakfast sausage chunks and a generous sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper. It's deeply satisfying without that punch-to-the-stomach feeling of overindulgence.

His eggs Benedict are even more outstanding. The dish, which changes regularly, featured succulent, fork-tender short ribs stacked atop a golden-griddled, open-face English muffin. Jalapeño-lime hollandaise, the texture of silk, gilded the poached egg that crowned the short rib. This egg, a masterclass of the form, was cooked just to the point that it was firmed up enough to hold its shape, but still glistening and jiggly as if it was ready to burst — and it was, its luscious yolk mingling with the hollandaise and forming a sauce for the meat. I dare one to find a better Benedict in town.

Fries are perfection — crisp and larger than a shoestring but smaller than a medium-cut version. A generous sprinkle of salt and black pepper coats the fries, but what makes them so outstanding is that they are served so searing hot you can practically still hear the oil crackling on them when they are placed before you. As an alternative, you can order a side of Brussels sprouts, which are perfectly fried — crispy brown but not crossing the line to charred — and coated in a sweet-and-sour bacon shallot reduction.

No matter which you choose, you will likely not register what you are eating on the side of the double cheeseburger, which may take the crown for the best cheeseburger in the Bi-State area. Eagan starts with a blend of prime ground beef that is so well-marbled, it glistens with fat. The patties are thicker than a smashburger but not all that much so; that added heft allows him to griddle it so that the very inside stays pink and juicy. Molten American cheese is placed both in the middle of the patties and on the top one, giving it extra goo that melds with a generous dollop of mayonnaise and the rendered fat to create a savory nectar that seeps out when the burger is cut into. A perfect, pillow-soft buttery bun holds the contents together. There is no ketchup, mustard or lettuce-tomato-onion garnish, nor should there be. This masterpiece is perfect the way it is.

That Eagan can capture the essence of a classic diner double, yet somehow make it all the more extraordinary is absolutely mind-blowing. Clearly he knows how to do things rite — and then some.

Fleur STL is open Wed.-Sun. 8 a.m.-3 p.m. (Closed Monday and Tuesday.)

Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News |  Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed