By George Mahe
Photograph by Katherine Bish
Yes, they share the same owner, but strike opulence from your expectations, folks. Lester’s Sports Bar & Grill is not Busch’s Grove—no reservations, no valet parking and no 4-pound lobsters. Envision, instead, a sports bar on andro, where speakers at each table can zero in on any one of 68 TVs around the bar and where perfecting the house-smoked meats required the staff to spend a month getting schooled at Harold’s Deli in NYC. But the parking is pure St. Louis (right out front), as is the official greeter: a bronze statue of Stan Musial, his warm smile relieving any fears of pretentiousness. The only nod to excess seems to be a $20 sandwich that boasts more than a pound of meat—yet, served with several slices of bread for sharing, it could be the best deal here or at Busch’s. But the main attraction will be the huge racetrack bar, tastefully finished in the manliest colors of men’s sports—black, blue and red—and the massive Scottrade-style video scoreboard that hangs from above. This place packs more testosterone than you’ll find at Talladega.
