Food & Drink >>

• Best Burger (1 Comment)
  Grandpa Mischeaux's Real Deal Barbecue & Grill
  Every morning, before opening up his storefront barbecue joint for the day, Byron Mischeaux hits the Safeway on Broadway's north side and picks up 50 pounds of ground beef. By lunch he'll have hand-sculpted that haul into 30 shot put-size, heavier-than-a-pound mounds of carnal excess -- the best... More >>
• Best Burger (Non-Beef Division)
  Cajun crab cake sandwich
  Some trace the origin of the hamburger to the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904. Would we be spoilsports to point out that others date the delicacy all the way back to ancient Rome, and beyond? As edifying as it may be to read accounts of Tartar warriors toting filets off to battle under the... More >>
• Best French Fries
  O'Connell's Pub
  Ah, O'Connell's: lit low, as if it were one of Stanley Kubrick's candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon, lovely exposed brick on the south wall, and the booths' dark wood paneling. Foursquare, reliable as rain in the springtime. An umber state of mind. O'Connell's doesn't need to serve food to... More >>
• Best Roast Beef Sandwich
  O'Connell's Pub
  When you're in need of a roast beef sandwich right this instant, no one can fault you for opting for the eminently reliable and tasty Lion's Choice. But when you've got a bit more time to invest, it's got to be O'Connell's Pub. Yeah, you might have to wait for a table if you arrive during the... More >>
• Best Hot Dog
  The Monte Cristo
  Two all-beef wieners, strawberry sauce, Swiss cheese, neither pickles nor onions, on a Save-A-Lot bun. OK, so that's a highly bastardized version of the McDonald's jingle, but then again, the Monte Cristo dog at Iron Barley is like one big middle finger flipped toward the ho-hum frankfurter.... More >>
• Best BLT
  Nik's Wine Bar & Bistro
  Our discovery of the BLT at Nik's was, like all great discoveries, fraught with both heartache and triumph. The journey began unremarkably enough: a late-night stop for a glass or two of malbec. We'd already eaten dinner, but our friend had not. Our server opined that the BLT was "pretty tasty."... More >>
• Best Fish Sandwich
  Grilled wild salmon sandwich
  Not fried cod, not tuna salad, not even beer-battered tilapia. If you want to sink your teeth into the ultimate fish sandwich in St. Louis, then it has got to be the one at the Schlafly Tap Room. Theirs is a charred six-ounce fillet of genuine wild salmon, draped in a flavorful pesto mayo,... More >>
• Best Cheese Counter
  Whole Foods Market
  Your sweetie telephones to request that you swing by Whole Foods on your way home from work and pick up a half-pound of Ossau-Iraty. "It's a Basque cheese from the French Pyrenees," your little Lemon Drop says helpfully, "a sheep's-milk cheese with a grayish-orange rind." She spells it for you,... More >>
• Best Bread
  Breadsmith
  Foccacia, levain, ciabatta, ficelle -- ten years ago who knew those terms had to do with bread? Where once we were happy to find a baguette in a gourmet food shop, we now can pick up a loaf of pain rustique at Schnucks, for crying out loud. But while a few of those parbaked breads shipped frozen... More >>
• Best Bagels
  Bagel Factory
  At the New York State Fair this past August, the Bruegger's bagel chain sponsored the baking of the world's largest bagel. The 868-pound megabagel, which measured six feet in diameter and twenty inches thick, required a small crane to hoist it out of its custom-built oven. The mountain of carbs... More >>
• Best Grocery Store
  Global Foods Market
  Few grocery stores can stake a rightful claim to being a bona-fide tourist destination, but then few grocery stores are as wild as Global Foods Market. The international supermarket routinely plays host to busloads of out-of-town guests whose tour of St. Louis includes less exotic destinations... More >>
• Best Farmer's Market
  Clayton Farmer's Market
  Walking toward the farmer's market in Clayton on a Saturday morning is a treat for all the senses. First the live (usually folk) music reaches your ears, then the smell of freshly brewed coffee and freshly baked something-wonderful entices your nose. Brightly colored flowers sit next to... More >>
• Best Fresh Seafood Counter
  Bob's Seafood
  People look at us like we're crazy when we tell them that sometimes, we like to have raw fish for lunch. Not sashimi, mind you; not a prepared plate of fish with wasabi and whatnot at a Japanese restaurant. We mean a half-pound of bluefin or Alaskan king salmon, or sometimes scallops, which we... More >>
• Best Meat Counter
  LeGrand's St. Louis Hills Tom-Boy Market
  Longtime St. Louis Hills residents still call the place Binder's, even though Jim and Joe LeGrand bought the store on Donovan more than fifteen years ago. Regardless of what they call it, they know that LeGrand's Tom-Boy Market is the place to go for meat. Beef ground fresh daily? Got it. The... More >>
• Best Asian Market
  Seafood City
  Seafood City is the only grocery store we know of where you can buy your frogs' legs very fresh -- as in, attached to the live frog, which you point to, and a butcher does the rest. The same holds true for any number of fish flopping around in their tanks, fresh shellfish, and one awfully large... More >>
