St. Louis beer and food recs

I've posted a lengthy St. Louis recs post which I'll copy in later. Definitely take your kid to Bailey's Range though. Awesome burgers, shakes, cocktails and beer.

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Paging TCO and Zappas

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I have a buddy that goes to St Louis once a year to visit the in laws so what little I know comes from him. Urban Chestnut is another local brewery to check out. Most breweries are kid friendly in the sense kids are allowed. But some offer sodas and the like for kids and some dont. I would just email them and ask.

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Urban Chestnut

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That's one I forgot about. Thanks.

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You probably know this but you won't get any side project unless your trip coincides with one of their releases.

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Dammit!

As promised, here is my GREAT ST. LOUIS FOOD POST (tm).


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.

I've personally eaten at Bahn Mi So, Rooster, Bailey's Range, Farmhaus, Braiserrie, Niche, and Anthonino's. They're all great.

With kids, I would HIGHLY recommend Anthonino's (for your mandatory stop in the Hill) and Bailey's Range. We found both to be extremely kid friendly, and our boys enjoyed the experience (tell them Anthonino's was on DDD).

And if you don't take your kids to City Museum, then you aren't fit to be a parent.

My wife is from St. Louis. We go back periodically, but this is the first time we've hit Ted Drewes since her father died (Ted Drewes was an anchorpoint of her childhood). She had a near spiritual experience there. Absolutely overwhelmed by nostalgia to the point that she couldn't move for a bit and was just dumbstruck. Pretty awesome experience to have some little ice cream joint do that to a person.

We're fortunate in that our good friends who still live there are huge foodies and boozies (I'm coining that), so our trips center around that. The StL food/beverage/coffee scene is amazing right now.

Feast Magazine does a great job of documenting it.

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The StL food/beverage/coffee scene is amazing right now.

Feast Magazine does a great job of documenting it.

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This!

I don't think outsiders realize how cool a town St Louis has become in the last few years. I've actually had people say, "what the frick?" when I told them I was excited about going back to St Louis. It's not the same town it was 10-30 years ago...though you can still see a lot of the plight.

My brother in law goes to SLU and I love going to visit him.