Neighborhood restaurant is a term that gets bandied about quite a bit.
I mean, all restaurants are in someone’s neighborhood, right? But when I think of a neighborhood eatery, I want it to be a place I can see returning to frequently, and just as important, a place I can afford to eat at a few times a month. A place where neighbors can meet for drinks or a nosh, casually.
Estelle, the new Southern European-inspired spot on St. Clair Avenue in St. Paul, is the neighborhood restaurant of my dreams.
Interesting, well-executed dishes, but also a killer burger. Great cocktails that won’t break the bank. A wine list full of funky, affordable options and a comfortable vibe. Friendly, spot-on service.
Estelle is all of these things and more.
Chef Jason Hansen, 33, has a long and varied resume that begins with working at Pazzaluna in downtown St. Paul for three years after finishing culinary school, and includes stints at 112 Eatery, Tilia, St. Genevieve and Stewart’s, but also a several-months-long trip backpacking through Europe, which inspired the menu at Estelle.
His business partner Peter Sebastian, a front-of-the-house guy who managed Public Kitchen + Bar and Gray Duck Tavern, went to Eagan High School, as did Hansen, but the two didn’t really know each other until mutual friends, who knew they were both looking to open their own spot, put them in touch.
They are making use of the restaurant’s somewhat awkward space, in which the long, narrow bar is completely separate from the dining room, by offering some really fun Spanish bar snacks called pintxos, only in the bar. They are generally just a few bites, often served on or with toothpicks for noshing.
The light, fluffy chicken liver mousse was the best we tried, and at $3, it was the perfect price for a divine bite. The briny, tart pickled mussels were also worth the higher ($10) price tag, and were the right amount for sharing among four of us.
In the dining room, there are enough small plates to make a fun sharing meal, but also sandwiches, pastas and a few meaty entrees. None of the portions are huge, but none of the dishes cost more than $17, which is honestly crazy considering the skill level required to produce some of them.
We happily sampled our way through the small plates section, which includes traditional items like patatas bravas, deeply spiced potatoes drizzled with an irresistible lemon aioli; crisp-outside, creamy-inside arancini (rice croquettes); baked oysters topped with spicy chorizo and crisp bread crumbs; and a fantastic tortilla Espanola, a layered potato and egg dish, with golden, crisped edges and a mild pepper sauce.
It also features a sardine toast that Hansen was nervous to put on the menu.
“I wasn’t sure how people would react to it,” Hansen said. “But we’re selling a lot of them.”
It’s not an easy item to pull off, either. The kitchen breaks down the sardines and poaches them in an olive oil bath to cure them, then layers them on crisp bread along with delicate pickled fennel, shallot, crisp-briny fried capers and a spot of that luscious lemon aioli. The result is something that far exceeds expectations and could easily convert even the most ardent sardine hater.
For a relatively short menu, Hansen has included four sandwiches, which is by design.
“We wanted to have a sandwich section in the middle of the menu to make it more approachable for everyone, to not make it stuffy,” Hansen said. “We wanted it to be casual enough that the Macalester kids could come down and get a cheeseburger and a Coke.”
And so it is that Hansen, who is also the brains behind one of our other favorite cheeseburgers, the double smash burger at Stewart’s, ended up making one of our favorite burgers of last year.
This beauty is also a double smash, with lovely little crisp edges due to that technique, but to give it a little bit of Spanish flare, Hansen adds piperade, a mix of peppers, onion, tomato and pimenton spice, and also romesco, the roasted red pepper-almond sauce that is everywhere in Spanish cuisine. Because it is a burger, after all, the cheese is melty white American, and there’s also a swipe of Duke’s mayo, spiked with a little lemon.
Perhaps our favorite items on the Estelle menu, though, are the thoughtful, creative pastas.
The Fideua, short little vermicelli noodles, toasted until nutty and cooked in a flavorful broth, are combined with clams cooked with sofrito and smoked ham hocks and some bright pink, briny shrimp. The dish is finished with tarragon and a spot of butter for richness.
Hansen is especially proud of the creste de gallo, little macaroni-type noodles that have an outer edge sort of like a rooster crest, which are made in house like the rest of the pastas. They are tossed with a fresh, bright jalapeno pesto (seeded peppers, garlic, smoked almonds, spinach and olive oil) that Hansen made for chef Steven Brown when he worked at Tilia early in his career. Brown loved the pasta dish so much that he brought it up to the dining room and had people try it.
The moment clearly made an impression on the young chef, who decided to put a version of it on the first menu of his own.
The two meat-based entrees on the menu each deserve a mention. The piri piri chicken is Hansen’s version of a Portuguese specialty.
The chef said he was so obsessed with perfecting the dish that the summer before the restaurant’s opening, he bought a little Japanese grill and repeatedly, obsessively tweaked the recipe for the chicken and the (outrageously tasty, as in they should sell the stuff) hot sauce.
“My parents were like, ‘Stop making the chicken, we’re all so sick of the chicken. We hate it!’” Hansen said.
We, decidedly, do not hate it. In fact, we can’t wait to order the crisp-skinned, just-spicy-enough-to-be-addictive chicken, served on a cooling bed of fluffy rice studded with little bits of mouth-watering pickled vegetables, again.
The other non-pasta-based large plate, is pork belly, which is a bold risk because kitchens so often under- or over-cook the thick slabs of fatty meat, which results in either jerky-like unpleasantness or mouth-coating sadness.
Happily, the cooks at Estelle render the pork perfectly, resulting in a tender, smoky treat, paired with creamy little white coco beans and peppery arugula, smoked almond slices and preserved lemon to cut through the richness.
We’re not really dessert people, but the sweet little pasteis de nata, or egg tarts, with their creamy, barely sweet custard, here are absolutely worth the $3 apiece. They’re tiny, so order one for everyone at the table.
Really, the only downside we can find at Estelle is that it’s often tough to get a table.
Hansen said the response from neighbors, some of whom have been to the restaurant a handful of times or more in the three months it has been open, has been nothing but positive.
“It’s way busier than we thought it would be,” Hansen said. “We’re lucky we have a really awesome, talented staff. Everybody’s just doing an amazing job.”
They do take reservations, so if you are as hungry reading this as I am writing it, you should really book one right now.
Estelle
- Where: 1806 St Clair Ave., St. Paul
- Info: 651-330-9648; estellestp.com
- Prices: Bar-only pintxos, $3-$10; small plates, $7-$12; sandwiches, $13-$14; large plates, $14-$17
- Good to know: Parking is on-street only and can be tight.
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