While you can still find those St. Louis favorites, the gateway has opened to expand your culinary horizons to a new view in the Lou. Here are 11 fun places to eat in St. Louis, listed alphabetically, that are sure to become what you think of when considering the St. Louis food scene.

Thank you to Explore St. Louis for hosting my stay.

Brew Tulum

Located at LaClede’s Landing, Brew Tulum specializes in fresh-roasted Mexican coffee and made-to-order Mexican bites. Owners AJ Juarez and Laura McNamara strive to source exclusive micro-lot offerings from Mexican coffee growers who have dedicated their lives to their land and passion for a good Cuppa Joe.

Brew Tulum is also a great place to cater your next Mexican-themed fiesta. We sampled some tacos and chilaquiles that were on the catering menu. If you decide to host a meal, the food won’t disappoint.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Order some of their coffee online to enjoy while planning your next visit to St. Louis.

The Elsworth Supper Club

“Are you sure this is where we’re supposed to be?” the driver inquired.

“Yes, it’s in a residential neighborhood,” replied our host.

Justin and Amelia McMillen are the husband-and-wife duo who host The Elsworth Supper Club in the backyard of their home in St. Louis’ Webster Groves neighborhood. It is a warm, intimate experience enhanced by thoughtfully executed seasonal ingredients. I dined there in autumn, and the seasonal delicata squash with paw paw miso was on the menu.

Before returning to St. Louis, McMillen assisted Chef Kyle Connaughton in opening SingleThread, a Japanese-inspired restaurant, farm, and inn in Sonoma County, California. During McMillen’s tenure there, the restaurant was awarded three Michelin stars. So, while the meal is in someone’s backyard, the food quality isn’t your neighbor’s backyard barbeque.

The dining room is a converted single-car garage, with a beautifully set table for 10 lit with votives. Everyone sits at a communal table, and before the evening is over, your dining companions become your newest friends.

The Meal

Each dinner is unique, so what I had most likely won’t be on the menu when you visit. Yet, here’s an idea of the quality and variety of dishes on offer. The chefs set the menu for the evening, and everyone eats the same meal as you would in a family home. The difference is the Michelin quality that Chef McMillen comes from.

Our appetizer course included lamb tartare with pickled lime and nori, smoked scallops, and kohlrabi.

The entrée included Blackhawk Farms American Wagyu short rib, beans, delicata squash, and rice. My favorite part of the meal was the homemade sourdough bread with kumquat kosho butter. I couldn’t stop returning for that butter, accented with citrus and decorated with edible flowers.

Dessert included apple crisp with saikyo miso ice cream and kinako pecan praline. A chai and pecan caramel apple and a sweet corn gooey butter cake were also on the menu. I must mention that this was the only traditional St. Louis dish I had the entire trip.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Make your reservations for the warm weather months through Direct Messaging on Instagram.

Florentin

Located in the Delmar Maker’s District, Florentin is an Israeli-inspired restaurant that serves primarily vegetarian food, offering the likes of shakshuka, falafel, borekas, and smoothies. Named for Chef Ben Poremba’s favorite neighborhood in Tel Aviv, the restaurant reflects the locality. Think Avant-Garde, edgy restaurant scene, markets, street art, and Bohemian residents.

Whether you sit down and enjoy your meal in the full-service restaurant or order at the counter for a light lunch, the food won’t disappoint. For the warmer months, they also have a pretty patio.

We started with a trio of dips, including hummus, baba ghanoush, and tzatziki, served with pita. If you aren’t familiar with baba ghanoush, the typical Eastern Mediterranean dip starts with roasted eggplant mashed and then adds sesame seeds, olive oil, lemon, and garlic. With the pita bread, you could easily make this a meal.

I chose a falafel pita for lunch, a filling vegetarian option. The crispy falafel balls were nestled in a bed of lettuce, tomatoes, a pickle, and sauce, making for a satisfying sandwich.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Florentin serves breakfast and lunch, 9 AM to 3 PM, Tuesday through Sunday.

