Mama’s on the Hill
2132 Edwards StreetMy weekend got extended in St. Louis so I wasn’t able to meet my family in Nashville.
It worked out alright. J took the kids and another skater and they hung out with their friends most of the weekend. I’m sure they didn’t even miss me.
Our Friday in St. Louis was a little bit of a shorter day. We were done with work by about 5:30 and started heading to a new hotel closer to Barnes Jewish Hospital.
As we pulled out of the parking garage downtown, I asked co-worker if she wanted to get dinner. Earlier in the week, she had mentioned going to The Hill and finding a place. This was our chance to do that.
If you’ve never been to The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis, it’s wild. It’s really just a neighborhood with Italian restaurants and businesses sprinkled in amongst the houses. Parking is a nightmare. It’s all street parking and when there are cars on both sides of the street, it becomes very hard for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions.
I have only been to The Hill once and I couldn’t tell you what restaurant we ate at. It was before that very awful Rascal Flatts concert I told you about in my blog post about the Enterprise Center so it was quite a while ago.
When we checked in to our hotel Tuesday, the guy checking us in gave a couple of recommendations. I just took the one that sounded somewhat familiar to me and headed there.
Mama’s on the Hill is on the corner of Edwards Street and Bischoff Avenue in St. Louis’ The Hill Neighborhood. The restaurant is surrounded by houses and just kind of tucked in to the corner. The building has a long history as a restaurant. It was first opened as Oldani’s in 1939 then became Mamma Campisi’s in 1982. It closed in 2005 but was reopened by a new family in 2006 and became known as Mama’s on the Hill. The restaurant’s real claim to fame is the invention of toasted ravioli…a food that has become synonymous with St. Louis.
The age of the building hits you right away. The entrance is in the corner of the building and up a couple of steps. It’s not really ADA friendly. On the way out, we were behind a guy with a walker. It took three people to get him down the two steps and on to the sidewalk.
We walk inside to a very full dining room. There are two rooms here on either side of the host stand.
There’s also a bar area behind the stand that was also pretty full as people we were waiting for tables. We were told it was going to be about an hour wait. I wasn’t in a hurry so I left it up to my colleague. She wanted Italian so she said let’s stick it out. She put her name in and we headed back to the car to wait. It was less than 20 minutes when her phone went off telling us the table was ready.
When we got back inside, a host led us through the bar to stairs leading down to the basement. This is a very tight, narrow staircase like you would see in an old home leading to a basement. We were told more than once “watch your head” as there are a couple of head bonk opportunities on the way down.
I was kind of shocked when we got downstairs. I was worried about going out to eat with a co-worker that this place would feel too intimate and it would be uncomfortable. That was not the case. This was a dark, packed, windowless, very, very loud dining room that made it hard to have a conversation..oh, and it lacked cell service…and there were also several head bonk opportunities down here as well from the support beams for the floor above us.
The restaurant is set up to run like a well oiled machine. Everyone has a job so you see several people at the table over the course of the meal. The first person came over with water. The next brought a basket of bread.
When that machine works, it’s probably very efficient. Unfortunately, there was a breakdown somewhere and our server walked by us several times. She took orders at two tables who were seated several minutes after us and I finally had to grab one of the bus boys and ask if he could send her over. It took pretty close to 20 minutes for us to put an order in.
Co-worker order a glass of wine and since we’re in St. Louis, I ordered a Budweiser. Also, there wasn’t a great beer list so I just kept it simple. It was brought to me in a bottle but the server then poured it in to a glass and took the bottle back with him.
There was so much on the menu, including the toasted ravioli that I wanted but I tried to keep it somewhat simple. I ended up ordering the Beef Ravioli. This dish is what they call a “generous portion” of beef filled ravioli topped with marinara sauce and Provel cheese then baked before being served. Honestly, it was the Provel that did it for me. I don’t get that stuff often so I just decided to go nuts while I was in St. Louis. The ravioli is everything you would hope for in a place that makes it all from scratch. The pasta itself was so tender but still held on to big portion of beef that was filling the inside. The marinara has the super fresh taste you can only find at places like this and of course, the Provel gave that slightly smoky flavor. I was worried I was going to have FOMO for not ordering something else but I did not. This was a delicious choice.
I did something that surprised even myself and added on a house salad to the meal. I was surprised at how good this salad was. From the looks of it, it shouldn’t have been anything really special. It was mixed greens with diced red peppers, green onions, and more of that Provel cheese tossed in a House Dressing. The combination of the cheese and that dressing was so good. It’s one of those things where I can’t believe how much I enjoyed a salad.
We had to flag our server down again to the get the check but she brought it straight back to the table. I grabbed it but my co-worker asked if she could pay for it. Again, it was being expensed so it didn’t really matter so I handed it to her.
I saw the server say something to her but couldn’t make out what it was. Turns out, she gave her two different bills. There was what the bill should have been which was a little over $70 then there was the bill we were actually paying that had a very hefty discount because of the wait at the beginning. Neither of us said anything to her about being unhappy about the wait. After all, it was a Friday night at dinner time at a very popular restaurant. So, we were both a little confused at first but the server said she realized she walked by us several times and felt bad so she essentially took my meal off (it was the cheaper of the two).
So, we ended up paying a little under $40 for the two meals but it should have been a little over $70.
Mama’s on the Hill was quite the experience. It’s definitely a big family restaurant as most of the tables were much larger than the two top we were sitting at. Sitting in the basement is also quite the experience.
We wanted the full St. Louis experience when we headed towards The Hill for dinner and I think I can say we got it with Mama’s on the Hill.
SW Michigan Dining 