I had heard such good things about Area 14 over the summer, I wandered in there on Saturday night. At first I didn't know if I had the right place, it was a long, dark  hallway, I guess it's for dramatic effect but it's a but confusing, granted I confused easily..... The main room is a nice set up but it was smaller than I expected. They have a couple of flat screen tv on the wall, one was powered off and had random cables hanging down. The bathroom was a complete nightmare, the lock was busted on the door, there was a whole in the wall, the toilet was constantly running, wouldn't flush and on top of that was full of used toilet paper. The bartender made good drinks if you could find her, she kept wandering off even though there was not many people in the bar in the first place. To cap off the vibe, the DJ just turned on a play list and sat in the couch with his girlfriend.
Area 14 has a lot of potential but looks like it's fallen on hard times, $7 drinks, bad service and a bathroom that is worse than a Johnny on a Spot during Mardi Gras, I think I won't be venturing back anytime soon
Upon entering the "scary" dark-lit hallway to get to this restaurant, my two friends and I had to find someone to ask if we could sit, as no one was ready to greet us. Â He pointed us to a table and we sat. Â We conversed for at least 10 minutes without anyone coming to our table to offer menus or a drink. Â Finally one of my friends got up and brought us back menus. Â There continued to be a complete lack of attention from the servers to our table. Â I'm not sure if they weren't giving us much attention because we didn't have reservations or what, because the place was not even full. Â It was a Thursday night and at medium capacity. Â The food was so-so. Â I wasn't extremely impressed, as some other reviews stated and will probably not be back.
Review Source:This ia by far the best sushi St. Louis has to offer!! The ambiance is nice, and the whole feel of the place reminds me of being in a lounge in New York or L.A. The DJ played a good combination of mellow and upbeat futuristic sort of sounds. The food was beyond good...it was phenomenal. The Oh My God roll is served with the plate on fire and is quite the presentation. The David Backes roll was also amazing and was served with some of the freshest tuna I have had since I left Miami. We also tried the ultimate roll which was, you guessed it, delicious. The rolls have fun names and are named after out local athletes. It was decently priced at around $15 a roll or less.
Ask for Lauren as your server. She was phenomenal!!
Fix your damn bathroom lock! I don't want to have to hold the door closed while using the toilet! If you are gonna have one single toilet bathroom for the entire place then you need to stock it with enough toilet paper. What kind of place runs out of toilet paper at 11 PM?!
Aside from my frustration with the bathroom, there is really nothing wrong with the place. It's a small lounge, with alot of seating and surprisingly decent mixes (depending on the DJ of the night, obviously) but the crowd is seriously hit or miss...I don't personally enjoy places over-crowded with the college-age, pastel-shirt and plaid-shorts-wearing variety. Seriously...plaid shorts are so 2006. Get with the program!
Friday Night Happy Hour Down Time was a great evening. Â Sushi was awesome. Â Really the best thing they have going. Â Laid back is no way to describe me, but what I needed after the week I had. Â The DJ was playing some very interesting music/computerized tempo, Acid Jazz and Down Low maybe what it is called. Â Great job. Â I got to eat on a comfy chair at 7:30 pm at night in this hidden gem. Â the Bar tender worked with me to create me something special to drink, since I normally don't. It was a long over do date night with a rough work week behind me didn't know how I could enjoy the evening and relax.......
It was very hard to find for us, I think it is suppose to be that way. Â If everyone knew about it there would be no room, it is intimate, nice, friendly. Â And my husband got to stray and catch a little of the Cards game on in the bar area.
The later it got the busier it got and a new DJ was coming on. Â Looks like a fun energy spot for late..........need to reserve your spot. Â They are a little short handed on the serve help as it gets busy and hard to meet everyones needs. that is a stress factor and seems to show through in the serve help.
As far as going back I would highly recommend the Happy Hour slot to kick back, realax, enjoy the music, and have some wonderful sushi.
Immediately following dinner (<a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/tani-sushi-bistro-clayton#hrid:5byXIsDeF-gMrP8dyOAx0Q">http://www.yelp.com/biz/…</a>) our dinner party of 16 headed toward Area 14 the lounge owned and operated by Tani Sushi Bistro. We walked in and the vibe was like "blah". The house music playing was very low, a few people at the bar and a party of about 12 in the main area. Looking around our table was not set for us, no bottle out and ready to be corked and looking more closely the bartender was also our server. Now lets keep in mind it's a Saturday night and this party was booked over a month in advance.
