Welcome to our inaugural City Guide, a special issue we hope will become an annual favorite. It's geared at visitors and transplants, explorers and culture seekers, people who are new to St. Louis or people who've lived here their whole lives and just want to get to know it better.
If it’s your first time visiting St. Louis, even if you’ve only got 36 hours, we’re ready for you — with an utterly unscientific, completely idiosyncratic guide to seeing the very best the city has to offer in a very short period of time.
But we know one guide doesn’t work for everybody. Maybe you’ve only got a single day here, or maybe you’ve already seen the touristy stuff and are looking to experience St. Louis the way the locals do. Hell, maybe you yourself are a local — and since you’ve already gone up the Arch and done the City Museum more times than you can count, you want to dig a little deeper, to get out of your comfort zone. Whether that means leaving the suburbs or venturing to them, we’ve got you covered. Our mini-guides to the Central West End, the Loop, Overland, south St. Louis and downtown St. Charles each offer a 24-hour agenda packed to the gills with delicious things to eat and fun things to do.
And still there’s more. Among many other offerings, we’ve got a guide to the city’s abundant live music offerings, a roster of all the best places to see art, a rundown of both the area’s hottest restaurants and an appreciation of its longstanding classics, and even a roadmap to exploring a dozen of the city’s best donut shops. Oh, and did we mention we tracked down the best place to try each one of the city’s finest local foodstuffs? T-ravs and frozen custard, here we come!
You can’t go wrong if you follow one of these guides, all of these guides or some mish-mashed combination. After all, this is St. Louis: The drinks are cheap, the traffic is light and the possibility for adventure is everywhere. Forgot to get tickets? There is an alternate option for every possible mood.
We hope you’ll check out whatever strikes your fancy — and if you’re still going strong at midnight, we’ve got some suggestions on where to keep the party going, too. Happy traveling!
