3818 Laclede
314-533-7000
Lunch and dinner daily
We’ll lay odds that any University of Missouri alum over the age of 45 can tell you a story about The Shack, the famous dive bar inked onto the mid-Missouri map by cartoonist-in-residence Mort Walker. If Brant Baldanza (The Corner Pub & Grill and The Tavern) and partners have their way, The Shack PubGrub will become to Saint Louis University students what its namesake was to counterparts at Mizzou. Think about it: Unlike Shakespeare’s Pizza and The Heidelberg in Columbia, SLU has no mandatory restaurant stop on memory-lane junkets. The original Shack never boasted a behemoth like the betcha-can’t-finish-one, fries-on-board Shack-Wich, looking perfectly in scale atop its mini–sheet-pan “plate,” or the signature Shack burger, ground in-house from sirloin, brisket, and chuck steak, then smashed and dashed with Shacklicious sauce. Riding on backless steel stools, sipping a Shock Top or slamming Sha-Bombs, SLU students debate whether their Shack will become that Shack… We, meanwhile, scan the room for the next Mort Walker.
