ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

My very patient editors said yes, and in 2015 we launched the STL 100. In 2025, we proudly present the 10th anniversary edition of the list.

Much has changed over the past decade, not least the restaurant industry itself, thrown into crisis by the pandemic’s arrival in 2020 and, five years later, still dealing with how the pandemic has changed dining habits.

Of the 100 restaurants on that inaugural STL 100 in 2015, only 14 have remained on the list through all 10 editions. (Completists will note this is technically issue No. 11 of  STL 100; the 2021 edition, looking back on the first pandemic year, was a collection of stories instead of a list.)

For 2025, there is a new No. 1 restaurant, following the unexpected closure of last year’s top spot, Bulrush. Coincidentally, I first reviewed a restaurant from the chef of this new No. 1 a decade ago.

Here’s toasting 10 years of the STL 100 and the 100 restaurants we are celebrating this year.

Thanks for reading, and happy eating.

1. Sado and Pavilion

Japanese, Seafood, Sushi, Thai

In 2015, the same year the STL 100 debuted, young chef Nick Bognar opened Ramen Tei adjacent to his mother Ann Bognar’s Japanese restaurant Nippon Tei. My review of the ramen restaurant wasn’t a pan, exactly, but it was dismissive. I certainly wouldn’t have guessed Bognar’s trajectory.

A few years later, after a spell outside ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, he returned to take over the sushi program at Nippon Tei. He transformed the restaurant. His sushi was respectful of tradition, but thoroughly modern. A revelation.

This was merely a prologue for Bognar’s debut restaurant, Indo, which opened in 2019 in Botanical Heights (see No. 10). The menu featured an even more ambitious presentation of nigiri sushi as well as dishes that drew inspiration from his Thai heritage. Indo drew national acclaim and was poised to become the next great ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ restaurant.

Then the pandemic arrived. Indo weathered the worst of it, though Bognar’s multi-course omakase (chef-directed) dinners at its sushi bars didn’t return. In 2023, he and his family opened Sado on the Hill, which brought together his sushi program from Indo and customer favorites from Nippon Tei (now closed). One of that year’s best new restaurants, Sado entered the STL 100 last year at No. 7.

Sado would have returned to this year’s Top 10 based solely on its perfect single bites of nigiri sushi and such composed sashimi dishes as the signature Isaan hamachi with a coconut naam pla or the kanpachi cured in black tea. And, yes, also for its crab Rangoon.

Since then, however, Bognar has opened Pavilion, a separate enclosed space at Sado where he hosts omakase dinners for small groups of diners a few times each week. Here Bognar’s full, mature talent is on display with exquisite bites of expertly dry-aged fish. A piece of nodoguro (blackthroat seaperch) cured for six days is as rich as bluefin tuna.

Bognar also serves the expected luxuries at Pavilion: tuna, uni, wagyu beef, even foie gras. He knows when to apply a light touch (i.e., that tuna, in three different cuts) and when to return to his roots, seasoning A5 Japanese wagyu in tribute to his grandmother’s nam tok beef.

“When it smells like grandma’s kitchen, I know I’m up to something good,� he said during my 18-course dinner at Pavilion.

In fact, at Sado and Pavilion, Bognar is up to the best restaurant in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.

Last year: No. 7

Sado

• 5201 Shaw Avenue
• 314-390-2883;
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

Pavilion

• 5201 Shaw Avenue
• 314-390-2883;
• Dinner by prepaid reservation. Check for current availability
• $$$$

