St. Louis Restaurants

  • Romance In a Restaurant

    The remodelled Tony's has now opened for business, and I hear there's some new items on the menu, too. I hope it's still a restaurant for romance, though, as I write here.

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  • Just One Bite: Cravings

    Virtue is all very well and good, of course. But sometimes virtuous eating falls totally, utterly, by the wayside and into a very deep culvert.  Lured by a taste of a friend's dessert last week, I stopped by Cravings in Webster Groves for a single-item lunch: the caramel apple galette. And, yes, I had been

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  • Gringo

    The angled southeast corner of Euclid and McPherson had long been a perpetually dusty and smudged collection of windows, holding back a bursting collection of seemingly haphazard elderly furniture. To sit at the bar of Gringo, gaze out the now-sparkling windows at street life and try to integrate that setting with what used to be

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  • Just One Bite: Pastaria

    A late-ish visit to Pastaria because I was craving pizza proved a wise move this weekend. It's always fun to sit at the counter and watch the action. (And no cover charge for the live entertainment!) The warmth from the wood-burning oven felt really good, too. But it was the pizza itself that left me

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  • Brunch: Oceano

    Here we are in midwinter, a time when sunshine and lighthearted things are particularly appreciated. Bundling up and heading out to brunch requires some effort, but sometimes those efforts are amply repaid. At Oceano in Clayton, most brunch guests gravitate towards the front windows, not surprisingly, and settle in for coffee, mimosas and a long

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  • The Kitchen Sink

    The Kitchen Sink, the little hole-in-the-wall that began on DeBaliviere just off the Forest Park Expressway, has moved into more genteel quarters on Union – but still a half-block off the expressway. The site, on the ground floor of a prewar apartment building, has held several spots, from high-end dining to sports bars, but still

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  • A Happy Anniversary To a St. Louis Stalwart

    As St. Louis welcomes a new food writer at the Post-Dispatch, Daniel Neman (tell us how you pronounce that, Dan), the brave guy wades right into the whole provel question. Maybe you have to grow up with it, as I write about it in St. Louis Magazine. Folks are right about the meatloaf at Riverbend, of

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  • Element

    It's an adventure just finding the restaurant named Element. Between Lafayette Square and Soulard, it sounds easy enough. But itt's off a sidestreet, not possessed of much signage, and in one of several sort-of-similar buildings. Whether you've been around these parts long enough to say it's behind the old City Hospital #1 or if you're

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  • Blood & Sand

    How fair is it to review a private club? There would be no sense in reviewing the food at, say, the St. Louis Country Club – only members and guests can eat there. Blood & Sand opened last year to a lot of fanfare and a policy that it was members only after an introductory

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  • Zia’s

    A seriously mixed bag: A dinner for one at Zia's on The Hill. Some friends had spoken highly of it, and on a Saturday night (no reservations on Saturday, by the way), I set out early. And found a parking place, too. A good sign, I thought. And a nod in the direction of Hill

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