Colby and Megan Garrelts’ Bluestem hasn’t just evolved – it has transcended itself

To understand the evolution of the Bluestem restaurant over the past decade, you must consider the evolution of the restaurant’s owners, husband-and-wife chefs Colby and Megan Garrelts.

Colby was 28 and Megan 23 when they opened their white-tablecloth venue — the first such fine-dining spot in Westport since Metropolis’ closing two years before — in a long, narrow space just east of Westport Road’s bend into the party district. The couple was childless at the time, ambitious newlyweds.

“We found out our offer had been accepted to buy an existing restaurant, the former New World Bistro, the day after our wedding,” Colby Garrelts told me earlier this month.

Back then, Colby had already earned a reputation as a no-nonsense, sometimes temperamental young chef. “I could be a hothead then,” he said. “But I was trying to show my employees and vendors who was boss because I was the boss.”

Garrelts has mellowed a lot over 10 years. Building a successful business has helped — the couple owns Bluestem and the Rye KC restaurant — as have winning a prestigious James Beard Award last year, publishing a cookbook and, of course, becoming a parent twice over. What hasn’t changed, though, is his and his wife’s drive to make Bluestem the metro’s most sophisticated, forward-thinking dining room.

That drive was behind this year’s major renovation of the Bluestem space, a project that finally created the venue the Garreltses originally envisioned.

“It’s not one restaurant but three very different restaurants,” he said. “There’s the formal dining room; the lounge, which has its own menu and its own personality; and the dining room at brunch, which is very soothing and sunny, modestly priced, and attracts its own distinctive clientele.”

In lesser hands, these three personalities could easily fall out of sync. But the Garreltses don’t juggle Bluestem’s different moods so much as expertly stage-manage them. Walking through the dimly lighted lounge — its patrons’ private conversations buzzing discreetly in your ears — to find your place in the more spartan formal dining room, you’re struck with an intoxicating cosmopolitanism. It’s a little bit Bret Easton Ellis, a little bit Edith Wharton, and it works.

When The Pitch last reviewed Bluestem (“Egg Inflation,” May 27, 2004), the restaurant was just beginning to live up to its affectations. Ten years later, the genteel touches — the amuse-bouche, the bread service, the theatrical tea presentation — transcend modishness or mere personality. That’s what evolution yields.

The white tablecloths, once the hallmark of fine dining, went away with the recent renovation, but the prix fixe menu (three courses for $65, five for $75, 10 for $110), introduced in 2006, remains the centerpiece. Yes, you can order the 12 choices on the current dinner menu a la carte, but they will tell you that prix fixe is a far better value, and they’re right. Not incidentally, it also forces you to try new things, dishes you’re unlikely to order in other environs.

At a recent dinner, I took the three-course option, and my dining companion, at my urging, went for five. We were concerned that, at times, he would be eating while I would be sitting and awkwardly watching him eat. But the service at Bluestem is so polished and so shrewdly timed that there never seemed to be an instant during the meal when something delicious wasn’t in front of us both.

We had each received a delicate amuse-bouche, a tiny square of lusciousness that the server described as though guiding us through a Picasso exhibition. It had more ingredients in emerald-cut design than a semester of home economics. My first course (my companion’s second) was entrancing: a bowl of house-made tortellini, rich with black truffles, white wine and butter, that’s stuffed with ricotta cheese and topped with a jumble of succulent slow-braised rabbit. It was an elegant presentation of a rustic Sicilian dish — and no less rewarding than my friend’s torchon of creamy foie gras.

His third course was olive-oil-poached salmon (delicious), and while he savored it, I reveled in the bread selection, proffered from a dark wooden box. There were soft breadsticks and crispy hunks of parmesan-dusted lavosh, as well as breathtakingly beautiful Parker House rolls — yeasty, warm, golden. Any other night, I could have made a guilty little meal from those rolls, but I had an 8-ounce, herb-roasted rib-eye coming that turned out to be tender and luxurious. And, of course, I also needed to taste — and taste again — my friend’s Duroc pork loin, which arrived glammed up with glazed bacon and sweet-and-sour peaches.

