Tripel for Sauce Magazine

Last month I got a fun assignment for Sauce Magazine: photographing Tripel in Lafayette Square for the November issue. The photos were for the the Nightlife section, which is a column that I cover regularly. Each month the column includes a main opening photograph of the crowded nightspot and a couple of food shots for the side bar. Despite the fact that the brief is usually pretty simple, this column is a little tricky to shoot each month. For one thing, most bars and restaurants don’t want you to come in during peak hours to photograph the food portion of the assignment. Unfortunately it’s hard to get a good crowd shot of a bar in the middle of the afternoon. As a result I usually end up going back at least once more after dark to get the “nightlife” shot, sometimes multiple times because inevitably the bar has a slow night, or empties out exactly when I arrive with my camera. Gar.

This month, we decided to change things up a bit for Tripel. Tripel is a newly opened brasserie with a Belgium theme located in the picturesque Lafayette Square area of St. Louis, about a ten minute drive from my studio. For the November issue, the art director Meera Nagarajan, asked me to get a great shot of the bar manager Terry Oliver making a cocktail for the main shot. Terry was fantastic to work with, and was really cooperative as he poured the cocktail several times until we got it right.

The other thing I should mention are the Mussels Normandy which I photographed for the sidebar. As I wrote about recently, I generally don’t eat what I photograph, particularly when I’m on location at a restaurant. This isn’t always easy, particularly when I’m photographing something that is A) something I really love and B) if that something is steaming hot and you’re standing over it with your camera while the smell floats right up to your nose. This was the case with the Normandy Mussels at Tripel. They came out hot from the kitchen, and I was shooting on the floor of the restaurant (which had a much more interesting surface than the table tops). The result was that I was standing right over the steaming pot and the smell was enchanting. I didn’t eat the mussels then, but Dr. Wife and I are definitely going to be going back to eat them at our first opportunity.

TRIPEL
1801 Park Avenue
St. Louis
314.678.7787
tripelstl.com

Read the review at Sauce Magazine.com