Since I love the major restaurateurs here in St. Louis, it has been my goal to visit all their restaurants, so Esca was high on my list. I had been planning to go for my birthday for MONTHS.
The whole first page of the menu was dedicated to beverages and I knew I wanted a cocktail. They all were so pretty and made me feel fancy. I ordered a Vesper and my friend ordered the Gibson just to name a couple. There were multiple rounds of cocktails honestly.
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Vesper |
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Gibson |
This is definitely a place where you want to study the menu in advance and have some friends to help as well. There are quite a few "Appetizers", but really, they are small plates to be shared and can easily be a meal.
There were two I wanted for sure and my friends were willing to help order a few other items.
The shrimp oreganata and the gnocchi were high on my list.
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Shrimp Oreganata |
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Gnocchi |
My friends ordered the lamb meatballs and fire baked polenta with a Ragu Bolognese on top. Both of those really stood out...
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Lamb Meatballs |
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Fire Baked Polenta |
We did order some vegetables as well...the fire roasted broccolini.
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Fire Roasted Broccolini |
There are only a handful of main dishes, if you prefer to go that route, and Patience succumbed to the special of the day: lamb shank over barley
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Lamb Shank with barley |
Regardless of my desire to try as many appetizers as possible, you really need to save room for dessert. We ordered four of them and they were amazing.
Of course I chose the chocolate truffles, but I did share.
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Chocolate Truffles |
We also shared cannoli, which were quite creamy.
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Cannoli |
They served the highly popular vanilla gelato drenched in olive oil with a touch of salt. The olive oil definitely makes it creamier, but without any chocolate in it, I was good with one bite.
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Vanilla Gelato with olive oil and sea salt |
Patience loved her lemoncello tiramisu. SO dense and lemony.
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Lemoncello Tiramisu |
And you can always drink your dessert as well. Beth's expresso martini was so pretty.
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Espresso Martini |
Just a heads up that the tables are pretty crammed together and it was very warm in the restaurant. We all had trouble reading the menu with the low light and small font. Hopefully, those are details that can be easily resolved.
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Beverage menu |
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Dinner Menu |
Resources:
Esca = https://bengelina.com/esca
Photos by Patience Scanlon
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