Jamaican and Italian food and Outdoor patio

BY HOLLY SILVA, Special to the Post-Dispatch, 05/27/2004

Funky escape: Venice Cafe
Address: 1903 Pestalozzi Street
Phone: 314-772-5994
Hours: 4 p.m.-1:30 a.m. Monday-Saturday; closed Sunday
Credit cards: Only cash accepted
Smoking: Smoking allowed indoors and outdoors
Wheelchair access: Poor (stepped entry and full flights of stairs to upper and lower levels)

If you're having trouble scheduling that vacation to the tropics or even a road trip to New Orleans, Venice Cafe in Benton Park is a worthy proxy for a paradisiacal outdoor evening.

The Venice garden is a funky, artful and wildly colorful mix of mosaic-tile tables, lush greenery and columns topped with green and blue glass-bottle star bursts. The stage is dripping with dozens, maybe hundreds, of abandoned baby dolls. It's an adult surrealist's amusement park.

Walls are covered in license plates, hubcaps, disposable lighters, and what first appear to be buttons but turn out to be every sort of plastic screw-on cap - soda, dish-washing liquid, peanut butter and prescription ("push down, turn to open") - nailed into wooden pillars.

If you are not fully transported to a world of ironic dadaism by these creative efforts, try the antique sign advertising a sign: "This Sign Will Bring Them In!"

To further your aims of sublime rest and refreshment, there's also live music, trees overhead and the adventurous house-special drink of gin, limeade, club soda, spearmint schnapps and fresh lime served in a child's plastic sand pail.