F15teen
11/08/2007
The dining room at F15teen was once an automobile showroom on Locust Street.
Maybe I just wasn't paying really close attention, but I didn't think a whole lot about baseball while dining at F15teen. Had I not known that the restaurant was co-owned by Cardinals outfielder Jim Edmonds (uniform No. 15), I don't think I would have picked up on that fact once I set foot in the place.
An aside: Because of my deep-seated parental rage against the spelling of Sk8er Boi — no doubt amplified by having to hear that song at least three times an hour when it was at its peak on the charts — we will henceforth refer to the local restaurant as Fifteen and avoid the alphanumeric idiosyncrasies of its preferred logotype.
Anyway, I'll grant that I didn't spend a lot of time walking around the rather sprawling layout of Fifteen. What was once a car showroom has been meticulously renovated into a lovely, two-story dining room, capped by its original red pressed-tin ceiling, that seats only about 60. A corridor of the vintage-1890 building leads to a bar-lounge-nightclub area in the rear, and a patio, complete with outdoor fireplace, runs up the side.
Thus, my lasting impressions were less of flash and personality and more of a commendable willingness to singlehandedly transform an underdeveloped downtown block, a memorable interior design and, most important, a menu that's affordable and approachable but with more than enough unexpected tweaks and twists to elevate it above a simple celebrity steakhouse.
STLtoday - Entertainment - Dining
Jim Edmonds's new restaurant
Jim Edmonds's new restaurant
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