This month's cover story—the 35 best places to eat in St. Louis (p. 100)—got me wondering: How much of someone’s St. Louis story can be told just through restaurants? I’ll give it a go …
As a kid, I saw the inside of the Des Peres IHOP maybe twice a year (the state’s max, I was told, for legal consumption of chocolate-chip pancakes), wearing either church clothes or soccer cleats. Our pizza, I’m pleased to say, came from either Farotto’s or Two Nice Guys. (The latter was the long-closed Webster location that hugged the train tracks; all meal, I’d wait for a whistle.) Mike Shannon’s for my 13th birthday—as part of a kids-pick family tradition. (My older brother chose Stan Musial and Biggie’s; my older sister, showing some flair, pointed the station wagon toward a riverfront riverboat.) We’d all share post-Fox Cleopatra’s at the old Cyrano’s. In high school, I summered at the Frontenac Pasta House—free meals for employees—whose tables I bused like nobody’s business.
During the college years and after, when I lived in other cities, many St. Louis meals were held at my parents’ Glendale home; yet those that weren’t were also memorable—family gatherings at the now-closed Zinnia, plates of Kirkwood Kluckers with high school friends at 11 Mile House. When I returned to St. Louis in 2002 and bought a loft downtown a year later, I tried to support the neighborhood: lunches at Cummel’s and Cafe Brevé; a few dinners at the earnest Everest, fingers crossed that it’d make it (it has); way too much love shown to the Tap Room.
Then came courtship and marriage: a first cold beer at the Bottleworks; post-Tivoli appetizers at Cicero’s; our first “serious” meal at the swanky Kitchen K; dinner with my parents on the patio at Lorenzo’s; dinner with hers at Bosna Gold; round-one introductions to relatives at I Fratellini; bachelor-party dinner at the soon-shuttered Mirasol (totally not our fault); a post-marriage dinner with both parents at Aya Sofia; toasting my wife’s successful doctoral exams at Acero …
OK, so it seems like you can tell some kind of story this way. Been thinking of your own? Email it to feedback@stlmag.com, and we may post it on our new blog.
For now, back to the issue at hand. It’s the second St. Louis Magazine under the eye of new art director Kevin Goodbar, and the first with new senior editor Jarrett Medlin and editor-at-large Malcolm Gay. All three are terrific additions to the staff. The issue the whole team has put together—33 pages of dining coverage, including our first Restaurant of the Year; in-depth articles on a high-profile lawyer and a hopeful NFL star; a funny essay about buying a scooter—tells its own stories. We hope you find them filling.