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2. Vicia

Contemporary

Eight years after Tara and Michael Gallina opened Vicia, the Central West End restaurant continues to compel national accolades. Most recently, Vicia chef de cuisine Jane Sacro Chatham is a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for “Emerging Chef,â€� a nationwide category. Leading Vicia’s kitchen for the Gallinas and their business partner and culinary director Aaron Martinez, Chatham upholds Vicia’s agenda-setting standard: sometimes hearth-fired, often vegetable-forward, always delicious. A late-winter dish of miso-cured ocean trout transcended modern trends into timeless elegance. The supple trout practically melted into its pool of shiro-dashi butter, which gave the fish a subtle swagger without obscuring its delicate oceanic sweetness. Vicia can still wow with a plate of vegetables, like a salad of carrots in a carrot vinaigrette with a citrusy bite of coriander. This is the flavor Bugs Bunny chases in his dreams, the carrot all other carrots aspire to be. Since last year’s STL 100, Vicia has switched to a traditional a-la-carte menu, though the menu retains a family-style “Let us cook for youâ€� option like its retired Farmer’s Feast tasting menu. However you dine at Vicia, it continues to be one of the essential ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ restaurant experiences.

Last year: No. 2

• 4260 Forest Park Avenue
• 314-553-9239;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$$

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3. Little Fox

Contemporary

Consider the arc of Mowgli and Craig Rivard’s Little Fox. It opened in January 2020, certain to be one of that year’s most buzzed about debuts. That March, of course, the pandemic shut everything down, and the future of all restaurants, let alone those with only a few months in the books, was in doubt. Five years later, you can see the pandemic’s scars across the industry, but Little Fox itself is thriving. This past year, the Fox Park restaurant opened for dinner on Monday, making it one of the few top-tier restaurants open on that typically quiet evening. That speaks to the demand for the food from Craig Rivard and his kitchen team. I’ve previously described his cooking as a Californian-Italian hybrid, but I think bountiful might be the best description, a menu full of impeccable technique, the season’s best ingredients and generous flavors that work together seamlessly. You can see it in the perfect texture of the bomba rice inside the ‘nduja croquetas, the jolt pickled peppers give to the mussels’ garlic-shallot broth and in the smoky, earthy, tangy accents a giardiniera of grilled hakurei turnips added to the ‘nduja-marinated bone-in pork chop with polenta, a signature dish I didn’t think could be improved further.

Last year: No. 4

• 2800 Shenandoah Avenue
• 314-553-9456;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday, brunch Saturday-Sunday
• $$$-$$$$

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4. Nobu’s

Japanese, Seafood, Sushi

Dinner at Nobu’s is quiet, but not silent. Noboru Kidera, the eponymous 76-year-old chef, might look up from center stage of his extraordinary Delmar Loop sushi restaurant to ask if you liked one of the courses he has selected, painstakingly prepared and artfully plated for your multi-course meal. George Kidera, Nobu’s son, will describe each dish and make small talk with you and your few fellow diners throughout the meal. Calm is the first descriptor that comes to mind when you step inside Nobu’s, with its blond wood and warm light like an upscale Nordic spa. As dinner begins, reverent better fits the mood. You can hear the click of spoons seeking the last drop in bowls of red snapper bone broth, the pop of dashi-infused trout roe against your teeth and a sigh of delight when the perfectly tart accent of green tomato seeds hits. Are you embarrassed when your noises turn frankly carnal as dinner moves through bluefin tuna, wagyu beef and uni? Don’t be. The passion on display here is quiet, but undeniable.

Last year: No. 3

• 6253 Delmar Boulevard, University City
• 314-323-9147;
• Dinner by prepaid reservation Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $$$$

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5. Root Food + Wine

Contemporary

The publication schedule of the STL 100 and my desire to bring you the freshest possible reports bring me to the region’s most prominent restaurants in late winter. Obviously, that isn’t the prime season to visit any kitchen that favors local farms and the ingredients of the moment, and it seems especially unfair to drive to Philip Day’s Root Food + Wine in Augusta before the trees along winding Highway 94 have begun to bud. Yet once again this year Day has floored me with an early March menu, where the mint chimichurri with pink peppercorn that accompanied lamb sausage and a couple of lamb fitters was more electrifying than other restaurants’ most verdant summer fare. Day continues to reinvent his signature winter mushroom appetizer, this time serving a consommé to sip alongside a custardy mushroom riff on Japanese chawanmushi. He coaxed unexpected elegance from the sweet potato: charcoal-grilled, maple-glazed and decorated with apple and mustard seed. I will return to Root well before 2026. Day has just changed Root’s menu format to highlight more game and vegetable dishes.

