St. Louis Restaurants
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The Shaved Duck
"Classically European…comfortably American," says The Shaved Duck’s website. That’s one of the few mistakes we’ve seen from this South Side bistro, an offspring of the Scottish Arms, a Highlands Tweed pub-style bar and restaurant between Midtown and the Central West End. The Duck veers way off the classic European track. And thank goodness for that,
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Sunset 44 Breakfast Buffet
"It’s not a brunch. It’s a breakfast buffet." That’s Bob Menendez, veteran St. Louis restaurateur and long-time owner of Sunset 44, but whose roots go back to the Circus Tent (Hampton Avenue? Fried chicken? Old-timers know.), talking about Sunday mornings at his place. And sure enough, there’s mostly morning food in the chafing dishes set
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SqWires Brunch
This isn’t really a complete review of the brunch at SqWires, but we recently had a chance to try a few things at a breakfast meeting. Happily, we could order from the usual menu, which isn’t always the case at some restaurants which restrict the options for larger groups. Frequent restaurant-goers know good coffee isn’t
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Pi
The number of die-hard Pogo fans is shrinking, just like The Greatest Generation. Pogo was a comic strip from the gifted Walt Kelly, light-hearted and cynical, simple and sophisticated, and now nearly forgotten except by aging true believers. So we need to explain that our opening salvo on this review comes from the collected
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Bartolino’s Osteria
At the corner of Hampton Avenue and I-44, an old St. Louis restaurant family graces a new Drury Inn. Technically on Sulphur Avenue, Bartolino’s Osteria sports its own entrance, a covered terrace, and several dining rooms. And at the moment, it’s hot, with a busy bar business and lots of casually dressed patrons of all
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Terrene
When Dave Owens left the rarified air of Plaza Frontenac to open Terrene, straddling the fuzzy boundary between Grand Center and the Central West End, he set the bar rather high, using his own vegetarian ideology to take a different approach to dinner, on both the menu and the plate. Like his former boss,
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Burger Bar
Parking was proclaimed as free on the recent night when we visited Lumiere Place, and it proved to be the most positive – or least negative – experience during an evening when the blackjack dealer turned hot, the slot machines turned cold and dinner at the Burger Bar was way too expensive, though we had
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Pappy’s Smokehouse
"Why," we asked each other, smiling happily "wasn’t there a place like this when we lived nearby?" Pappy’s Smokehouse is at the intersection of Olive and Cardinal, a block east of Compton, actually facing Cardinal rather than Olive, on the edge of what once was the Brigadoon-like Laclede Town. Ann lived in Laclede Town in
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The Piccadilly at Manhattan
A tip from one of many food fans with whom we chat sent us looking for this quiet neighborhood spot in Maplewood. South of the railroad tracks and east of Big Bend Boulevard, it stands at the corner of Piccadilly and Manhattan, which should be — but isn’t — the intersection of a pair of
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Schlafly Bottleworks Brunch
If there is any meal where using the best ingredients makes the biggest difference, we’re convinced that it has to be breakfast. The difference between cheapo bacon and the artisanal product, for instance, or eggs from battery-raised chickens versus free-range, becomes apparent with the first bite–if not before, given the brilliant color of free-range egg