The bar at the new Idol Wolf in the forthcoming 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis (1528 Locust Street, 21cmuseumhotels.com/stlouis) is bright and airy with a semi-circular bar and gleaming bottles. It feels exceedingly modern and fresh and a vertical brick design under the bar extends into the dining room. Here, lower curved ceilings make for a more intimate experience.
The setup feels a little old world and a bit like an upscale wine cellar, which makes perfect sense when considering Idol Wolf aims to fill a hole in the St. Louis dining scene as a Spanish-inspired, chef-driven concept headed up by Executive Chef Matthew Daughaday formerly of Juniper, Reed’s American Table and Niche.
“There's a lot of history to Spain and St. Louis and the origins of St. Louis,” Daughaday says. “So it makes sense from a historical standpoint, in telling the kind of history of St. Louis, I think it fits in there nicely. It's some of the best food in the world.”
Idol Wolf, which will begin taking reservations for dinner on July 25, aims to provide a sharable eating experience. There is seating for 100 guests in the dining room as well as a private-events space and a billiards lounge that will have its own small bites menu. The main menu, Daughaday explains, combines larger plates that are meant to be substantial enough to serve as a meal by themselves with the smaller tapas that diners might already have experience with.
The dishes utilize both fresh local ingredients and some imported from Spain, such as soppressata, chorizo and even fire-roasted tomatoes. Seafood, more than anything else, dominates the menu, and Daughaday points to the grilled octopus — served with potato presse, chorizo spice, herbs and lemon aioli — as a particular favorite.
“I spent a lot of time on how to get octopus nice and tender,” he says. “It has this kind of smoked paprika rub on it … I made it kind of unique to us.”
The latter is served with chorizo-spiced butter and smoked aioli on an arepa. Daughaday describes how it is basted in the same spices as chorizo (though there is no sausage involved).
“It takes on flavor really well,” he says.
Idol Wolf’s food offerings are meant to be approachable, giving diners an introduction to exciting Iberian cuisine. That’s balanced with a bar and coffee program. Director of Food & Beverage Dylan Rauhoff explains that the bar menu includes drinks that feature plenty of nods to Daughaday’s food menu, Spanish drinks and classic drinks made with Spanish liquors, like a Ximenez (a Spanish wine grape) old fashioned that’s sweetened with Ximenez sherry.
“Determining how these spaces each interact, the three different experiences you have at Idol Wolf — the dining room, the lounge, billiards room — just creating from that has been a lot of fun,” Rauhoff says.
Both Rauhoff and Daughaday came on at Idol Wolf in September last year. Since then, both say they’ve been refining the concept for the restaurant, doing research, developing the space’s aesthetic and everything else that one needs to do to get a restaurant ready to open.
Idol Wolf will eventually also open for brunch and another concept, Good Press, a cafe, will open in the hotel on August 8.
“It's been great,” Rauhoff says. “It's been an exciting process.”
“I just look forward to people coming down here,” Daughaday adds. “It's a perfect place in time for downtown St. Louis.”
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