St. Louis Restaurants
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The Original Pancake House
Our friends know we’re not much on chain restaurants. But we try not to be narrow-minded, and when we find an exception to the boredom of corporate food, we speak right up. And speaking of “up,” it’s time to rise and shine to have breakfast, or brunch, or breakfast-for-lunch, at the Original Pancake House. The
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Sidney Street Cafe
Kevin Nashan had quite a task. Buying the extremely popular Sidney Street Café in 2003, and becoming the chef, he faced the difficult situation of doing what he wanted to do without alienating the restaurant’s fanatically loyal customer base. And this is St. Louis, where “we’ve always done it like this” is an litany. Five
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La Tropicana Market
In this era of coffee mania, we found an excellent cuppa at an old favorite that we had never thought to connect to the beverage. Walking into La Tropicana, we were greeted by proprietor Luis Trabanco. "You know," we said, the lightbulb having gone on over our head en route to the shop/restaurant, "you ought
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Vito’s
For pre-theater and -concert dining in the Grand Center area, we often suggest Vito’s, and then firmly speak to the necessity of a reservation. On a recent weeknight, arriving at 6:30, we saw only two open tables, and those were in the bar at this popular Midtown location at the southern outpost of the arts
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Point of View
The old saw that the higher the floor on which a restaurant is perched, the less reliable the food, may be losing some of its edge. We lost a lot of our skepticism after a visit to Everest in Chicago a year ago and even more after a lunch downtown at Point of View. On
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Cafe Provencal
Airline tickets have skyrocketed, the exchange rate is enough to induce chest pains, and life is more than a little unstable these days. No time to go tooling off to the South of France, regardless of how enticing that sounds. But when the craving for daube and olives and eggplant comes over us, heading for
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C. J. Mugg’s
In "Casablanca," the movie, the line is "Everybody goes to Rick’s place." On a Friday evening at C.J. Mugg’s in Webster Groves, that was just about the way it was. Young and old, singles and tables of 10, folks at the bar watching sports and three generations having a casual dinner. They all were there.
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Nobu’s
Recycling is always a good thing, and when you can recycle a chain pancake house into a first-rate sushi restaurant, we’re all winners. Nobu’s is nearly always our first thought when someone says sushi, and when we visit, it’s the sushi that sucks us in, pulling our attention away from nearly everything else on the
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La Vallesana
Is it possible that the most exciting frozen dessert in town can be found on Cherokee Street? There’s strong evidence at La Vallesana, and a selection of dishes leading up to that dessert also a reason to visit. We were there on one of the many pleasant evenings recently, stopping at La Vallesana, in an
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BC’s Kitchen
Bill Cardwell, who has helped change and improve the dining habits of many St. Louisans for more than 20 years, has taken his show on the road–Highway 40/64 to be exact–nearly all the way to Wentzville. The new shopping center, which came out of its box with some further assembly still necessary, is called the