06/19/2003

It's finally safe to go back in the water.

Thirty-three years after it opened, 10 years after the flood that shut it down, four years after the city of St. Louis approved tax increment financing to resurrect it, and about a year and a half after a disastrous three-month occupancy by a tourist-focused small chain restaurant called Mesquite Charlie's, the Robert E. Lee riverboat sails (or at least floats, because it's actually a permanently anchored barge) again as a full-service, fine-dining restaurant.

Depending on whether you trust the phone book, the restaurant's menu or its Web site, the new place is variously known as the Robert E. Lee, the Lt. Robert E. Lee or Yackey's Lt. Robert E. Lee, the final name referring to Rick Yackey, longtime former owner of Norton's restaurant in Soulard and developer of several other Soulard properties. Yackey raised a few eyebrows earlier this year when he announced that he was reopening the boat only for catered affairs, a move that called into question whether private parties alone could generate enough cash to make the facility profitable, let alone pay off the $600,000 TIF.

At the time, Yackey said he was still looking for an operator to run a restaurant in tandem with the catering facilities, but when he didn't find one after several months, he took matters into his own hands. And in the grand scheme of things, this appears to be an excellent outcome. Yackey plays the atmosphere for all it's worth, capitalizing on the inherent charm of the location but not relying on it as the restaurant's sole selling point.

Mississippi River tie-ins are everywhere: several catfish dishes, numerous Cajun specialties and even the thoughtful inclusion of Steele Catfish Zinfandel and O'Fallon Steamboat Ale on the beverage lists. Entree prices are generally in the under-$15 range (with the exception of some of the steak dishes, which run $18.50-$22.50). Although we wouldn't classify the food as "gourmet," everything we tried was well worth the price, and the service was at once informal and very welcoming, a fitting approach for a restaurant that sits at St. Louis' front door.

Anyone who's come into the area from Illinois via the Poplar Street Bridge since 1970 has probably glimpsed the Robert E. Lee, the replica sternwheeler riverboat moored at the base of the south leg of the Arch. Its blue exterior is four decks high, topped off by two slender black smokestacks. The interior is similarly designed to evoke the antebellum era when the then-Lt. Robert E. Lee was an engineer in the United States Army, stationed here to help prevent the displacement of the river channel away from St. Louis.

The main dining room is on the second level, with rounded booths lining the large windows that overlook the Arch on one side and the river and its frequent maritime traffic on two more. Even the free-standing tables at the center of the room provide decent views, and the globed chandeliers that hang from the ceiling swing gently whenever an especially large barge tosses off a wake as it passes by.

Of the 11 listed appetizers, the "Steamboat shrimp" is specifically called out at the top, so we used it as our initial departure point in exploring the new Robert E. Lee menu. It's quite similar to New Orleans-style "barbecued" shrimp, although in this case the large, shell-on shrimp are first steamed with Cajun seasoning and then placed into a pool of melted butter, whereas the classic New Orleans barbecue preparation, the origins of whose name is somewhat mysterious, involves sauteeing the shrimp in the butter right from the start. (And, in fact, one of the entrees at the Robert E. Lee, which we didn't get around to trying, takes this very approach.) In any event, the Steamboat shrimp were a little messy but very enjoyable, featuring sizable shrimp in a quantity of more than two dozen for the $15.95 large order.

Other successful appetizers included Cajun shark bites, 10 roughly one-inch cubes of flaky but firm shark meat seared in Cajun spices, served over rice with scallions and celery; the "Steamboat portobello," a cap of the giant mushroom covered with a mixture of bread crumbs, shrimp and crawfish tails; and a smoked trout fillet, half of a fish served with triangular crisps, on which, according to preference, the fish could be accompanied by egg, cream cheese, tomato, capers and bits of red onion.

As with the Steamboat shrimp, "Yackey's Etouffee" - available in crawfish, shrimp and chicken-and-sausage versions - was called out above all other entries on that page of the menu, and the shrimp etouffee was appropriately spicy, with a rich, smoky flavor also imparted to the 15 medium shrimp from the medium-thick, roux-based sauce.

Pecan-encrusted catfish was a good choice for more of a walk on the mild side, a corn-meal-battered, fairly large fillet with firm, snow-white flesh. It was hard to discern how much actual pecan was ground into the batter, but there was a delicate nutty flavor resulting from the addition of Frangelico liqueur into the cream sauce.

Among the beef entrees, the Robert E. Lee is presenting the currently trendy hanger steak - a formerly obscure cut popular in French bistro cooking - as its low-end steak, and it may or may not be the authentic cut, but it does have the requisite texture somewhere between flank steak and London broil, served sliced in the same manner as those cuts, with a Worcestershire-influenced brown sauce. At the high end, the stuffed 8-ounce filet came with about a dozen peeled crawfish tails spilling from its center, something called a "Cajun bearnaise" sauce lightly dressing both. The firm, sweet tails were fine and the meat was good if not great, but the combination was too contrived for my taste, with the added spiciness not proving a good enhancement to the normal flavors of bearnaise sauce.

Ten whites and 11 reds are included on the wine list, ranging from $18-$58 (the high end being a 1999 Rombauer Cabernet) by the bottle and a subset at $5.25-$8.75 by the glass. And although the service was by and large excellent, one of our two servers was undereducated as to the content and preparation of several of the dishes.

And then there's the perennial "we just don't get it" issue with so many restaurants in and around downtown St. Louis (and, in fact, with downtown as a whole) - parking. All cars are gigged $3 to park on the levee. In a follow-up phone call, a manager at the restaurant said that $3 would be deducted from the check when the parking receipt was presented. However, neither the parking attendant nor either of our waiters told us this, and the person staffing the host's station on one of our visits had no knowledge of this policy. And given that virtually everyone parking on that segment of the levee, at least at night, is going to the boat and that virtually everyone on the boat would have had to park on the levee, the shell game with showing the ticket seems pretty ridiculous.

The good news, though, is that the boat is back, and it stands up pretty well even before you factor in the benefit from dining right on the banks of St. Louis' riverfront heritage.


Yackey's Lt. Robert E. Lee
100 South Leonor K. Sullivan Boulevard
314-436-4050

Menu: A Cajun emphasis, but also a variety of catfish and other river-themed items, plus five steaks, two chicken dishes, two pork dishes and short list of pastas.

Entree prices: Shrimp etouffee, $13.95; pecan-encrusted catfish, $14.50, hanger steak, $14.50.

Atmosphere: Slightly garish but not overbearing re-creation of a 19th-century riverboat.

Wine list: Short and moderate, with bottles in the $18-$58 range.

Smoking: In the "saloon" on the first deck. (Food is also served on this deck.)

Hours: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Friday-Saturday.

Wheelchair access: Diners in wheelchairs are seated in the saloon, on the first deck.