Photograph by Katherine Bish
An annual "cheap eats" issue is to city magazines what narcissistic self-importance is to the Academy Awards: practically mandatory. Unlike the Oscars, though, which serve approximately the same purpose in the universe as CD wrappers, pet hypnotists and Ricky Martin, a feature on cheap eats can be useful. Even the most sophisticated and discerning diner occasionally craves a meal in which the wine list has but four choices: red, white, kinda red and "don't make us laugh." We're fairly sophisticated and discerning ourselves, but we like to keep an eye out for these kinds of places as well. Herewith, some of our favorites.
Nadoz Café
All right, one more time: Crêpes are made of wheat flour and always have sweet fillings or toppings. Galettes, a Breton classic, are made of buckwheat flour and have savory fillings. Taste the difference at Nadoz Café. Smooth and stylish, this place on Lindell, near the Fox, is among the most graceful and attractive eateries in town, from the arching windows that bathe the dining space in sunlight during the day to the subdued lighting that gives it a romantic evening glow. It’s become the weekend spot for a light lunch in midtown. It’s hard to go wrong with a menu that tempts with nearly every selection: a breakfast panini with eggs on grilled sourdough along with applewood-smoked bacon and cheddar; a smoked turkey–and–avocado sandwich, spicy with the addition of pepper Jack cheese and chipotle dressing; a lime and garlic–spiced Cuban pork sandwich with cilantro pesto. The sweets, from Linzer tortes to white-chocolate cheesecake to peanut-butter cookies, are designed for the serious dessert aficionado. The specialties here, though, are the crêpes (one made with chocolaty Nutella, butter and sugar) and galettes (the best is filled with smoked ham and cheddar with a honey-mustard sauce). Try one of each, and we won’t have to repeat our lecture on the subject.
3701 Lindell, 314-446-6800, www.saucemagazine.com/nadoz
Crêpe: $3-$5
Schlafly Bottleworks
A brewery. In St. Louis. It’s a wacky idea, but it just might work. Tom Schlafly took the leap more than a decade ago, opening a spacious brewery and adding a restaurant. The Tap Room was an immediate hit, and now Schlafly Bottleworks is one of the primary factors in the renaissance of Maplewood’s commercial district. There’s the famed pale ale, a malty Hefeweizen, American lagers and Czech-style pilsners, all brewed on site. Dinner entrées here don’t exactly qualify as “cheap eats,” but the rest of the menu has a savory value that’s too good to ignore. The kitchen bounces culinary creations off the wall and onto the table like they’re bad checks: bison stew spiked with oatmeal stout; sardines on grilled white bread with mustard; a turkey burger with Monterey Jack, vegetarian chili and guacamole; venison cheesesteak; an ahi Reuben with a honey and wasabi mayonnaise decorating seared tuna, shredded cabbage and Swiss cheese on Russian black bread. It’s the most fun your tongue will have that can be described in this magazine. Along with tours of the brewery, the Bottleworks offers live music on weekends and sponsors a film festival the first Wednesday of the month, a farmers’ market in season and an annual art fair on the parking lot. We’re betting this place makes it.
7260 Southwest, 314-241-2337, www.schlafly.com
Sandwich: $6–$10
Chuck-A-Burger
In ’57, as the Soviet Union squandered valuable resources on Sputnik, Chuck-A-Burger introduced carhop service at its new joint on the Rock Road. Today, the Russkies are keeping their jalopy space stations up with borrowed duct tape and coathangers, but the Chuck-A-Burger carhops are still going strong. Celebrate American genius as you contemplate the single, super or triple “Chuck,” a crispy-edged, griddle-fried burger loaded with toppings. Or go for the breaded pork loin or the grilled steak sandwich. A BLT (with lots of B) comes, as it should, on toasted white. Sides of shoestring or curly fries are de rigueur; Cokes can be laced with cherry, vanilla or strawberry. Much of the neighborhood, including Ritenour High, just across the street, looks like the setting for Happy Days, but this place in particular lies in a time warp, with weekend classic-car “cruises” in the parking lot and the most poodle skirts in one place since Dick Clark started dyeing his hair.