The Fountain on Delmar

In the Maker’s District, the Fountain on Delmar is an offshoot of The Fountain on Locust, a St. Louis staple known for its ice cream martinis. While the original location offers hearty comfort food, like Polish dill pickle soup and a fig, ham, and Gouda grilled cheese sandwich, the new location focuses on coffee, pastries, ice cream, and a cocktail bar.

From the black-and-white tiled floor to the murals on the wall, I love the art deco styling at The Fountain on Delmar. The atmosphere is so beautiful that I can’t help but want to hang out. And the ice cream served all day doesn’t hurt. This is the perfect place to stop by for your morning coffee and pastry, take the kids for an after-school snack, or meet up with friends for an after-work cocktail before heading home.

The Fountain’s coffee program features Chauvin Drip Coffee and espresso drinks, including lattes, cappuccinos, and affogatos. It developed its coffee menu in partnership with Kaldi’s Coffee, which offers all of your favorite coffee shop classics in addition to some specialty drinks like its Campfire S’mores Latte.

Their pastry chef bakes pastries that feature creative twists on classics from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. You’ll find a rotating selection of items like Gooey Butter Cake Cookies, Pineapple Upside-down Cupcakes, and Crackerjack Snickerdoodles.

Their menu also includes creative cocktails and mocktails, where they’re known for their ice cream martinis. For example, you might want to try the Great Mississippi Mudslide. A cocktail made from coffee liqueur, Irish cream, and vanilla ice cream garnished with Oreos.

Piper’s Pro Planning: The Fountain on Delmar closes on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Osteria

Katie’s Pizza and Pasta Osteria is an Italian restaurant that is the perfect place for many occasions. While the space works to take the kids for a delicious pizza, you can also enjoy an adult-only four-course meal with your significant other. Its location at Ballpark Village, next to Busch Stadium, where the St. Louis Cardinals play, makes it the perfect after-game location with your friends to replay the action and discuss the umpire’s calls over a glass of wine from their extensive wine list. Katie’s also has locations in Rock Hill and Town & Country.

Our table of eight shared a variety of dishes, making our meal a tasting menu. We started with antipasti. The most Instagram-able dish on the menu might be the whipped feta studded with candy cane radishes and clementine segments. While they served house-made bread alongside, I couldn’t help but start with the fruits and vegetables already on the plate.

What to Order

We also enjoyed Fried Truffle Arancini, made from fried truffle risotto, mushroom jus, and stracchino, drizzled with truffle aioli and topped with a slice of freshly shaved truffle. We had oysters Fellini on the half shell. They topped them with horseradish and lemon crumble and then sturgeon caviar. It came with a side of Cipriani mignonette, Calabrian Firelli sauce, and lemon.

We were in St. Louis in the fall and found delicata squash on several menus. At Katie’s, we had tempura battered delicata squash, Aleppo labneh, and watercress.

For the hand-crafted pasta course, we had paccheri pasta. We also sampled the hand-crafted Margherita Red di Bufala Pizza.

The Secondi course or entrées were chicken parmigiana and a charcoal-grilled 24-ounce ribeye alla Fiorentina from Missouri prime ribeye. The steak was topped with fennel pollen, rosemary, watercress, and aged balsamic. The chef served it with roasted fingerling potatoes and a Taleggio fonduta, a cheesy, creamy dip for the potatoes and steak.

The chicken parmigiana was a crispy parmigiana stuffed with Fontina and prosciutto di Parma, topped with tomato and arugula salad, a Calabrian chili Bomba, and wildflower honey.

For dessert, we had a choice of Sicilian cannoli or ricotta donuts. The cannoli shell was handmade and filled with a cannoli filling. The ends were covered with cocoa nibs, candied orange peel, and pistachios. The ricotta donuts came with mascarpone crema, wildflower honey, and cacao nibs.

Katie’s was one of my favorite places. I’d just returned from a foodie’s tour of Italy and had several of these dishes there. The food was authentic fare.

