CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK | St. Augustine restaurant and bar scene

While Nights of Lights makes St. Augustine a hugely popular yuletide destination, that’s not why I went there toward the end of December. Rather, I took the trip to see whether the city’s culinary landscape was shining as brightly as its champions claim.

“St. Augustine could become a Charleston…we’re on our way,” chef Barry Honan of Lotus Noodle Bar confidently told Flamingo Magazine last summer.

Then, a few weeks later, I had to go back because there was so much chatter about Saint, an Italian restaurant that celebrated its grand opening on Jan. 3.

And now, all the online gabsters are abuzz about Grouper Shack, yet another new place.

In other words, St. Augustine’s food-and-beverage scene seems unlikely to slow down long enough to let anyone capture it fully. By the time you finish reading this column, it may well have gained another cocktail bar and a fancy sub shop.

Of course, tourists and new businesses go together like cacio and pepe, so the mere fact of new restaurants isn’t evidence of a status step-up. But local enthusiasm for the latest additions helps Honan’s case, since Charleston’s surge hinged largely on resident diners’ belief in the talents of its chefs. (The city also benefited from Johnson & Wales University operating a campus there for almost 20 years, which doesn’t apply to St. Augustine, and its proximity to seafood-giving waters, which does.) 

More significantly, several of the meals I had there were excellent. While I didn’t eat everywhere, these were the standouts from my visits.

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Lotus Noodle Bar, 56 Grove Ave.

Since it was Honan’s assessment that first drew my attention to goings-on in St. Augustine, Lotus was high on my hit list, despite a few red flags on its website. One of the most unfortunate trends in so-called hospitality is restaurants trying to telegraph how much they care about food by asserting how little they care about their guests.

I fully understand the revenue reasons behind policies limiting customers’ use of a reserved table to 90 minutes. Still, putting it in writing is the opposite of welcoming. Same goes for the online statement “At this time, we don’t use a phone for communicating.” 

Unfortunately, the same attitude was in evidence at the ramen-centric restaurant, which opened in 2023. Presumably because I was dining alone, my reserved seat was a corner stool at a shallow counter affixed to a wall, which made for an experience startlingly similar to eating on an airplane—or would have, if I hadn’t reseated myself a few stools down, opposite an interior window. (I didn’t see a call button.)

My server didn’t seem comfortable either. She was visibly unnerved by a nearby table’s familiarity with reasonably common terms such as sashimi and shoyu, and she couldn’t tell me what Lotus’ tagline of “modern ramen” meant. My guess is it means the kitchen doesn’t conform to the four classic categories of ramen, but at $40 a bowl, folks shouldn’t have to guess.

All that aside—and it’s a lot to set aside—everything I ate at Lotus was lovely, most especially vivid stamps of raw tuna, pulsing with just-caught energy, submerged in bracingly acidic tomato ponzu. The constellation of fish was garnished with sliced shallots, green leaves, and edible pink flowers, so the stout bowl looked like a dollhouse koi pond.

Ramen isn’t designed for elegance, but the smokiness of the robust ground duck version I tried was a fine counterpart to the sashimi’s refinement, with chewy noodles doing contrasting duties on the textural front. Overall, it was a dish that brimmed with exuberance—which Lotus could use more of.

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Forgotten Tonic, 6 Aviles St.

I hesitated to include this historic arts district cocktail bar on the list because I only stopped by Forgotten Tonic for one drink; considering it offers a food menu that ranges from bruschetta to bibimbap, it feels somewhat unfair to write up the venue without having a meal.

But I suspect the team there wouldn’t mind me saying Forgotten Tonic is among the places I’m most eager to revisit, and the 3-year-old bar would spring to mind if someone asked me where to imbibe when in St. Augustine. It’s always impressive when bartenders can make seven disparate ingredients get along like old friends, but conviviality is apparently the theme here: The wi-fi password is putyourphonedownandtalktoyourneighbor.

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La Nouvelle, 102 Bridge St.

My sole disappointment at La Nouvelle was that I’d just had a birthday, since Viva Hospitality’s newest restaurant seems like the ideal place to celebrate one. Opened in February 2024 under the kitchen leadership of Matthieu Landillon, La Nouvelle has the air of high standards, from its unerringly correct baguettes to its hawk-eyed servers: Picture the sort of place where a fresh fork appears before you realize yours has fallen to the floor.

And while you’re conjuring a mental image, know that La Nouvelle is located in a stately 19th century home, so its agreeably quiet dining room is a mix of dark wood, Victorian-inspired wallpaper, and warm lighting. It’s a bistro, so the marble-topped tables are bare, and the menu includes a cheeseburger and moules frites.

Yet it’s a cheeseburger worthy of La Nouvelle’s compelling wine list, topped with gruyere and caramelized onions. Junctions of everyday and exceptional are La Nouvelle’s strength: I’m still thinking about the merguez sausage—rustic cigarillos of full-flavored lamb—accompanied by admirably stretchy pommes aligot. All it was missing was a follow-up slice of birthday cake.

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O’Steen’s Restaurant, 205 Anastasia Blvd.

What can be said about O’Steen’s that hasn’t been said since it opened in 1965? Just this: It’s still great. If you haven’t gone in ages or wrote it off because tourists line up for fish and Minorcan clam chowder, it’s time to revisit the legendary fried shrimp. 

For true culinary destination status, a city can’t just wish a bunch of new restaurants into existence. It has to love on its institutions—all the more so when they serve squash casserole and sweet local shrimp in vaporous puffy coats of ivory-hued batter.