Restaurants >>

• Best Mall Dining
  Zodiac at Neiman Marcus
  When the ladies who lunch go shopping, the Zodiac at Neiman Marcus is where they lunch. With good reason: linen tablecloths, weighty silverware, courteous, attentive table service, chic white-on-white décor -- oh, and the food's topnotch. The lunch-only seasonal menu might feature a... More >>
• Best New Restaurant
  Moxy
  Years ago, when Eric Brenner was just another lifer working the line at one of the eateries on the Hill, slinging scampis and toasted ravs for the hoi polloi, he thought to himself: Why can't we do high-end food at a place like this? Later, when he transferred to a country-club kitchen, making... More >>
• Best Service in a Restaurant
  George
  How do we love George? Let us count the ways. We love that he's known to greet parties out in the parking lot -- umbrella at the ready when it's raining -- and escort them to their tables. We love that he remembers names after one visit. We love how he keeps patrons laughing throughout the meal... More >>
• Best Desserts
  Cyrano's
  Back in the day, between 1960 and 1996, you didn't go to Cyrano's just for dessert. You went to Cyrano's to impress your date, to feel cosmopolitan, to practice being romantic and/or to hang with friends. Cyrano's combined the charm of a cozy atmosphere, small plates of food and big, decadent... More >>
• Best Restaurant When Someone Else Pays
  King Louie's
  You are a cowboy. Daring. Adventurous. Rugged. Poor. So while the lusty cut of bone-in rib eye known at King Louie's as the cowboy steak is practically your birthright, its $38 price tag dictates that you rope in a richer rancher than yourself to cover your meal come check-wranglin' time. So... More >>
• Best Power Lunch
  Anthony's Bar
  Until recently, Anthony's Bar was strictly a lunch joint where attorneys, developers, bankers and media elite could be seen sharing bowls of potato chips in a noonday truce not unlike war-weary soldiers exchanging Christmas carols with their enemies. Now, with the coming of erstwhile downtown... More >>
• Best Local Chef
  Michael Roberts
  For nineteen months Atlas Restaurant has occupied a lovely space on Pershing, meshing perfectly with the sleepy-chic vibe of DeBaliviere Place. Nineteen months of fabulous piccolo fritto, nineteen months of perfect profiteroles. Nineteen months since San Francisco's loss became St. Louis' gain,... More >>
• Best Local Chef Without a Restaurant
  David Gilbert
  David Gilbert, formerly of Eau Bistro, believes the sensory element of the St. Louis dining scene is missing in action. He wants to change that and challenge diners to expand their culinary comfort zones. As he says: "After I'm certain that I've covered all the basics -- texture, sight, aroma,... More >>
• Best Wine List in a Restaurant
  Riddle's Penultimate Café and Wine Bar
  Every wine list tells a story. At many restaurants wine lists are composed as hastily assembled afterthoughts to the menu, or as thinly veiled attempts to turn mad coin on extortive markups. Those stories begin, Once upon a time there was a restaurant-owning schmuck who really didn't know or... More >>
• Best Décor
  Monarch
  It's a good thing we're talking about interior design here, or Monarch wouldn't even make the tail end of our list. The inner beauty that is Monarch resides in a squat brown-brick building in the heart of Maplewood. But inside it's a different story: Not just great décor, but great... More >>
• Best New Chef
  Kevin Nashan
  Kevin Nashan probably doesn't want to be mentioned here. Most likely he's fine with people not knowing that he's the new head chef at Sidney Street Café. As of December 2003, Kevin co-owns the wildly popular, twenty-year-old fine-dining landmark along with his wife, Mina and his brother,... More >>
• Best Chain Restaurant
  Sekisui
  Sekisui is the best kind of chain restaurant -- the kind that doesn't look, feel, taste or act like part of a chain. That's partly because, as far as St. Louis is concerned, it's one-of-a-kind: While the Sekisui franchise began a few years back in Memphis, where a handful of outposts now operate... More >>
• Best Italian Restaurant (Not Cheap)
  Trattoria Marcella
  In the past year Trattoria Marcella has expanded (for the second time in a decade) -- and the space still isn't big enough to contain the aromas emanating from the kitchen. The delicious smells sneak through the cracks and spill into the neighborhood in which Marcella resides, on the far western... More >>
• Best Italian Restaurant (Cheap)
  Mangia Italiano
  When it comes to Italian food in St. Louis, there's cheap and crappy and there's expensive and very good. But finding that middle ground? Not so easy. Mangia Italiano's quartet of owners, all of them armed with street-level restaurant experience, resurrected and updated their small space in 2002... More >>
• Best Tapas
  Modesto Tapas Bar & Restaurant
  If the winner is predictable because there are so few tapas joints in town -- what, like two-and-a-half? -- that does not diminish the excellence that is Modesto. Were there a dozen such establishments in the Lou, Modesto would likely reign supreme. Modesto serves up Spanish tapas in an... More >>
• Best Mexican Restaurant
  Lily's Mexican Restaurant