[page]

On that night’s menu were four desserts, executed by pastry chef Jessica Armstrong from ideas formulated by Megan Garrelts, a celebrated pastry chef in her own right. (“Some of the desserts are definitely collaborations,” Garrelts told me.) As at other trendy restaurants, Bluestem’s menu descriptions of the desserts are simply lists of ingredients. Megan Garrelts explained: “We may use the same ingredients from one day to the next, but the preparation might be completely different.”

For example, that night I tasted a delicacy listed as “peach, butterscotch, pineapple, corn” and then, a few days later, I was given a different composition of the same quartet in the lounge. The first night, it was all about marinated peaches with fresh corn ice cream and button-sized dots of butterscotch pudding. On the second visit, the butterscotch element was a firm rectangle of gelée, which was surrounded by compressed slices of peach and pineapple, sitting in corn ice cream. I preferred the first array.

Of course, I didn’t stuff myself silly in the lounge like I did the following week. In that more boisterous space, a dozen or so substantial small plates range in price from $7 for a bowl of arancini, those crispy fried rice balls, to $24 for an impressively constructed charcuterie board. During the lounge’s happy hour, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, the prices of these dishes come down appreciably, leading to irresistible temptations.

I mean, when there’s a hanger steak to be had for $11 — and that hanger steak has been beautifully slow-cooked and then tossed on the grill so that it seems to be a far more costly cut — it’s foolish not to order it, no matter what else you’re working on. (It even comes with parmesan-garlic fries.)

And that evening, I’d already gone to work on one of those charcuterie boards, a tasty selection of sliced salty cured meats, which I found to be greatly enhanced in the company of this restaurant’s smart cheese plate. It’s not inexpensive but it’s assembled like a work of art, with both local cheeses (the soft, creamy Dirt Lover from Green Dirt Farm, for example) and Wisconsin classics such as the brawny five-year cheddar from Hook’s Cheese Co. or Carr Valley’s Casa Bolo (made with milk from cow, goat and sheep), all accessorized with delectable house-made jams and pickles and relishes.

There may be no finer bowl of shrimp and grits in the city than Bluestem’s generous bowl of fluffy Anson Mills grits and grilled shrimp, in a spicy sausage gravy. So, yeah, I had some of that, too. And some of the lounge’s 8-ounce burger (made with beef ground at the Local Pig butcher shop), which I know I would have loved had it been blanketed with a better cheese than colby-jack, a greasy mistake. “My staff insisted on that cheese,” Colby Garrelts said when I asked him about it later. He laughed. “They thought it was a funny homage to me.” Well, that’s fine, but I say respect tastes a lot more like a thick slice of Hook’s great cheddar.

The same burger from the lounge is also featured on the brunch menu, an eclectic mix of traditional breakfast items (steak and eggs, biscuits and gravy, eggs Benedict) and favorites from that bar menu. The shrimp and grits dish makes an appearance, as does that lovely hanger steak (served during the morning hours with sunny side eggs and home fries).

Even with those winners at hand, though, you’d be a loser if you didn’t order one of Megan Garrelts’ airy brioche cinnamon rolls, the best version of this Midwestern standard for many miles. But maybe not if it means passing up on a fat hunk of her moist banana bread, which begs to be dipped into a mug of coffee, or the fried corn fritters, which are golden puffs of nirvana even without Megan Garrelts’ seasonal jam.

The brunch standards still get their due at Bluestem, of course, with an eggs Benedict that’s both stylish and homey (the country ham is as salty as you want, the hollandaise a satiny perfection) and a signature breakfast platter (eggs, fries, sausage gravy, crumbly cornbread) that would make an enviable last meal.

At least until dinner, if dinner is also at Bluestem.