9025 St. Charles Rock Road, 314-428-5009; 3150 Elm Point Industrial, St. Charles, 636-916-1957; www.chuckaburger.com
Burger: $2.35–$4.75
Romine’s
Southern-style fried-chicken joints were once to St. Louis what “significant others” are to family reunions: numerous and varied in personality, with some coming and going quickly, others hanging around forever and a few turning out to have arrest warrants outstanding in Alabama. (OK, so no analogy’s perfect.) Once a part of the city’s culinary heritage, great fried chicken and the places where it was served have become steadily harder to find. Romine’s Restaurant & Bar has been standing as a monument to this remarkable food since the ’30s. The paneled walls and plastic tablecloths give it a folksy ambience. It’s a down-home roadhouse, convivial as Sunday dinner at Cousin Bessie’s, only with clean dinnerware. To be sure, there are other items on the menu: burgers, steaks, chops and fried catfish, but chicken is front and center, dredged in flour and fine cracker crumbs to produce a brown, crunchy crust, leaving the meat inside juicy and tender. Daily specials mean you’d spend more on valet parking tips at another restaurant than on dinner at Romine’s. Sides are standard: french fries or baked potatoes, green beans and slaw—plus salads to assuage your guilt about this glorious celebration of fried chicken.
9053 Riverview, near the Chain of Rocks Bridge, 314-869-1900, www.rominesrestaurant.com
Entrée: $9–$10
Wings
You probably believe that you’ve got a Ph.D. in wings, but don’t present that dissertation until you’ve tried the wings at The Locker Room, a sports bar in Florissant. Somehow the cooks get sauce inside the wings, a scientific advancement at least as worthy of recognition as that 70-inch TV screen on the wall with something sports-wise playing.
10 Paddock Hills Plaza, Florissant, 314-837-0015
Nachomama’s
We share your sentiment that way too much “Tex-Mex” cuisine tastes the same—which makes Nachomama’s all the more exceptional. A loyal following gathers in this small eatery every night. Daily specials are scrawled on the chalkboard, with smoky, chipotle-marinated, slow-roasted chicken a big seller. A burrito, fat with rice, chopped tomatoes, lettuce and a big slab of fried fish, can easily feed two; enchiladas and chalupas are more reasonably sized. Tacos come in a variety of incarnations; the best is fajita-style, the slices of steak zingy with a splash of lemon. A gooey cheese brings big slices of portobello together in a flour-tortilla quesadilla. Sides of refried pinto beans are soft and silky yet retain their essential bean-ness instead of the puddinglike texture seen at so many Mexican eateries. The décor is distinctly reminiscent of the bar where you had the “reception” after that ill-advised first wedding in Tijuana.
9643 Manchester, 314-961-9110
Burrito: $4.75–$5.75
Pizza
Got an SUV-load of famished adults and kids? Accept our condolences and our advice: Go to Fortel's Pizza Den, indisputably one of the family-friendliest places around, with decent pizza and a push-tables-together-for-a-party attitude that makes for relaxing meals. The unique pesto pizza is more than worth a try.
Multiple locations; www.fortelspizzaden.com
Lampert’s Plush Pig Barbeque
St. Louisans remember the ’70s as the era of disco, Bob Gibson and some of the most excruciatingly awful local commercials ever to foul a TV screen. Larry Lampert was near the head of the pack with ads for his car-parts store. He moved on, opening a fair pizza place and an even better sub-sandwich shop. Now he’s back, with a barbecue joint we’re willing to accept as a delectable apology for those commercials. Lampert’s Plush Pig Barbeque is a festival of ’cue diversity. Pulled pork is prepared Carolina-style, the meat shredded and moist. Brisket is in the Texas tradition, slices slow-smoked to perfection, and ribs get a crusty coating that’s the noble mark of Kansas City’s finest barbecue. The Pig understands that sauce, like your Uncle Fred at Sunday dinner, is best put discreetly to the side. At this place, it’s in used liquor bottles—again, reminiscent of Uncle Fred. The pit here burns Missouri cherry that gives the meat a distinctive smoky tang. Sides of slaw, fries and potato salad complete a meal that’s served on wooden picnic tables. In good weather, those under the umbrellas in back are choice spots for a taste of down-home barbecue in downtown Clayton.
