1904 Beerhouse? FAIL. Huuuuge fail.

I go out to eat a lot. A LOT. Way too often, probably. But believe it or not, I don’t really experience many food failures. Usually I can come up with some sort of redeeming quality for a place. I try really hard. I’m a huge optimist — what can I say?

However, my visit to 1904 Beerhouse (located inside the River City Casino in South County, St. Louis) can only be described in one way: An epic FAIL. Oh, it was so bad. So, so bad.

Now this part right here is where you imagine the front of the establishment. Silly me deleted the photo off of my camera. Drats.

The decor was really nice. That part was really well thought out. There were really cool sculptures, photos, and other knickknacks all over the restaurant. And it had really cool chandeliers hanging from the ceilings.

Our waitress was very friendly as well. She answered most of our questions concerning the menu with no problem, and she was very pleasant.

Now onto the food. Oh, the food.

Since they were out of the Kobe Beef Corn Dog appetizer, we started out with the Crispy Dungeness Crab Fritters. It was like a beer battered crab cake. It was pretty tasty, and the chipotle tartar sauce that came with it was pretty tasty.

crab fritters with tartar sauce

The side of cole slaw, however, was DISGUSTING. It was vinegar based, which I usually like, but something tasted way off about it. It was really sour.

For the main entree, I settled with the Big and Cheesy Chicken Sandwich. The menu described it as ‘crispy thigh chicken, sweet and spicy onions, extra sharp cheddar cheese, St. Louis style BBQ sauce on an onion roll’. Pretty tasty, right? Well, it sounded appetizing to me.

doesn't look very appetizing, though...

Well, it came out, and it was TERRIBLE. First of all, there were way too many slimy onions on the sandwich. I removed those immediately. What was left was a rectangular block of fried chicken on a bun. Hmm. ‘Where’s my cheese?’, I wondered. I bit into the sandwich, and quickly figured out that the cheese was STUFFED into the chicken. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve bitten into in quite some time. The cheese just oozed out. And there was way too much of it. Oh, and is ‘St. Louis style BBQ sauce’ really ketchup? Because that’s what it tasted like. Ugh.

fried hunk of chicken, minus the gooey onions

I could only suffer through two bites of the sandwich before I decided I had had enough. The fries were laughable. They looked like McDonald’s fries, and tasted like they had been sitting out for a while. Not hot, not crispy, just blah.

My mom ordered the pizza, and it was not bad. It tasted like the kind you can get frozen from the grocery store, but whatever. She seemed to like it okay. And it definitely looked appetizing to me!

yummy pizza!

My sister ordered the basket of fried chicken, which might have been palatable had it not come with three pieces of thigh meat. Maybe something like that should have been mentioned in the menu. Personally, I like a variety of pieces.

The chicken came with a potato cake of sorts, as well as watermelon salsa. Fried chicken with watermelon? Oh…I see what you did there…*raised eyebrow* The watermelon salsa was pretty bad, by the way. Imagine sweet watermelon bits with crunchy onions, all drenched in a sour vinegar sauce.

watermelon salsa

My sister ended up sending the chicken back,  and instead went with the ribs (not pictured — sorry!), which were decent but forgettable.

Overall scores?

Food: 1 star (out of five)

Ambiance: 5 stars

Service: 4 stars

Value: 4 stars

Okay, I did think of ONE good thing about the Beerhouse: this bad experience has made me really appreciate when restaurants get it RIGHT. Never again. Sorry!