The Preston, the fine-dining restaurant inside The Royal Sonesta Chase Park Plaza, is digging into its hotel's wilder chapters with two new history-themed experiences launching this November: a five-course dinner series called Dining Through the Decades and a cocktail education program dubbed The 1917 Cocktail Society. The first dinner, set for Nov. 7, is built around a notorious New Year's Eve whiskey raid that hit the hotel less than two months after it opened its doors.
According to Sauce Magazine, The Preston introduced both experiences as a way to lean into the hotel's rich past. Dining Through the Decades pairs five-course dinners with dishes inspired by the hotel's history, period cocktails and tours of its historic spaces, the outlet reports. The Chase opened in 1922 and has hosted headline-making guests and events ever since, per the same report.
That first dinner, themed “A Headline-Making Prohibition Party & The Sazerac,” draws its inspiration from the hotel's early years and a raid that made national news. Just after midnight on January 1, 1923, federal agents burst into the Chase Hotel's posh Palm Room for a whiskey raid, according to stlouis.style. Sauce Magazine's report notes that the New York Times covered the New Year's Eve raid at the time, just weeks after the hotel's debut.
A Menu Pulled Straight From the Palm Room
The five-course menu for the Nov. 7 dinner takes its cues from a New Year's Eve dinner once served in the hotel's Palm Room, the article notes. Diners can expect Oysters Rockefeller, Lobster Thermidor with Dijon mustard, mushrooms and Parmesan, and filet mignon Bordelaise with Duchess potatoes and buttered asparagus, per the same account. The night also includes a Sazerac and other period-inspired drinks to round out the theme.
Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and runs $125 per person, the publication reports. Reservations for the Nov. 7 dinner are available through OpenTable or by calling 314-633-1186. The series continues Dec. 19 with an evening focused on the 1930s, with future dinners planned around other chapters of the Chase's history — including its glamorous 1950s nightclub era, when the Chase Club attracted performers such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Bob Hope and Ethel Merman.
Cocktail Classes Trace Back to a 1917 Lindell Boulevard Party
The 1917 Cocktail Society takes a different approach, offering hands-on classes about the history and craft of classic cocktails rather than a sit-down dinner. The name references a 1917 gathering at the Central West End home of Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr. on Lindell Boulevard, an event often credited as the first cocktail party on record — a bit of local lore the St. Louis Post-Dispatch once explored in a piece on the first recorded cocktail party held in the city a century ago.
Mixologist Jeremiah Townsend leads the classes, which include cocktail tastings, demonstrations and personalized instruction exploring the techniques and traditions behind classic drinks. Guests also receive a curated takeaway gift. Upcoming sessions are scheduled for Nov. 14 and Dec. 19, with tickets priced at $65 per person and seating limited; tickets are available through OpenTable.
Both experiences take place at The Preston inside The Royal Sonesta Chase Park Plaza in the Central West End, a hotel built in 1922 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Preston itself has gone through its own transformation over the years — the restaurant remained closed for roughly three years during the pandemic before reopening for dinner in June 2023, and its current iteration leans more approachable, with a refreshed dining room and a largely new menu, according to stlmag.com.