7814 Forsyth, 314-725-4411, www.plushpigbbq.com
Sandwich and Side: $8.50
Chili
A chance to see your lawyer strolling by or your often-indicted-never-convicted cousin on his way to yet another court appearance, Chili Mac's Diner, just across from the St. Louis County courts and jail, is a view on the Clayton scene—with a huge bowl of chili (beans or not; you make the call) on the side. Slingers, BLTs and burgers are also offered at this classic spinning-stool diner.
6 S. Central, 314-721-8880; 3523 N. Broadway, 314-231-9546
Billy Sherman’s Deli
We wade into our local DMV toting more papers than they used at the last G8 Summit, inevitably to be informed by the glacial functionaries that we’re missing something. Nevertheless, we leave—though plateless—happy, because just next door is Billy Sherman’s Deli, where plates are imminently more accessible and rewarding. A shmear of lox on a bagel is a comforting salve for bureaucratic burns. Add the three-egg omelet with cheddar, green peppers and mushrooms, and you’ll be ready to get that proof-of-collusion-with-camels insurance that’s now required before you get the little sticker someone’s going to steal anyway. Or try the eggs scrambled with chunks of salami and matzo. Speaking of matzo, Billy Sherman’s serves a dynamite version of matzo soup with meaty kreplach dumplings. There are dozens of deli sandwiches: The hot pastrami melt with gooey Swiss on grilled rye with a side of chunky potato salad is a classic. So is a turkey club on toast with a side of potato pancakes with applesauce. The Monsanto Special piles beef (roast and corned), pastrami, salami, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing on a kaiser roll. Add desserts like warm apple strudel, rugelach and Ashkenazi-style hamantaschen cookies, and it’s like being in New York—where the line at the DMV is now measured in years.
12937 Olive, 314-434-7340, www.billyshermansdeli.com
Sandwich: $4–$7
India Palace
It’s a 747’s view of the airport—with biryani! India Palace perches 11 stories above the runway in an old Howard Johnson’s building, and it’s the home of one of St. Louis’ best Indian lunch buffets (no small feat). Ruby-tinged tandoori chicken, curries of lamb and chicken and a spectacular fish curry are all fresh, hot and plentiful. The prawns masala are pungent with ginger and tamarind, and there are several versions of paneer, the mild cubed cheese of India. And who could pass up “goat pickles”? There are crispy deep-fried puffs of poori; thick, yeasty nan; circles of whole-wheat roti. Hoist a frozen-mango dessert, kulfi, to those poor souls standing in security lines at the airport and to your good fortune for being here and not among their pathetic lot.
4534 N. Lindbergh, 314-731-3333
Buffet: Weekday lunch, $8.95; weekend lunch, $11.95
French Fries
Were it not for counter service aptly described as sclerotic, Big V's Burger Joint, in the Market in the Loop, might be the perfect burger joint. As it is, the french fries here—veritable allumettes—are crispy, salty, satisfying and as good as they get.
6655 Delmar, 314-863-2448
City Diner
For reasons best articulated by our therapist, sometimes we’re in the mood for a suave, stylish, contemporary setting for dinner; other times, we want to chow down at LaVerne’s Y’all Kum Back Inn. So it’s a relief that at least two of our personalities can be accommodated simultaneously at the City Diner. Retro-hip pop art on the walls and Bertoia-style lamps mesh with ’50s-era nostalgia-rific Formica tables, plastic-padded aluminum chairs and spinning diner stools at this eatery. Open 24 hours a day on weekends, the diner attracts teen slackers and suburban professionals, families and first dates. Go traditional with Salisbury steak, fried-egg sandwiches or meatloaf—or how about seafood pasta in curry cream sauce, eggplant Parmesan with polenta or grilled lemon-herb chicken? You can order an appetizer of grilled polenta in a wine–and–sun-dried-tomato sauce—or buffalo wings. There aren’t many kitchens that produce bacon cheeseburgers and vegetarian burritos with equal ease; here, we recommend both. Nightly specials such as Wednesday’s fajitas and Friday’s all-you-can-eat fish fry add to the appeal. Earlier problems with excruciatingly slow service appear to have been remedied. Still, you’ll want to plan for plenty of time to enjoy both the food and the entertaining ambience.