• Best Chicken Wings
  Billy Goat Restaurant and Bar
  Everybody's got their favorite [fill in the blank] and will gladly argue incessantly that their favorite [fill in the blank] is the best and you're a moron for thinking different. So it is with chicken wings. Some like their wings so hot and spicy that when they're done eating they can't feel... More >>
• Best Takeout Counter (Gourmet Division)
  I Fratellini
  It seems a crime not to take your lunch at I Fratellini, considering the Clayton storefront restaurant comprises one of the city's nicest dining rooms. But alas, life is tough, and sometimes lunch must be gobbled in bland conference rooms, while tallying last month's revenue sheets or while... More >>
• Best Fried Chicken
  Romine's
  Volumes have been written about the importance of fried chicken in the evolution of American culture and cuisine. And then there are the debates: pan- versus deep-fried, flour versus cornmeal, cayenne versus black pepper. It is said that fried-chicken lover Charlie Parker earned his Yardbird... More >>
• Best Mexican Market
  Tienda El Ranchito
  The minute you walk into Tienda El Ranchito, you'll know it was worth the trip across the Poplar Street Bridge. The smell of tamales wafts through the air, the walls are painted a festive orange and the volume on the Mexican vaquero movie is turned way up. The lighting is dark, the aisles are... More >>
• Best Takeout Counter (Grocery Division)
  Straub's
  There's always that peaceful lull after the holidays, when your house is empty of relatives and your refrigerator is full of food. Your dinners become deliciously nonsensical: Do Aunt Gretchen's turkey Tetrazzini and Mom's pecan pie and your sister's mashed potatoes really go together? And how!... More >>
• Best Whole Roast Chicken
  Schnucks
  Sure there are dozens of joints that'll sell you a roast chicken to go, but for our $5.49, no broiler-in-a-bag beats Schnucks' bird. Each and every chicken comes out of the grocer's rotisserie oven crisp on the outside and French-kiss juicy inside. Schnucks chickens come in three varieties:... More >>
• Best Low-Carb Snack
  Uncle Jerry's Snacks
  Uncle Jerry really liked pork rinds, so Dan and Shannon Wright named their special snacks after him. Running the gamut from St. Louis Style Pork Rinds to HOT Pork Tender Bites 'Old Tyme Cracklins', they're the only pork rinds made in Missouri. And virtually fat-free! These rinds, picked up from... More >>
• Best Potato Chips (10 Comments)
  Red Hot Riplets
  Fun fact: St. Louis leads the nation in Kool-Aid consumption. There are competing theories as to why this is, but we're going with the one put forward by Murphy Lee: "I need some Kool-Aid/With my Red Hot Riplets," goes the chorus of the song Lee dedicated to Old Vienna's best product. In a... More >>
• Best Burrito
  El Burrito Loco
  The eponymous behemoth at El Burrito Loco is a vegetarian burrito that weighs at least a pound. It provides more than enough food to cover both lunch and dinner, but excuse us while we gorge out in one sitting. Stuffed full of refried beans, Spanish rice, pico de gallo, Chihuahua cheese -- not... More >>
• Best Taco
  La Monarca
  A few forkfuls of shredded pork, a visible amount of chopped cilantro and a sprinkling of diced white onions, swathed in two warmed (not fried) tortillas. That's all there is to the tacos at this family-run Mexican grocery, Asian-happy Olive's nod to south-of-the-border food. No lettuce, no... More >>
• Best Fish Taco
  Salina's Mexican Café
  Certainly one of the greatest ideas in culinary history, the fish taco is nevertheless a tricky one to pull off. So it's not surprising that the dish, which enjoys huge popularity on the West Coast, doesn't appear all that often on St. Louis menus. Time was the best fish taco in town was the one... More >>
• Best Ceviche
  Mirasol
  Sayonara, sushi. Although we've loved you for years -- you were our first foray into truly foreign food, after all -- there's a new raw fish in town. It's down on Delmar, across from the Pageant, and it calls out to us almost nightly: Have the Honduran, eat the Ecuadoran, sample the salmon and... More >>
• Best Rarebit
  Dressel's Pub
  This city's approaching another fall, which is just a short interlude before a cold, daylight-deprived winter. Pools are already closed, open-toed shoes a no-no. As pleasantly cool evenings give way to brisk ones and six o'clock begins to look like midnight, it's hard to get motivated to do much... More >>
• Best Macaroni and Cheese
  Big Sky Café
  Macaroni and cheese is cuisine's common denominator. Babies just starting on finger foods love it, many a college student and broke twentysomething has sustained life by eating the perfectly matched duo exclusively. The dish is simple and hard to screw up for the kitchen-challenged -- with a bit... More >>
• Best Caesar Salad
  Frazer's Brown Bag
  Oh, the Caesar. Once a proud salad, prepared for vacationing movie stars by Tijuana chef Caesar Cardini, it's now too often besmirched by gloppy dressing or (perish the thought!) iceberg lettuce. Absolutely not so at Frazer Cameron's lauded restaurant, where the Caesar is something to celebrate.... More >>
• Best Barbecue
  Smokin' Al's