Piper’s Pro Planning: If you can’t make it to St. Louis, you can still experience Katie’s food through their website shopping. You’ll find everything from pizza to pasta and jarred sauces. You can also purchase one of their frozen pizzas from Walmart, where you’ll find them nationwide.

St. Louis is the perfect place for a skip-gen trip. Check out this article, “What are Skip-Gen Trips and Why I Recommend One.”

Rivertime Supper Club

While Big Muddy Adventures offers a variety of paddling experiences on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, foodies will want to combine their outdoor adventure with a gourmet campfire dinner. The experience, the Rivertime Supper Club, includes a paddle on the Missouri River, a stop on an uninhabited river island for appetizers, and a gourmet campfire dinner.

While your meal may differ, I’m sure the food will be tasty. The Big Muddy Adventures’ chef serves the meal buffet-style near the campfire. Ours included a chopped salad, macaroni and cheese served with and without mushrooms, and sliced steak with a chimichurri sauce. Packaged chocolates topped off the meal for dessert.

Piper’s Pro Planning:  Big Muddy Adventures provides a dry bag for your jacket during the paddle. If you want to take pictures during the paddle, I recommend bringing a clear, dry bag with a lanyard for your phone.

Side Project Brewing

Side Project Brewing has many honors. In 2020 and 2023, Rate Beer ranked Side Project Brewing as the No. 2 brewer in the world. In 2015, Side Project Cellar, the company’s Belgian-inspired beer, wine, and spirits bar, earned a James Beard Award nomination for Outstanding Bar Program. Forbes put Side Project’s executive chef, Adam Altnether, on its 2014 list of 30 under 30. The brewer pushes the boundaries of the region’s beverage scene and continues evolving.

What to Order

If you want to visit Side Project Brewing when you feel like throwing back an ice-cold craft beer, don’t overlook it when you feel like a meal. While we were there for appetizers, the Side Project Burgers were turning heads as they flew out of the kitchen. They were two four-ounce patties covered in melted American cheese, caramelized onions, apple cider Dijon aioli, and served with French fries.

The dish I kept going back to was the house-made potato chips and dip. The dip consisted of a sour cream and onion dip with fresh chives and lemon. It was fresh and addicting. The French fries topped with a snowy mountain of fresh grated Parmesan cheese and a lemon aioli were another favorite at our table.

One of my favorite craft beers was the Kriek Noir du Fermier, a dark farmhouse ale. The dark and robust yet dry malt bill is balanced with the brightness, depth, and rustic character of the wild Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus found on their family’s Missouri farm. This Michigan girl likes the farmhouse ale so much because they fermented and aged it in red wine barrels for several months with Michigan Balaton and Montmorency Cherries before being naturally conditioned in the bottle. They had me at cherries.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Side Project Brewing is closed on Tuesdays. Although all their merchandise is available for shipping, their beer is only available for shipping to addresses in Missouri.

Steve’s Hot Dogs

Steve Ewing, lead singer of The Urge, owns and operates Steve’s Hot Dogs. Steve serves his signature dogs at the Delmar Maker District, South Grand Boulevard, and CITYPARK, where St. Louis CITY SC plays, so no matter what activity you have planned, you’ll find Steve’s Hot Dogs nearby. I visited the brick-and-mortar in the Delmar Maker District, with a fun, upbeat atmosphere of black and white tile accented with pops of red.

Steve’s Hot Dogs started as a hot dog cart in 2011 for late-night concertgoers looking for something to eat after the concert. Steve has three brick-and-mortar venues today, three vendor spots in stadiums—football, hockey, and soccer—and Steve’s Melt Down, a grilled cheese stall at the City Foundry in the Lou.

The mayor of St. Louis declared Steve’s Hot Dogs the home of the official St. Louis-style hot dog. The local ingredients are the stars at Steve’s. The hot dog starts with a hearty French Roll made by the local baker, Champion, only for Steve’s. Then Steve layers a slice of provolone locally made in the Italian District. Then comes the cold smoked and grilled all-beef Nathan’s Famous hot dog. Finally, they garnish the hot dog with grilled green peppers, white onions, bacon crumbles, sliced banana peppers, and Estes smoked pepper mustard.