3139 S. Grand, 314-772-6100
Sandwich: $4.50–$6.95
Pita Plus
OK, so we’re eating, and a beautiful high-school girl comes bouncing in, wearing a poofy lavender silk dress. Grandma comes out from the kitchen, and there’s all kinds of hugging and hollering and one of the men is taking pictures. We think it’s prom night—but the girl could just as easily be celebrating a brilliantly successful sex-change operation. We have no idea, because Grandma’s speaking Uzbeki. We do know Pita Plus has the best gyros in the area: generous shavings of pressed beef and lamb, fragrant olives, chopped onions and tomatoes, with bottles of tzatziki at the ready. You can also get golden triangles of burrekas—flaky pastry stuffed with cheese, spinach or potatoes—and achingly sweet diamonds of walnut-studded baklava, glistening with honey. Home-baked stacks of pita sell out early each day. If you’re lucky, you can get a bag of crusty, crunchy pita chips, perfect with the gyros. Pita Plus is a hugely popular lunch spot; try it in the evening, when the line’s not so long.
13005 Olive, 314-453-9558
Gyro: $5.75
Gumbo Shop
While it looks as if the decision to locate our own next-to-a-big-river city above the waterline proved a wise one, our own efforts at importing the phenomenal cuisine of our Louisiana counterpart, New Orleans, have been stuck in neutral for years. What is arguably America’s greatest cuisine has been blessedly available only in little hole-in-the-wall places here, such as the superb Gumbo Shop. The setting is modest, with only the finest in Styrofoam tableware—and, speaking of tables, there are almost enough to seat a soccer team, if you don’t count the goalkeep. But when the urge for New Orleans’ most famous contributions to the world—aside from corrupt cops and jazz—hits, steer for this place. The gumbo, Mississippi-mud brown, consists of shrimp and sausage swimming in a potent roux. Jambalaya is fluffy and fragrant and studded with sausage. Loaves of bread are split and stuffed with crispy fried oysters or shrimp. Blackened or fried catfish, frog legs and hushpuppies are all prepared with that inimitable Crescent City voodoo, and you can wash everything down with a variety of beers. A thick Southern-style bread pudding is a favorite here for those who, inexplicably, claim to like the stuff.
9501 Manchester, 314-918-8747
Gumbo: $4.79–$6.99
Crown Candy Kitchen
Look, we can put away the groceries; we’re professional eaters—but the guys who can down an entire malt or shake at Crown Candy Kitchen are in another league altogether. On a corner in a neighborhood that’s the “before” picture in an urban-gentrification project, the interior is like a Hollywood set. A classic soda fountain, Crown Candy has wooden benches and enough Coca-Cola signage and other memorabilia to qualify as a museum—a museum that serves really great sandwiches and desserts. The Big Cheese stacks provolone, Swiss, cheddar and American on grilled sourdough. The Reuben is good; the egg-salad sandwich a specialty; the BLT the stuff of legend. Ice cream is fabulous here, in sundaes or cones and in 24-ounce shakes and malts. Put away four in 30 minutes, and they’re free. Finish one, and you’re ahead of us. Note: Crown Candy is also one of the only places in town where you can enjoy a phosphate. The place opened in 1913, and Methuselah, who just got seated ahead of you, has been in line all that time, or so it seems; the queue stretches out the door at lunchtime. It won’t seem worth the wait if it’s your first trip, but eat one chocolate-banana malted and you’ll be planning your next visit.