  Lily's is the "I know a little place" restaurant everybody wants to discover. It's not listed in the yellow pages and only recently found its way into the white pages. And once you find it, be prepared for bit of legwork. After being seated and choosing your meal, you place your order at the... More >>
• Best Guacamole
  Pueblo Solis
  Don't call the guacamole at Pueblo Solis a "dip." That would imply that this otherworldly guac is merely something to liven up tortilla chips. Instead, refer to the restaurant's warm, delicious chips as "guacamole spoons." Al Solis' convivial Mexican eatery does right by the avocado, mashing it... More >>
• Best Bosnian Restaurant
  Taft Street Restaurant
  St. Louis can boast the largest Bosnian population of any city in the nation, and the once German-dominated Bevo Mill area of south city, along stretches of Gravois Avenue and Morganford Road, boasts the largest number of Bosnian residents. Recently numerous Bosnian coffeehouses and delis have... More >>
• Best Greek Restaurant
  Olympia Kebob House & Taverna
  Sometimes you just don't mess with success. We loved 'em last year and we love 'em this year and locals have loved 'em for more than twenty years. At last count, there were about a dozen Greek restaurants in the St. Louis area, all of them serving gyros. But a gyro only goes so far. We want... More >>
• Best Place to Get Fatter
  The Cheesecake Factory
  Americans are getting fatter...and fatter. Despite the incessant calls to reduce our carbs to zero, watch our fat grams and expend the zillions of calories we ingest each day, restaurants (mostly the big chains) know human nature better than any psychologist. They know we lose all self-control... More >>
• Best Way to Blow Your Low-Carb Diet (1 Comment)
  The Pointersaurus Challenge
  Two people. One hour. A 28-inch pizza that weighs twelve pounds. Two meat toppings or four vegetable toppings. No leaving the room. Welcome to the Pointersaurus Challenge, staged by Pointers Pizza in Richmond Heights. If you and your podna can put away this gargantuan pizza, you win 250 bucks... More >>
• Best Lunch Counter
  Tiffany's Original Diner
  The place: A 24-hour greasy spoon, so narrow it contains only a classic countertop with vinyl-topped stools to the left, and to the right, a pinball machine, a cigarette machine, a few video games and a poster of Johnny Cash flipping the bird. An old TV hangs from the ceiling, broadcasting game... More >>
• Best Diner
  Olivette Diner
  A great diner can be counted upon to offer up both the reliable and the unexpected. Of course there are regulars whiling away the day over the morning paper, of course the coffee will always be hot and fresh, of course breakfast is served anytime and of course the person pouring the coffee and... More >>
• Best Buttermilk Pie
  Mama's Coal Pot
  Think of pound cake soaked in milk. Yellow cake batter, a bit undercooked. Chess pie with a smidge more tang. Made with the most basic of baking ingredients -- eggs, butter, flour, sugar, pinches of vanilla and nutmeg and, of course, buttermilk -- buttermilk pie has always been a staple of... More >>
• Best Soul Food Restaurant (1 Comment)
  Diner's Delight
  How do you like your tripe? At Diner's Delight the recipe calls for boiling, breading and then deep-frying the meat to golden perfection. Add two slices of bread, a wedge of onion and a dab of hot sauce and you've got the tastiest cow-stomach sandwich this side of the Mississippi. But it's not... More >>
• Best Steak House
  Annie Gunn's
  It's not your "typical" steak house, not the kind of place you get dressed up for, aiming to do some wallet-lightening wining and dining. On second thought, plan on some wallet-lightening wining and dining. Just leave your sport coat or little black dress at home, because Annie Gunn's is much... More >>
• Best Vegetarian Restaurant
  Everest Café
  Here's the thing about vegetarian restaurants: All the better if they're not vegetarian restaurants. Just because you don't ingest animal, that doesn't make you some sort of party-pooping, Debbie Downer stick-in-the-mud who can't have a good time and share a good meal with your carnivorous... More >>
• Best Seafood Restaurant
  Arthur Clay's
  If you and your honey are of a mind to drop a hundred-and-a-half on a meal for the ages, we heartily recommend diving into Arthur Clay's seafood menu. Chef/owner Steve Scherrer knows fish, and his connections to ocean fishermen are personal. Scherrer talks weekly, and often daily, with coastal... More >>
• Best Outdoor Dining
  King Louie's L'Etoile d'Or Grille
  Dining al fresco in St. Louis in the summer can be a crapshoot, but still we love to eat outside. Just witness the huge number of folks you see dragging picnic dinners to any of the many outdoor summer events. And there ain't nothing wrong with a picnic. But when you want to go a little upscale,... More >>
• Best Sushi
  Wasabi Sushi Bar
  Seems like every time we bend down to fetch a dropped chopstick another Japanese joint opens up. Fine by us -- we can never get enough good sushi. Note the good in that last sentence -- as in fresh. We've got several favorites -- Sekisui on South Grand (see "Best Chain Restaurant"), Nobu's on... More >>
• Best Vietnamese Restaurant
  Four Seasons
  Enough of the Vietnamese restaurants already! Just kidding. You can never have too many Vietnamese restaurants, and judging by the preponderance of new ones opening around town, the genre's giving the chop-suey biz a run for its noodles. Four Seasons took a chance by opening along a mile-long... More >>