Steve’s offers award-winning options for vegetarians, vegans, and gluten-free eaters. The restaurant also sells bottled sauces for those wanting to take home some of Steve’s. I brought the Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce home, enjoyed it on hot dogs, and pulled pork for a tasty barbeque sandwich.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Check their website for hours. Different locations have different hours.

Sur Este Mexican

Sur Este Mexican, located in The Lou food court with counter service, offers a southeastern Mexican flair to the St. Louis food scene. They have authentic Yucatan cuisine featuring favorites like cochinita pibil, a citrus-roasted pork dish, tacos and tamales, and seafood dishes like octopus and ceviche. Chef Alex Henry uses all locally sourced ingredients from St. Louis area farms except for avocados, seafood, and citrus. The chef prepares every dish in-house so that the flavors are authentic Yucatan.

They offer 10 different types of tacos and provide them in a serving of two. I had the tacos al pastor, marinated rotisserie pork and pineapple, topped with guajillo salsa, onions, and cilantro. I chose to have corn tortillas, but you can have flour instead. On the advice of my dining companion, I ordered the chips and sikil pak, a smokey, spicey Mayan dip from the Yucatan. They made the dip from tomatoes, pepitas, chiles, and spices. It was a good side for the tacos.

Piper’s Pro Planning: You can order online for pick-up or delivery within the local area. So, if you’re at a vacation rental or hotel and don’t feel like going out again, consider ordering in if you’ve had a busy day.

The BerryBox, the Superfood Bar

Located in The Lou, with counter service, the BerryBox was my dessert after a Mexican-themed lunch. After any Mexican lunch, I love to cleanse my palate with something cool and creamy, and the açaí bowl at BerryBox fits the bill. Located next to Sur Este Mexican, it was easy to grab dessert after finishing my tacos. The bowl featured an organic açaí base with local granola, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, and agave nectar, a great choice after eating any Mexican dishes. They offer a variety of bowls, smoothies, toasts, and beverages.

Piper’s Pro Planning: Open daily. Check their websites for specific hours.

Winslow’s Table

Winslow’s Table sits in a two-story brick building reminiscent of a country farmhouse. The décor features roosters and potted house plants.

The farmer’s breakfast is the logical choice in this setting, with two local farm eggs cooked your way, with breakfast potatoes and house-made toast served with butter and jam. This dish also included a choice of bacon, fruit, or chicken sausage. While this is the perfect venue for this meal, you’ll also find other dishes with an international flair – Middle Eastern-inspired meals, like shakshuka or a Moroccan omelet. The four-egg Moroccan omelet features tomatoes, red peppers, and spiced oil served on crispy corn tortillas, cheddar, pickled red onion, feta, and cilantro. The chef serves it with tortillas, Pili-pili hot sauce, and berbere sour cream. You can add bacon or chicken sausage.

What to Order

I ordered avocado toast with a side of fruit. The chef spread the creamy mashed avocado on toasted sourdough bread, topped with a drizzle of Salsa Macha and shaved radishes. Salsa Macha is a rich and flavorful sauce, unlike other Mexican salsas made with tomatoes or tomatillos. They make this salsa with chiles, seeds, and olive oil to add some zip to the dishes.

While I enjoyed breakfast at Winslow’s Table, they also served lunch and dinner. They serve breakfast and lunch until 3:00 PM, so if you crave a late breakfast, no problem.

When it’s time to hit the road, the pastry case beckons for a road trip snack or some sustenance to get you through the afternoon activities. The case is full of goodies – think goat cheese cookies, Mexican chocolate galettes, five-spice scones with vanilla icing, sweet potato pie, and salted caramel monkey bread.

Piper’s Pro Planning: If you want to take a bit of St. Louis home to your friends and family, Winslow’s Table also features an artisanal pantry with goods from Midwest makers and other curated gifts.

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