Veritas Gateway to Food and Wine is leaving Chesterfield to re-open down the road in Ellisville with a new location that will offer a more comprehensive wining and dining experience.
The move is being driven by a desire to use a space that is better suited for the restaurant side of the operation while also more closely incorporating its retail wine shop, according to owner Stephanie Stitt. Vertias will close Jan. 15 and will open sometime in April at the corner of Clarkson and Clayton roads, with a grand opening event set for May 1.
"When we opened eight years ago, we did not intend to be a restaurant as much as it turned into," Stitt said. "It's really taken off and has a life of its own. The small kitchen space that we put in back when we were just going to do tastings doesn't work."
The business is family-run with Stephanie's husband and co-owner David overseeing the wine program and son Mathis as the head chef. Currently, Veritas only has full-service dinner on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and Stephanie Stitt said that is unlikely to change.
Vino fans can also take advantage of some deals as Veritas is holding a moving sale until its doors close in January with discounts on wine and store merchandise. For more information, visit the Veritas website, where you can also find further details about the improvements planned for the new location.
Stitt also used the move as a time to take stock of how she has seen the food and wine industry in the West County change over the years.
"When we opened, people were not sure that West County was ready for a 'real' restaurant," she said, pointing to the prevalence of chains such as Red Lobster or Houlihans. "People were eating there just because that is what was here."
She said Veritas and others, such as similar West County outfit Balaban's, have found success in focusing on inventive menus that feature fresh, local ingredients.
In fact, the last several years have seen a surge in such restaurants throughout the St. Louis area along with an ever-expanding craft beer scene that, in Stitt's view, make it an exciting time to be in the industry.
There wasn't really any at cut being able to just kind of go back home and be normal because we were shooting in Jordan and India. We were really immersed in the story we were telling. I had the props person print out all the pictures of the terrorists that Maya looks at and I actually hung them in my hotel room. So, even when I would come home from set it was always around me.
In terms of research, there was a great deal of information in the script. Every scene gave me clues, little things that she would say as to who the woman was. Of course, our screenwriter is an investigative reporter so that was very helpful. I nicknamed him Mark the Professor. I had three months of going to school before we even started shooting. I read books like "The Looming Towers." I read Michael Scheuer's book ("Imperial Hubris") on Osama Bin Laden. It was a full immersion school.
I never met Maya because she's an undercover CIA agent. It would have not been a good thing to do. However, I got a lot of research from Mark. It really, really helps when your screenwriter is an investigative journalist. I had to approach it like any other character I was playing. So, any questions I could answer through the research I did. But questions that I couldn't answer through the research, I then had to use my imagination and Kathryn's imagination and Mark's to create a character that went along the lines that respect the real woman. I'm playing a character who's trained to be unemotional and analytically precise. As an actor, you spend your whole life trying to be emotional and keeping yourself emotionally open. So, to find the humanity within that, in that arc, was a great feat that would have been impossible without Kathryn and Mark's leadership.
My favorite moment is the last scene of the film. There were a lot of scenes that are fun to do as an actor. It's so fun to do the big scenes when you're yelling and you're cussing. It feels really good to emote as an actor. It's very hard to play something that is subtle and specific and really tiny in the arc. So, it's really fun to play the scene where I'm chewing out Kyle (Chandler) in the hallway. That's great. But for me, in the film, my favorite moment is the very end of the film because it says more than just what this woman did. It's not a propaganda movie, saying "Go America!" It's through the eyes of this woman who became a servant to her work and she lost herself along the way and she realizes that it's bigger than that. It's like what Kathryn said, "Where does she go?" But then also where do we go as a country? Where do we go as a society? What do we do now? I find that to end the film on that question is far more interesting than providing an answer.
I never, ever imagined I'd be involved in telling the story during those events. I was in New York during 9/11 and also when I found out Osama was killed. When I was reading the script, it was like every page that I turned was a shock to me, especially Maya and the role she took in it. Then I got upset that it was such a shock to me. Why would I assume a woman wouldn't be involved in this kind of research? The wonderful thing about working on this film is (that) historically in movies, lead characters are played by women defined by men, whether it's a love interest or they're a victim of a man. Maya's not like that. I don't know that Kathryn Bigelow would make a movie like that because she stands on her own. She's capable and intelligent. I think she represents this generation of a woman. That was really exciting for me to discover on the page in the script and to discover about her history.
Those scenes, I think, they were tough, to be honest, to film. We filmed that section in a Jordanian prison, so we really weren't on a sound stage in Los Angeles. I think throughout the film you can see how important the location of shooting in India and Jordan was to the film because it creates an atmosphere that is absolutely in those scenes. That was a tough week. It's like Kathryn said, it's a part of the history of the characters. Instead of looking at it and making my own judgments on what I personally believe is right and wrong, I try to look at it in terms of the character. I mean, this is the introduction to this woman who is recruited right out of school. She shows up in her suit to go to what she believes is going to be a normal interrogation and it becomes much more intense than she imagines. An introduction to a woman like that and to see where she starts to where she ends at the end of the film, I found that very useful when playing the character.
I didn't connect her to the character in "The Hurt Locker." When I was doing my research and I was thinking about Maya, I was thinking about her like a computer almost, a woman who's really good with facts and details and putting a puzzle together. What happens when that woman is put in a situation that is much bigger than she ever imagined she'd be involved in and the stress of the interrogations or being in that part of the world and not only dealing with the interrogations of the terrorists but also coming up against superiors who don't believe in your lead. How she starts to unravel within that. Just because she's trained to be unemotional and analytically precise doesn't mean she's unemotional. What I loved so much about the script is we do see moments where she falters. In the hallway with Kyle, she's basically blackmailing him. You know, if you don't give me what I want I'm going to put you in front of a congressional committee. I mean that's a very emotional reaction. So, I found it to be a very compelling piece with a lot of complexities and a lot of depths. I really saw her as her own woman. I never really connected her to another performance.
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