The bartender/server started moving tables and chairs, our guests were all kind of standing around. At this point we had about 20-25 people. Since I was really not prepared to have a "nice" conversation with Eric the owner, I asked my BFF to see what was going on. Upon speaking with Eric, we were informed they were short staffed due to the weather and the DJ scheduled for the night, called out! We were prepared to take our party that was growing by the minute and head elsewhere. However, the only part of that plan that would be a total fail is the fact that we communicated to about 100 of our friends that Area 14 was the place we'd be! So we were forced to stay by our own lines of communication. However, Eric didn't really quite get the idea of bottle service. If you are reading this you may have experience with visiting a lounge or nightclub. When you order bottle service and are prepared to pay for it, you are paying for the service and all that comes with the ease of sitting down enjoying drinks and the atmosphere.
Lets back up for one minute, when I first tried to book this party tracking down Eric the owner to reserve a table was like finding a needle in a haystack. And that should have been a CLEAR indicator that Area 14 did not deserve my business. However, I thought that maybe he was just busy and I still wanted to give them a try. When I FINALLY touched base with him, Eric was kind enough to reduce the bottle service of $400 to $250, two bottles of Grey Goose and a bottle of Prosecco. Regretfully, due to Area 14's inability to be prepared we declined the bottle service immediately when we arrived to find they were not ready for our party.
So we spent about 30 minutes trying to decide what are we doing, we had our guests sitting around looking at one another, no bottle service, music playing at the volume of elevator music and a bar that was not capable of servicing our guests due to being short staffed! EPIC FAIL Area 14! My BFF was still trying to converse with owner, Eric because at this point we were still prepared to leave. Eric wanted to know what he could do to keep our party there. So we said that there needs to be another bartender, and the music needed to be turned up. Eric did offer that if we could find a deejay he would pay for it. However, Saturday night at 10:30pm isn't an ideal time to track down a deejay. Besides it was not our responsibility to arrive and have to work out the details. Another gesture made by Eric which was helpful, Eric did offer us a bottle of vodka on the house to try and mend the situation.
Slowly but surely things came together. The other party that was in Area 14 when we arrived had cleared out, more of our friends filled the place and the music was finally up so people were not sitting there listening to grasshoppers chirp. Area 14 is a 1:30am bar, so we did what we could to enjoy ourselves, shots, drinks and taking pictures. I'd like to note we hired Camera Chi (<a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/camera-chi-saint-louis#hrid:GFsy-TaMs0waMWvm0XBGcA">http://www.yelp.com/biz/…</a>) to attend our party and capture the moments of the evening. It was slightly embarrassing to be standing around trying to get our own party started when it should have been ready to pop off; Area 14 missed the opportunity and lost a customer with this snafu. I think they could benefit from someone with event planning experience and quite possibly a Host for their lounge.
A few other things to note:
They are seriously lacking in customer service, even after they dropped the ball on our party. Not once did Eric come around to double check, the service staff are also impolite and they constantly looked stressed. This makes for an awkward interaction when ordering a drink. Service is key in a dog eat dog world.
Looking for a little slice of downtown in the Clayton area? Â Area 14 is the place to go. Â I believe it is run by the people who run Tani. Â It's located right next to Tani, however there are no signs outside. Â Luckily there are usually guys working at the door to lead you in. Â You walk down this long dark corridor with red laser lights everywhere. Â It ls pretty neat after a couple drinks. Â
I popped in about 10:30pm on a Friday. Â The place had a nice sleek look with lots of white couches and other places to sit. Â DJs were spinning quality house music up front. Â There weren't to many people then, but by 11:30 the place was nicely filled up. Â There is no dance floor space but people were just grooving in whatever spaces they could find. Â The music was pretty loud and the place had a good energy. Â I was also impressed with the crowd. Â A nice, diverse mix of attractive friendly people.
I don't know about the sushi component. Â When I was there they weren't serving food, but I was told to go to Tani next door. Â Maybe they serve food earlier in the night.
All in all this is a fun place to take a group of people for night out.
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