1401 St. Louis, 314-621-9650, www.crowncandykitchen.com
Sandwich: $3.25–$6.50
Pat’s Bar & Grille
Never trust a man who wears his sunglasses like a tiara or a woman who has more rings on her hand than fingers, and never eat in a place with an Irish name unless your appetite is whetted by lachrymose, toneless ballads about something irretrievably lost. We’re firm on the first two, but we make an exception with the last for Pat’s Bar & Grille, a Dogtown fixture. The Reuben is delicatessen quality; the “Irish toast,” stuffed with banana flambé, is a local brunch favorite; and fried shrimp, onion rings, frog legs and the famous “chicken-fried chicken” are all daily staples. What draws the cognoscenti, though, are the livers and gizzards—great heaping mounds, golden, plump, lightly breaded. An acquired taste, true, but if you’ve acquired it, this is the place. The atmosphere is about as formal as a tailgate party, and there’s less green decorating the Amazon basin than there is in this joint. Stop by on St. Patrick’s Day for a quiet, intimate lunch.
6400 Oakland, 314-647-6553
Chicken dinner: $7.50
Hot Pretzels
Gus' Pretzels, in Benton Park, has been twisting 'em since 1920: chewy, doughy links of unleavened loveliness, made right in front of you. It's the eating place to take out-of-town visitors who think that they've got St. Louis cuisine figured out just because they've had toasted ravioli. Go for the pretzel sandwich, stuffed with salsiccia and a honey-mustard dip.
1820 Arsenal, 314-664-4010
Aya Sofia
The Hittites were evicted by the Romans, who were handed their helmets by the Byzantines, who, as a result of some rather poor pitching, got shut out against the Seljuk Turks, who won some and lost some against the Crusaders, who eventually faded against the Ottoman Empire, who ... well, let’s just say that Turkey’s history has almost as many victims as a month’s worth of Oprah Winfrey Show episodes. But in between wars, they developed some great food. Aya Sofia brings several Turkish delicacies to St. Louis. Ground beef and eggplant slices are slathered with tomato sauce in a wonderful moussaka. Sigara boregi are tubes of phyllo stuffed with feta and fried. Izgara kofte is the name of a dish of slightly spicy broiled meatballs. Lamb shanks braised in an herbed tomato stew are known as kuzu incik, a classic you’ll savor (just one more thing you have in common with Suleiman the Magnificent, who was supposedly crazy about the dish). It’s a step above “cheap,” but you’ll be hard pressed you find a selection of mezeler (appetizers) as numerous and rewarding—shrimp kebabs, stuffed mussels and piles of warm pita with dipping sauces. The booths are cozy, and the gauzy curtains, screens and other decorations will make you feel homesick if you grew up in a seraglio.
6671 Chippewa, 314-645-9919
Moussaka: $14
Best Chef Chinese Restaurant
Local buffet buffs were still in mourning over the passage of the outstanding Chinese fare laid out daily at the corner of 141 and Manchester when word of a phoenixlike reincarnation started to spread. Reopened as Best Chef Chinese Restaurant, the space has been extensively spiffed up: It’s cleaner and brighter, and the serving tables have been rearranged for easier access. The buffet is actually better than it was, no small feat. Best Chef manages to strike a wonderful balance, providing dishes based on a variety of Chinese cuisines, some that will be familiar and will please the average Western palate, plus others that are happily, deliciously authentic. Roasted duck, soy sauce–braised chicken and curry-dusted Singapore-style noodles are available, along with such specialties as baby octopus, tender sheets of beef tendon and crunchy, sweet seaweed in sesame sauce. An array of new dishes is almost constantly appearing, and the odds are good that you’ll run across something you not only never considered trying but also never even thought of as a foodstuff. This is a good place to have a taste—and it is the place for a long, leisurely lunch or dinner during which you take the time to sample the amazing array. There’s a modest selection of dim sum snacks and steaming piles of crab legs for the cracking.
17 National Way, Manchester, 636-394-1700
Buffet: Lunch, $5.95; dinner, $8.45
Sen Thai Bistro
On a descending scale of annoyance, if Kabbalah bracelets are number 10 and Michael “Lord of the Dance” Flatley a solid number one, the dining companion who “just doesn’t know” what he’s in the mood for is about a four. Don’t haggle with him. Take him to Sen Thai Bistro. Stylish and upscale with a soaring ceiling and bright walls, a classy bar and glossy wood floor, this downtown eatery has the look and feel of fine dining but prices that make it a phenomenal bargain. Pad thai noodles tossed with fried tofu, bean sprouts, chicken, beef or shrimp and spiked with sour tamarind are delicious. Soupy curries of spicy red and green are thick with meat and vegetables. You can also order Japanese noodle dishes in broth with crispy fried tempura and a classic Hong Kong–style egg-noodle dish with char siu pork and shrimp-stuffed wonton. Then there’s the fragrant Vietnamese pho, with its addictive, beefy broth. At lunch Sen can be packed tighter than a Ladue deb’s social calendar, but try it for a completely rewarding downtown dinner.
