Intrigue is built in at La Roux Bistro

In December 2017, Springfield Business Journal reported that restaurateurs Tom and Lori Muetzel were abandoning plans to open Ophelia’s, a restaurant and bar planned for a historic property at 300 E. Commercial St.

“Unexpected complications have made themselves so evident that we feel compelled to err on the side of caution and listen to what past experience has taught us,” Muetzel said at the time.

And what complications they were.

As SBJ reported, while attempting to increase basement height by lowering the floor, contractors found a large, vaulted room that was completely full of water.

Seven and a half years later, on July 21, another concept opened for business at the site. La Roux Bistro is the latest international C-Street offering by restaurateur Joe Gidman, who owns the business with partners Rodrigo Cabrejos and Joe Hosmer.

Gidman brings hospitality expertise to the table, with two existing C-Street restaurants, Cafe Cusco, also co-owned by Cabrejos and serving Peruvian cuisine, and Van Gogh’s Eeterie, featuring food from the Netherlands. He also owns Chabom Teas and Spices, a specialty tea and gift shop inspired by Portuguese culture, with a name that translates to “good tea.”

But La Roux Bistro, located at 300 E. Commercial St., offers something completely different to the street and to the Queen City. Gidman describes the restaurant’s fare as a fusion of French cooking and New Orleans/Creole cuisine, with a touch of the Ozarks (or, as the French originally named it, Aux Arcs) for good measure.

The restaurant has three levels: an airy street-level bar, a surprisingly light-filled space a few steps below the surface and a cellar level – with stone walls and recessed lighting – underneath it all. Gidman refers to this room as the vault.

Mystery space
Rob Foster of Marshfield, owner of Arch Contracting LLC, was the guy who discovered the chamber that would become La Roux’s dining vault.

That discovery was memorable, Foster said.

“There’s really nothing that compares to that one,” he said. “We talk about it quite a bit. Even during the process, we thought … are we really doing this?”

The building is about 150 years old, and it replaced a structure that had been on the site and burned down.

“We dug through the burn layer and found all kinds of artifacts,” he said.

The original building, located at the intersection of Robberson Avenue and Commercial, was constructed by Dr. Robberson, Foster said. Robberson was a physician, a pharmacist and an undertaker.

“He probably had a lot of things he wanted to keep cool,” Foster said.

The space could have had any number of uses, and Foster said any guess of his would be purely supposition. What he knows for sure is that one of the former owners filled in the shafts leading to it and then covered the space with two to three inches of concrete.

There had been a Singer sewing machine business on the site at one time, Foster said, and his workers unearthed two ornate bottles of Singer sewing machine oil during the project.

Foster said he heard from someone who knew the grandson of the business owner that the space had been used for inventory but flooded once too often.

“He decided he was through with it and filled it in,” Foster said.

Foster’s team made the discovery while trying to pull back concrete from the south end of the building. Using a large coal chute, they got some small-scale equipment inside – a breaker, an excavator and a small earth mover. Foster was working on an excavator when he pulled up a thick piece of concrete. He looked down and saw what he took to be a stone in a square shaft.

“I thought, oh, boy, we found a well. That’s always a burden when you find something like that in a building,” he said.

At the same time, a breaker operator working ahead of him in the building came to him to suggest they get another breaker because he was hitting a lot of rock.

Foster paused to assess, and on a hunch he called some plumbers at work on the project. They dropped a sewer camera into the space.

“The saw an underground world with all kinds of stuff, totally open and dark,” Foster said. “I thought, man, am I glad we didn’t get more breakers and fall into that.”

Foster said his company excavated the space, removing rock, pouring concrete and adding a new wall. The scariest part was keeping the building intact while working so close to the footings, he said.

“We incorporated engineers into the project to give us advice and prescribe how we would do it, just to be safe,” he said.

That mystery space has become a focal point for the new restaurant, according to Gidman.

There was a spring running through the room, Gidman said, and it has since been directed into a well that pumps the water out across the street.

Like Foster, Gidman said the original intent of the cavern with a curvilinear stone roof is unclear. Was it a wine cellar, a springhouse, a root cellar – a morgue?

“Nobody knows,” said Gidman.

A mix
The intrigue of the basement room adds a touch of fascination to the dining experience, and that’s a reaction the owners have tried to evince throughout, from a Chappell Roan-inspired mural by Christine Riutzel on its top floor through its menu offerings.

The menu will change, Gidman said, but he promises fresh local ingredients and a mix of offerings. “Roux” (pronounced ROO) is a French word that describes the mix of fat and flour that forms the basis of most sauces, and for cooks, it’s synonymous with “mixture.”

The concept of mixture applies also to the restaurant’s clientele, Gidman said.

“Even on our dinner entrees, the portions are a good size. They’re going to be pricey, but they’re a good size,” he said.

But, Gidman said, the restaurant also offers affordable appetizers, salads and sandwiches.

“One of the things that we’ve been thinking about, evaluating the menu, is we want the high-end, fancy, date-night feel, but if it’s too high end and you don’t have those other options, you may only come here once or twice a year – and if you only come once or twice a year, we don’t stay current in your mind, and you don’t become regulars,” he said.

So, customers can choose a $50 steak or $30 chicken dish and be dressed to the nines. But if they want a $15 muffaletta and a beer, they can do that, too.

“That also goes with the name, La Roux – it is a mix, you know?” he said. “Come into this atmosphere and you don’t have to break the bank, or you can live like there’s no tomorrow.”

Chef driven
Gidman said he wanted to keep the restaurant’s chefs, Steven Snyder and Peter Tinson, front and center.

“We’ll never have kitchen managers that aren’t actual chefs. We do want to keep the legacy of this restaurant more chef-driven,” he said.

La Roux also distinguishes itself by a team approach to staffing.

“Outside of our management, all of our employees are paid the same wage here, and none of them are actually paid a tipped wage,” Gidman said. “We are doing a full tip share across the restaurant. Instead of paying half the minimum wage, we’re paying the full wage to everybody. We’re really trying to build a staff here that is focused on the hospitality industry and want to learn to work as a team as opposed to being out for themselves.”

It’s part of Gidman’s goal for his staff to provide a unique and memorable dining experience for customers.

“I want to have the very best of the very best in this city in this restaurant,” Gidman said. “Instead of being worried about yourself, you come into work and you’re focused on the team, you’re focused on the product, you’re focused on the brand. You’re learning to make decisions as a group. You’re caring about that table over there as much as the table that you’re taking the order of.”

That sense is reinforced by the flow within the building, with an open kitchen and guests and staff interacting.

“You’re so connected to all of it,” he said. “We tell people, wander around. You do not have to stay at your table. Go explore. If you eat up in the bar and you want dessert down in the vault, do it.”

Gidman declined to disclose startup costs, but he noted the renovations to the historic C-Street building cost upwards of $3 million.