Last year: No. 12

• 5525 Walnut Street, Augusta
• 636-544-1009;
• Dinner Thursday-Saturday, lunch Saturday (closed Sunday-Wednesday)
• $$$-$$$$

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6. Mainlander

Contemporary

Change has come quickly to Mainlander, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ best new restaurant of 2023 and a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2024 for the country’s best new restaurant. Chef Blake Askew and his business and life partner Gordon Chen are moving Mainlander from its cozy original home in the Central West End to bigger digs in the same neighborhood. When the restaurant reopens in late spring in the former Salt + Smoke space by the intersection of North Euclid and McPherson avenues, it will feature a bar area as well as a dining room. Will this make it any less challenging to score a reservation? Probably not. My return to Mainlander this past fall found Askew and his team confident and playful, exploring Midwest cuisine through that month’s set menu, with inspired touches from various Asian cuisines: a riff on shrimp toast made with rainbow trout, Chinese bing with mushrooms, a main course that set fresh, delicate Minnesota walleye in sizzling sesame oil.

Last year: No. 6

• 392 North Euclid Avenue
• Temporarily closed to relocate
• $$$$

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7. El Molino del Sureste, Sureste

Mexican

Once again I must demand that the national tastemakers of the James Beard Awards, Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs, et al., take seat at Alex Henry’s exceptional Southampton restaurant El Molino del Sureste. If you are one of these tastemakers, and you’ve already been, go back. Usually, I don’t return to restaurants that debuted on the previous year’s STL 100 until the end of my research for the new edition, but Henry’s exploration of the cuisine of his native Yucatán, Mexico, required a visit in high summer for a cool ceviche percolating with chile heat and a huarache piled with juicy peak-season heirloom tomatoes. El Molino won’t celebrate its second birthday until September, but Henry and his brother Jeff have already transformed Mexican cuisine in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ with venison tacos, scallops in white chocolate mole and turkey dishes to persuade the Thanksgiving-averse. El Molino is now open for lunch with a more casual menu of tacos, and Henry continues to dazzle at the Food Hall at City Foundry with his signature cochinita pibil and other Yucatecan dishes.

Last year: No. 9

El Molino del Sureste

• 5007 South Kingshighway
• 314-925-8431;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday, lunch Tuesday-Friday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$-$$$

Sureste

• Food Hall at City Foundry, 3730 Foundry Way
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $-$$

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8. Louie

Italian

When did you realize our Jan. 6 snowstorm would be a Big Deal? I knew that very day when the unthinkable happened. The great Louie closed. Its employees, like the rest of us, were stuck at home. You can usually count on Matt McGuire to keep the wood-fired hearth burning inside his Clayton restaurant. Why wouldn’t he? Mother Nature would need to pack quite a wallop to keep diners from their coveted reservations here, and if Louie’s hearth can’t entirely vanquish winter’s chill, its unparalleled hospitality can. The appeal of chef Sean Turner’s menu is as consistent as the warmth of the restaurant’s embrace. That menu has hardly changed over Louie’s seven years, and the few additions during that time, like the grilled Spanish octopus with chickpeas, soppressata and Calabrian chiles, fit seamlessly alongside the unaffected pleasures of the roast chicken with rapini, the pork chop with chermoula and shishito peppers and the wood-fired pizza.

Last year: No. 8

• 706 DeMun Avenue, Clayton
• 314-300-8188;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $$$-$$$$

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9. Balkan Treat Box

Balkan, Bosnian

I bring you good news about the great Balkan Treat Box in Webster Groves. Two pieces of good news, in fact. As you might already know, last year Loryn and Edo Nalic opened Telva at the Ridge, also in Webster Groves, expanding their Bosnian and more broadly Balkan fare into breakfast. (You can read more about Telva in its entry in this year’s STL 100). Meanwhile, as of this March, Balkan Treat Box is open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Not that the restaurant lacked for crowds before, but first as a food truck and since 2019 as a brick-and-mortar, it has focused on lunch. If your schedule has kept you from Balkan Treat Box’s wood-fired and grilled fare, now is the time to try the plump cevapi (beef sausages) in hearth-baked somun berad or the char-speckled Turkish flatbread pide with tangy kajmak, prickly ajvar and more fresh herbs than a garden shop. It is easy to dwell on the meat options here — those cevapi, the chicken doner, the spicy beef lahmacun — but Balkan Treat Box also offers a terrific wood-fired eggplant dish patlidzan with apricot-pomegranate molasses as well as vegan and vegetarian versions of several signature dishes.