1221 Locust, 314-436-3456, www.senthaibistro.com
Pad Thai: $8
Everest Café
We’re not going to be drawn into that old St. Louis debate about which place here has the best Nepalese food. For our money—though not much of it, because this is one of the choicest dining bargains around—it is the Everest Café. Too casually described as “Indian lite,” Nepalese food is much like Thai cuisine in that each region’s offerings are unique. Everest features several. Momo (dumplings) here are prepared in the Tibetan style, with more meat than dumpling, and steamed so expertly that they pass the test of leaving no sticky film on your fingers. The creamed-lentil dal soup has the spicy northern-India taste of the Chetri minority. Go for the complete thali meal, with small bowls of soup, rice and tarkari, a curry of vegetables or meat that’s fragrant with cardamom and turmeric. Pour the dal over the rice, then add a touch of the bright achar chutney and your curry and scoop it all up with disks of flat masala bread. A daily lunch buffet is a splendid way to try other specialties here, and, considering the, um, urban “authenticity” of the neighborhood, a daylight approach for your first meal here is suggested.
1916 Washington, 314-621-2021
Lunch buffet: $6.95
Sausage
Erected by the Indians as a primitive totem votive and later used as a landmark for westward-bound pioneers, the giant V that lords over the Overland landscape today reminds us that Chicago-style sausages—juicy, plump, speckled with celery salt and swaddled in a bioluminescent relish—await their devoted fans at Woofie's, a worthy shrine to the hot dog.
1919 Woodson, 314-426-6291
Mi Familia
The city’s Cherokee Street has become synonymous with inexpensive Mexican eateries, homey, bare-bones places where gringos and expatriates gather for humble fare of the sort found on street corners south of the border. Happily, the county’s begun to see these places as well. Mi Familia, which began as a grocery in St. Ann, is now entirely a restaurant with some of the best of Mexico to be found on plates. There are taqueria standards—chewy, soft corn tortillas stuffed with chopped steak, roast pork or fried tripe and tongue topped with cilantro and onions—but this place offers a wide range of other authentic Mexican meals, including several seafood dishes. Big tureens of clams, shrimp and mussels rattling in a rich tomatoey broth, fried oysters, Veracruz-style fish—all come from the tiny kitchen. We’d rather shave with a weed-whacker than listen to Mexican music, but a small stage and speakers promise cacophonous fun for those so inclined—and a well-stocked bar makes Mi Familia an even more attractive way to spend a night with your own familia.
10472 St. Charles Rock Road, 314-429-5005
Enchilada plate: $6.49
Adriana’s
Gather your kitchen knives—you know, the ones duller than the last season of ER. Get the cooler. Head to the Hill. Drop the blades off, as several local chefs do, at Bertarelli Cutlery, where for a pittance you can have a professional edge put on them. Then go to Viviano’s, right around the corner, to fill the cooler, because you should be cooking more at home. Now go to Adriana’s for lunch. Adriana’s is the original pressed-tin–ceiling soul of the Hill. Invariably crowded and convivial, it’s a thoroughly rewarding dining destination. Homemade meatballs or slabs of salsiccia painted with a rich red sauce, roasted peppers, and onions are almost too big to stay on the sandwich buns. Charlie's Special is an even sloppier delight, with mozzarella and provolone melted on a buttery garlic bread and loaded with black olives, chopped lettuce, tomatoes and onions, all drizzled liberally with an oil-and-vinegar dressing. Slices of Genoa salami on toasted garlic-cheese bread with slivers of onions and black olives make for a more manageable repast. The soups, rotated daily, are always worthwhile. So, too, are the sides of mostaccioli with meatballs or sausage. When you're finished, pick up your newly sharpened knives, stop by Fazio's for cannoli and congratulate yourself on an afternoon well spent.
