Bars and restaurants in St. Louis

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We do periodic food trips up to St. Louis, so I'll just paste in some emails from my friend who lives up there and gives us recs. I apologize that he had linked URLs on a lot of these, so I'll just put the names of the places in parentheses where applicable. Also, it's a collection of emails, so it may be disjointed:


This place (Juniper) is doing the very much en vogue ‘southern’ style with a twist type of thing; we went and I loved it. The chef-owner was doing a series of pop-ups for a long while before finally going with a set name and a rotating menu. The menu here appears to be their newest one as it is slightly different from the one we had 2 months or so ago. Casual but need a reservation.



This place (The Tavern) is becoming a local ‘empire’ in a sense, in that they have three or four different places all under one ownership group. The Tavern does a lot of fish, which is nice. Last time we went I thought we had a fantastic meal. Also, it’s the only place on my list here not in the city (about 10 mins away from our house).



This place (Bahn Mi So #1) is our favorite Vietnamese, I believe K has already mentioned it to you. It’s a mom-n-pop type place and service is very slow. Pop runs the front and mom runs the kitchen, but it’s fantastic. It’s not glamorous in the least and the neighborhood is sorta bad also but, best curry shrimp I’ve ever had anywhere.



This place (Planter's House) we have not been to but it is owned by StL’s most prominent mixologist (I can’t believe I just typed that sentence…) and the reviews have been good. It is primarily cocktail oriented as you can imagine.



We haven’t been to this place (The Libertine) either however it also gets good reviews, again as a southern-type thing. Chef was displaced from NOLA following Katrina, wound up staying…


Blood and Sand This is a membership only place. They allow non-members to try it out once before they join. We haven't been yet but have heard all great things. They post no prices, but I could call and get the range. I'm assuming entrees $20-35.

Niche is great--same owner and chef as the Brasserie where we went the night before the wedding. This is their nicer place, "fine" dining. We've been a couple of times, but not for their Monday night thing. It's a pre-fixe 3-course meal for $35 a person. I've heard that Mondays are "fun".


Farmhaus (known for fish, hot chef in town)

BBQ has exploded in StL the last couple years (along with whiskey bars). Pappy’s sorta became a gold standard but, similar to Gerard Craft, they’ve had acoloytes go on to open their own, just as good (and not as crowded) establishments, like Bogart’s (which we prefer) and a brand new place called Adam’s Smokehouse.



Bogarts has awesome, awesome ribs and, strangely, pastrami, which is also fabulous. Adam’s apparently does their own salami, in addition to all the regular bbq items. Both guys worked at Pappy’s for a long time. We’ve not been to adam’s.



Another BBQ place I know that is not Pappy’s related at all is called Southtown Pub, basically up the street from where we used to be in the city. They do BBQ and oysters. BBQ was very good the one time I went, no idea on the oysters.

There's also the Fountain on Locust. We could take the boys for Vietnamese if you think they'll like that. In Maplewood there's a new place called Strange Donuts that might be fun to pop in, and there's a little pie place right next door to that. There are a half dozen or more really good local breweries here now, too--some are family friendly and have small menus of good food. Also there are a couple of delis that are very good if we just need a sandwich one day.



Other possibly good kid thing is Bailey’s Range. Another outpost in one of our local, StL restaurant empires. Basically they do everything in house, burgers and ice cream/milkshakes, plus craft soda, booze, etc. Not our favorite burgers (altho they are pretty good, just overcooked) but seems like the type of place a kid would like.

For The Hill we went with an upstart rather than the old stalwarts: Anthonino's Taverna. It was really good. Does some Greek as well.

Also ate at Rooster which is part of Bailey's empire. It was great. Only open for brunch and lunch.

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I get really excited about these threads because there is way more to the food and drink scene in STL than people realize.

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