This week, I discovered the challenges of running out of money and decided to stay home and eat. While the following restaurant may be hard to find, I encourage your hate mail be sent there, rather than my parents’ house.
Recently, I had the pleasure of dining at **Pimlico.** Located just off of Grindstone at 3715 Pimlico Drive and boasting a variety of savory treats ranging multiple ethnicities, Pimlico is owned by a St. Louis-based couple and run by various tenants who have occupied the address over the years. Each night, the hours vary greatly depending on what the chefs decide to do to fill their grumbling tummies.
This veritable paradise of Chef’s Choice meals makes some wary to try and get a table, but encourages others to try what the chef can concoct from locally-purchased items that day. While the location is perfect for parking, it lacks much dining space. Diners are often heard complaining about a hodgepodge of furniture that crosses the line from dorm-room-chic to lonely-bachelor-sad. Due to increasingly limited seating, a result of the owners’ tendency to burn furniture after embarrassing sporting events, diners will often wait for over an hour to get a seat. If you have plenty of time on your hands and like to be at the whim of a random menu, this is absolutely the place for you. Let’s get eating, shall we?
This Thursday night, the posted hours claimed the kitchen to be open from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The chef of the evening was the former owner of Schrammiches, Oliver Schramm. Having shut down operation on his previous shop in Joplin to move to Columbia, he has taken it upon himself to redefine the meaning of broke college student cooking. It’s lucky that I came at the end of January; the freezers were stocked with meat from the last goose of the year, as well as the duck that has been filling up the deep freezer. Aside from this, there is potential of the sous chef deciding to create some masterpiece.
While most restaurants shut their grills for the last time in November to retreat inside to warmer climates, Pimlico grills year-round. Thursday’s Chef’s Choice was to be smoked goose breast alongside a wedge salad, with an appetizer of duck fillets and apple slices. The duck was marinated in apple juice, complemented by thick late season red apples. The deer meat was slowly smoked to perfection all evening and served with a drizzle of watermelon barbecue sauce made by a local barbecue smoking competition team.
“Dinner and a show” is the mantra of regulars at Pimlico. The sous chef came in only an hour before the kitchen was closed and proceeded to cook a meal that required the use of every dish he could get his hands on. Fried chicken was never more greasy, dirty or smoke filled than when it is cooked by Sous Chef Brendan Simpson. Clearly not famous for his cooking but for his incredible heart and determination, Simpson missed out on the formal dinner and decided to give a rendition of fried chicken cutlets and bacon trimmings for latecomers. The kitchen filled with smoke due to oil spilling onto the range top, causing the unlucky people at the bar to have to abandon their seats.
The overall decor of the place screams “college apartment.” Most nights, the dining area is a constant state of disrepair, causing many diners to turn up their nose. Pimlico is able to shine on behalf of two circumstances: the first is when one of the chefs has an important guest dining in, and the second, when one of the chefs finds meals they are so excited to cook that the dining room must match the delectability of the food.
If you are lucky enough to attend one of these occasions, you will see the real diamond in the rough that is Pimlico. Due to these moments being few and far between, it is not the best place for a date, but a solid option as a place to hang out during a football game. The cost is hard to beat on what they call “family nights”: $5 buys you unlimited potluck dinner.
Pimlico has many good qualities and many bad, but it will always be a favorite in my eyes.