5101 Shaw, 314-773-3833
Entrée: $5.75–$7.50
Tacos
Requiescat in piscis. Although we occasionally need a moment to get ourselves together when we think of the loss of Flaco's Tacos, we salute those who've picked up the fish-taco flag. Tortillaria continues to fiddle with a recipe that sometimes misses, with fish pieces too small, but hits deliciously more often as of late. And mucho credit to Del Taco, which has produced a fine fish taco that allows us to soldier on.
Tortillaria, 8 1/2 S. Euclid, 314-361-4443; Del Taco, multiple locations
Fast Eddie’s Bon-Air
If good fences make good neighbors, then big, fast-flowing rivers with treacherous undertows must make great ones. Even so, occasionally it’s nice to take the bridge and visit the folks in Illinois (state motto: “We’re not nearly as flat as Kansas”). Fortunately, you have no farther to go than over the river and a quick turn to the right before finding Fast Eddie’s Bon-Air. An Alton landmark, Fast Eddie’s is approximately the size of the Edward Jones Dome, but noisier. Two bars in the place mean a frosty for each hand, but, frigid brews aside, the draw here is the food. A slab of marinated tenderloin on a stick—the fabled “Big Elwood”—as well as bratwursts, pork kebabs and the half-pound and charmingly named Fat Eddie hamburger are all unabashed tributes to grilled meat. Patrons had a collective conniption when the huge peel-and-eat shrimp went up four pennies to 29 cents each a while back, but life goes on. The baseball cap–and–T-shirt crowd is well represented, but the clientele runs the gamut. Just note that it’s a bar, so if you don’t remember Duran Duran, you’re probably not old enough to go—and if you do, you’ll probably want to knock back a couple to help you forget. Thursdays through Sundays, there’s local musical entertainment.
1530 E. Fourth, Alton, 618-462-5532, www.fasteddiesbonair.com
Burger: $0.99
Top 5 Sandwiches
We pass boring meetings by mentally compiling lists of, say, the best curling team ever assembled, or the top five sandwiches in St. Louis, which are:
1. The Kopperman's Deli Reuben
2. The Cuban pork sandwich at the Tropicana
3. The thit nuong, a charbroiled-beef sandwich on a crusty French loaf, at Banh Mi So No. 1
4. Schneithorst's bison burger
5. The club sandwich at Penn Station Subs
Mac 'n' Cheese
Cheese macaroni at the Del Monico Diner. What else need we say? It's gooey and cheddary, with just the slightest golden crust on top to give another dimension in texture. The collard greens, fried chicken and other offerings are basically just side dishes for this cheese-and-carbohydrate repudication of all things Atkins.
4909 Delmar, 314-361-0973
Tin Can Tavern
Which goes better with the cube steak and onions, the Schlitz or the Old Milwaukee? If you have an opinion, you’re probably already a regular at the Tin Can Tavern & Grille. A relatively new culinary treasure, it crossbreeds the conviviality of a familiar neighborhood bar with the fare at the Fil-U-Up Diner: catfish fried in cornmeal; pork chops seared in an iron pan; chicken, fried or roasted. For some, the meatloaf alone is worth the long and lonely trip to exotic South City; others rave about hefty bricks of pot roast on a slice of Texas toast, covered with mashed potatoes and rosemary-scented gravy. With such sides as baked mac ’n’ cheese, applesauce and hushpuppies, what more do you need? Oh yeah—beer. This is a place for the kind of person who likes his beer the way he likes to do his best thinking: in the can. You can pop the top on more than 50 brands of aluminum-fresh frosties here, including one invitingly called High Gravity Malt Booze. Local bands caterwaul in the evening, Thursday through Sunday, and on game days that 42-inch plasma flat screen doesn’t show reruns of Masterpiece Theatre, if you get our drift.
3157 Morganford, 314-865-3003, www.tincantavern.com
Entrée: $7.25–$7.95