Last year: No. 5

• 8103 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves
• 314-733-5700;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $-$$

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10. Indo

Contemporary, Japanese, Seafood, Sushi, Thai

Nick Bognar continues to make big moves at Sado (see No. 1), opening the exclusive omakase counter Pavilion at his Hill restaurant. Meanwhile, his original Botanical Heights restaurant Indo hums along. Indo’s nigiri sushi moved to Sado when the latter restaurant opened. For a while, a selection of hand rolls replaced nigiri on Indo’s menu, but these were no longer available when I returned in February — and I didn’t miss them for everything else the restaurant does so well. The menu abounds with options brilliant in both conception and the colors on the plate. Composed sashimi dishes — silky dry-aged king salmon over the tart pop and dusky spice of a cranberry salsa macha — remain Indo’s signature. But I was just as impressed this year by plump, pan-seared scallops topped with lump crab meat and accented with Cajun-spiced butter and a pea puree, while chile-garlic noodles with mushrooms in an umami-bomb black garlic-soy sauce didn’t need seafood or meat to dazzle.

Last year: No. 10

• 1641D Tower Grove Avenue
• 314-899-9333;
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

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11. Noto Italian Restaurant

Italian, Pizza

For proof that Noto Italian Restaurant can do more than the metro area’s best Neapolitan pizza, just head to the lower level of its St. Peters building. Here Kendele and Wayne Sieve have opened Bormio, exploring the cuisine of Italy’s north, where it mingles with Swiss and German fare (see the Rest of the Best). Or you can stay in Noto itself — you scored that mandatory reservation after all — where executive chef Justin McMillen tempts you away from those wood-fired pies with a quarter of luscious duck confit in a teasingly tangy black-garlic agrodolce served over farro with pickled cherry. Black garlic appeared again this March in the aioli served alongside fried snow-crab claws, a luxury that demands you scrape the last sweet morsel of meat from each shell. Of course, I won’t blame you if pizza remains your go-to order at Noto, with its ideally charry, airy crust and elegant topping arrangements, like slices of mortadella with both bubbling fresh mozzarella and creamy stracciatella over a pistachio pesto.

Last year: No. 17

• 5105 Westwood Drive, St. Peters
• 636-317-1143;
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $$$

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12. The Crossing 🔟

Contemporary

The Crossing is one of only two restaurants to remain in the Top 25 of the STL 100 from its inaugural edition through today. Jim Fiala can add this distinction to the stack his Clayton flagship has earned over the past 27 years. For a practical example of the restaurant’s continued relevance, consider a weekday evening in early March, not exactly a bustling dining time these days. At the Crossing, though, I felt lucky to snag a table at 8 p.m. — and I made this reservation because I wasn’t confident I would find a free seat at its small bar. The fare overseen by Fiala and chef Thu Rein Oo redefines timeless. Even in late winter, it felt fresh, even revelatory. The seasonal luxury of shaved Perigord black truffle garnished a simple bed of housemade spaghetti. Succulent porchetta in its own juices provided a balm against a sudden cold snap, while the pork’s sweet bed of peas and rainbow carrots hinted at spring’s arrival.

