Oak Barrel Bistro & Artisan Bakery

Kirsten and I were excited to eat at Oak Barrel Bistro & Artisan Bakery, which recently began offering dinner service, because the restaurant sources proteins and produce locally as much as possible. I'm a little surprised at how difficult it is to find places in St. Charles County, home to 360,000 people, that use locally sourced products in their meals. Let me tell you, Oak Barrel is a jewel that I hope our county appreciates.

Learn more about Oak Barrel at their Facebook page. They're working on a website, too, at this address: www.oakbarrelbistro.com.

On this first visit, we tried the Ozark Mushroom Agnolloti (a ravioli) in a shitake-thyme cream sauce as an appetizer, a Caesar salad, the butternut squash soup, and the Sea Scallops and Shrimp Pasta entrees.

I'll just sum up this place in three words: Every. Bite. Counts. Everything we ate burst with flavor. Every item had the perfect texture. Everything on each dish paired well together.

When I really love something, I close my eyes while chewing. I found myself doing this with the mushroom ravioli appetizer. We asked for bread service immediately after tasting this dish, because we had to make sure we sopped up every bit of that amazingly yummy cream sauce.

Oak Barrel makes their food from scratch. The croutons are house-made. The pasta is house-made. The bread is baked on site. Kirsten ordered the pasta because she wanted to try Oak Barrel's fettucine -- its texture was perfectly al dente. The shrimp were cooked to perfection. So were the zucchini, yellow squash, grape tomatoes, crisp quanciale bacon and smooth smoke sherry cream sauce. You know, these were all superb ingredients, but the dish was elevated by the considerable skill of the chef. The squash was fully cooked, yet firm and flavorful. Oak Barrel buys the rare quanciale bacon -- a fatty version of bacon taken from the pig's jowls -- from St. Louis's own Salume Beddu (which we plan to make a subject of a future post). The bacon really adds a nice pork undertone to this seafood dish.

I really liked the shrimp dish, too, but I wouldn't have traded my scallops dish, which we both wanted. Sorry -- I called it first! :) The scallops literally melt in your mouth. The roasted fennel puree was a thing of brilliance, and something I don't think I can really do justice with written word. The scallops paired perfectly with the sherry beurre blanc sauce and guanciale bacon, which was a little more subtle in this meal than the shrimp fettucine.

Hurry up and head to Oak Barrel if you're interested in trying these dishes. The menu is seasonal, and in a few weeks we're told that the menu will change to lighter fare with spring produce, without so many rich sauces. They gave us a "Pay It Forward" certificate worth 10% off (basically a coupon). We were told we could give it to a friend or use it ourselves. The expiration date is April 12, and, sorry, I'm pretty sure we'll be back by then. :) I mean, we didn't even try any sweets from the bakery this time.