• Best Spring Rolls
  Miss Saigon
  The Chinese call them chun juan and fry them. In Indonesia they're called lumpia. And the Vietnamese call them goi cuon. This last version is a paragon of its nation's cuisine, beautifully wrapped up in a chewy-soft translucent rice-paper package, a veritable salad-to-go. The rolls at Miss... More >>
• Best Indian Restaurant
  House of India
  Nearly every lover of ethnic food -- and the uninitiated friends we drag along -- has fallen in love with Indian cuisine. Just walking into House of India and getting a whiff of the pungent spices cause the nostrils to flare and the mouth to water in anticipatory delight. The aroma of garam... More >>
• Best Chinese Restaurant
  Yen Ching
  Mom would've made you a bowl of chicken noodle, but Mom's not around right now, and you need someone to make you something that'll make that damn cold go away or, at the very least, make you feel better. And so you head to Yen Ching, housed across the street from the Galleria in a modest,... More >>
• Best Dim Sum
  Lu Lu Seafood Restaurant
  When you ask a fellow dim sum lover, "Where do you go for dim sum?" chances are Lu Lu will be the reply. The restaurant's overwhelming popularity is proven every weekend, when Lu Lu's dining room is packed with raucous diners, chatting away in English and Chinese, picking snack-size morsels from... More >>
• Best Thai Restaurant
  Thai Bu-ree
  You can't find authentic Thai cuisine in St. Louis. As the great Jeffrey Steingarten writes in It Must've Been Something I Ate, "[E]ven some of the simplest Thai flavorings and ingredients and the principles of combining them are alien to the Western palate." So here are the criteria we adopted:... More >>
• Best Ethnic Restaurant Row
  South Grand Boulevard between Arsenal and Utah streets
  The St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission has taglined the South Grand district "St. Louis' International Neighborhood." As non-visitors who take great pride in the area's ethnic eats, we can only say: Duh! With its relentless representation of Vietnamese and Thai fare, not to mention... More >>
• Best Coffeehouse
  The Grind
  Circa 1957, before coffee became a corporate commodity, beatniks drank strong joe in smoky shops lined with old sofas and little tables. Circa 2004, the Grind is one of those places. It is gritty and different and reminds you why you like the city of St. Louis (and cities in general, really).... More >>
• Best Coffeehouse (Up-and-Coming)
  Rhythm & Brews
  At the tender age of nine months, Rhythm & Brews is already everything a strapping young coffeehouse should be -- including, for the time being anyway, largely undiscovered. It's got free wi-fi, local artists' work for sale on the walls, and a funky, chic, unpolished look to its stone floor and... More >>
• Best Place to Eat Out Alone
  DB's Sports Bar
  Distractions are what you're looking for when dining solo. Either that or newfound company. Have it both ways at DB's. As at any sports bar worth its salt, TV sets aplenty broadcast the game (or the endless armchair commentary when the game hasn't started yet). There's another notable diversion... More >>
• Best Sunday Brunch
  Marty's Baking
  Come Sunday morning we prefer to worship food -- specifically brunch, that holiest of meals, a testament to the healing powers of a huge spread of really awesome chow. That's why our church is Marty's Baking, our altar one of the splendidly set tables (complete with linen tablecloths and fresh... More >>
• Best Place to Order Off-Menu
  Tony's
  Ah, Tony's. The quiet murmur of satisfied, stuffed wealth. The subtle opulence. The way you can race a server to your chair in a vain attempt to stop him from holding it out for you. The wine list, and then the other wine list if you're prepared to go all-out. You must choose, so choose wisely.... More >>
• Best Place to Pretend You're in a Big City at 3 a.m.
  Coffee Cartel
  The clubs downtown have closed, but you're not ready to go home just yet. After years of chowing on the delightful Del Taco (and it is delightful) or having chili on your scrambled eggs (still delicious), your palate has become more demanding. What you need is a sandwich and a milkshake. Not... More >>
• Best Place for Late-Night Dining
  Cusumano's Pizza
  St. Louis-style pizza is a nocturnal junk food. It doesn't really come into its own until after midnight and a few rum-and-Cokes. Only then does that infamous cracker crust really ring delectable in the alcohol-blurred diner's ear. Only then does that pool of red sauce and greasy cheese register... More >>
• Best Restaurant Trend
  Wakin' up the neighbors
  Was it only a year ago when thrill-seeking palates had to schlep to the darkest corners of the Gateway City in search of adventurous vittles? When, if you felt like hanging around neighborhoods that boasted nightlife -- the Loop, Lafayette Square, Washington Avenue, the Central West End -- you... More >>
• Best Restaurant to Die in the Past Year
  Kirk's American Bistro
  Here's the problem with best-kept secrets: Whispers don't pay the bills. For seven years Kirk's American Bistro dished up stylish bistro fare -- butternut squash bisque, beef Burgundy, Long Island duckling and perhaps the restaurant's best-known dish, Japanese fried lobster -- to the trickling... More >>