  The blues tunes Al Solis plays as background music at his canary-yellow barbecue joint tend to stick in one's head, but for some reason his lip-smacking ribs bring to mind the words of a white-chick songstress: Nobody does it half as good as you/Baby, you're the best. Solis'll be the first to... More >>
• Best Beer
  Stag
  The centennial of the St. Louis World's Fair gives us a once-every-hundred-years opportunity to reclaim Stag beer as our own. A little history: Before 1907, Stag was called Kaiser beer, named for the Wilhelm family of German emperors. But when Kaiser II fell out of favor during World War I, the... More >>
• Best Pizza (Thick Crust)
  Black Thorn Pub
  No matter that it's known as "Chicago-style"; the Black Thorn Pub's thick-crust pie is like the Gateway Arch of pizzas. It is taller than you could have imagined, seeing it with your own two eyes for the first time, and it is famous around these parts. With a cheese-stuffed crust, a spicy,... More >>
• Best Crêpes
  City Coffeehouse & Creperie
  Crêpes are comfort food that's undeniably French -- i.e., rich, delicious and vaguely cosmopolitan. Nestled in the downtown Clayton business district (and somewhat recently expanded to meet overwhelming demand for these French culinary luxuries), City Coffeehouse offers a wide variety of... More >>
• Best Coffee
  Goshen Coffee Company
  Coffee is the defining beverage of our generation. Thick, rich, sexy, hot, brown coffee, the kind you want to swim in. Oh java! Whether cut with half-and-half, soy milk, two-percent, Sucanat, Sweet'N Low or taken in its unadulterated form, the brown dragon has in the past decade both fueled an... More >>
• Best Pizza (Thin Crust)
  La Pizza
  There is no onomatopoetic term that can accurately convey the sound of biting into a perfect New York-style pizza crust. But there is perfect New York-style pizza around these parts that will make that sound for you when you do bite into it, and it's waiting for you at La Pizza, the teeny-tiny... More >>
• Best Use of the Worst Cheese
  Tomato sandwich
  Melt Provel atop cracker-thin pizza crust smeared with tomato sauce and you get something akin to plastic lava. Yet when Minions proprietor Barb Laidlaw stacks her baguette-like sandwich bread with slices of fresh tomato and that very same Provel, your palate does cartwheels. A simple,... More >>
• Best Doughnuts
  Donut Drive-In
  A 1950s-era marquee points to the low-slung, square white building at the intersection of Chippewa Street and Watson Road. Inside Donut Drive-In, Sharon hands a little girl a doughnut to sample. The girl presses her face to the store's two glass cases, which are filled with an array of... More >>
• Best Fast Food
  SanSai
  It's no coincidence that, a few short months after Westport Plaza's Drunken Fish sushi lounge opened a second St. Louis location in the Central West End, burgeoning fast food (sorry, fast-casual) chain SanSai Japanese Grill will likewise expand to its next area outpost in downtown Clayton (which... More >>
• Best Delicatessen
  Posh Nosh
  Last time we noshed at the Posh, a kindly older woman with snow-white hair, black eyeglasses and the most fetching smile took our order. She looks as if she's been around forever, which is about as long as the Posh Nosh has maintained its reputation as Clayton's classic deli. (We're here to tell... More >>
• Best Bakery
  La Dolce Via
  Little bits of Americana we wish weren't endangered species: Delivered milk. Uniformed gas-station attendants. Dressing up nice when traveling by air. The neighborhood bakery. Luckily, that last one can be easily found in St. Louis, on a tree-canopied corner in Forest Park Southeast. La Dolce... More >>
• Best Milkshake
  Crown Candy Kitchen
  "Milkshake" (with apologies to Kelis, Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams) My milkshake brings all the boys to the north side! And they're like, It's better than Steak n Shake! Damn right, it's better than Ted Drewes! I can teach you, but I have to charge less than four bucks! I... More >>
• Best Smoothie
  Sushi and Smoothies
  An avocado smoothie? Sounds gross, but it ain't. Which is, come to think of it, an apt description of Sushi and Smoothies itself. A relatively new and somewhat oddly placed (across from Bob's Seafood) wonderland of Japanese-influenced fare, Sushi and Smoothies features fresh smoothie ingredients... More >>
• Best Ice Cream Parlor
  Serendipity
  Let's make some ice cream. Get some heavy cream, some whole milk, some sugar and whatever else you crave (we like to throw in some chopped-up Cherry Mashes). Don't measure anything out, just mix it together in whatever ratios feel right. Dump it in an ice cream maker, let it run until it looks... More >>
• Best Concrete
  The Great Pumpkin
  Nothing tastes like nostalgia. And no concrete we've ever tasted combines childhood winter-holiday memories with reminiscences of carefree summers past like the Great Pumpkin, a seasonal concoction whipped up August through December at Ted Drewes. Even the way the Great Pumpkin is made -- an... More >>
• Best Chocolate
  Bissinger's
  Breakfast may never be the same: Bissinger's opens at 9 a.m. Forget the cereal. Leave the eggs in their shell. You need a hot cup of freshly brewed java, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. If you're lucky and it's July, try an eye-opening chocolate-covered raspberry, the best you'll ever taste.... More >>