Last year: No. 11

• 7823 Forsyth Boulevard, Clayton
• 314-721-7375;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday, lunch Monday-Friday (closed Sunday)
• $$$$

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13. Sidney Street Cafe 🔟

Contemporary

Did you hear the exciting news? A certain celebrity chef opened a restaurant downtown last year. He serves beef Wellington there. Has ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ heard of the dish? We have, in fact. When I visited Kevin Nashan’s Sidney Street Cafe for the inaugural STL 100 in 2015, I ate a take on that old-school dish made with lamb instead. The culinary scene in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is much richer and further advanced than drive-by chefs realize, thanks in no small part to the work the James Beard Award-winning Nashan has done at his Benton Park institution and the talents he has cultivated in its kitchens. (The latest rising star here is pastry chef Amelia Lytle, whose desserts floored me for the second straight year.) Post-pandemic, and with Nashan also supervising Peacemaker Lobster & Crab Co. and restaurants in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sidney Street has settled into a groove that smartly mixes classics (veal dumplings, lobster turnovers) with fresh ideas, seasonal ingredients and occasional old friends like that swanky lamb Wellington, amped up with prosciutto inside its pastry shell and an earthy sauce chasseur on the plate.

Last year: No. 14

• 2000 Sidney Street
• 314-771-5777;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$$

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14. Wright’s Tavern

Steakhouse

See how easy this whole restaurant business is? Identify a gap in the market — in the case of Wright’s Tavern in Clayton, a steakhouse that justifies the tremendous cost — design a stylish, glowing dining room appropriate for business deals and fleeting assignations alike, hire top-notch staff for both front and back of house and wait for the accolades to accrue. I kid. Sort of. At Wright’s and its sibling Louie (see No. 8), owner Matt McGuire crafts memorable dinners that seem, from your seat, effortless. But if you love steak, you know Wright’s Tavern takes pains few other restaurants do, dispatching your cut not only at your requested temperature, but also properly enrobed in a glistening crust. That care extends to everything else, from the crispest onion rings to the most ethereal pommes puree. With confidence, you can skip steaks entirely for the burger, the crab cake or the potato-encrusted halibut. For the diner, Wright’s Tavern really is easy. We don’t need to think, just choose.

Last year: No. 15

• 7624 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton
• 314-390-1466;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $$$$

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15. Esca 🆕

Contemporary, Mediterranean

For most chefs, Esca would be the triumph of a career, let alone a single year. For Ben Poremba, it is one part of an audacious reinvention in the flourishing Delmar Maker District. The best debut of 2024, Esca dazzles with coal-powered cooking, brushing brawny steaks and delicate fruits alike with fire, smoke, and embers. The dishes are elemental, steeped in Mediterranean sun. Crackling-skinned chicken in its silky jus. Branzino with an olive-pistachio tapenade like a briny breeze from the sea. Esca risks cliché to find new magic in old favorites, revitalizing hamachi crudo with the snap of almonds, beef tartare with lighter, sweeter veal. Remarkably, Poremba followed Esca’s opening with a second new restaurant across the street (the casual Israeli cafe Florentin) and the return of Nixta, the first of three acclaimed restaurants he is relocating to the Delmar Maker District. Even more remarkably, when his flagship duo of Elaia and Olio arrive in this district later this year, they now must measure up to Esca.

Last year: New

• 5095 Delmar Boulevard
• 314-365-2686;
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

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16. Taberu

Japanese, Seafood, Sushi

If Taberu were a restaurant, it would rival Pavilion (see No. 1) or Wright’s Tavern (see No. 14) as the toughest reservation in town. As it is, a delivery of Heidi Hamamura’s sushi is even more difficult to score. The platter is worth setting your alarm — Hamamura opens her books at 6 a.m. on the first of each month for the next month’s orders, which she takes via Instagram — and risking the frustration of a missed chance. Hamamura understands that sushi should be a luxury, not a commodity. She gilds luscious bluefin tuna with gold leaf, and she reimagines the spicy-tuna roll so that it leads with the fish’s sweetness before it wallops you with heat. Her accents can be as subtle as the sake-kelp marinade for red snapper or as equally obvious and welcome as the smoke that touches octopus, salmon and even a piece of duck breast with black-cherry sauce. Whatever the arrangement inside, Taberu’s plastic tray turns your dining room into ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ most exclusive table.

Last year: No. 22

• Sushi delivery and catering service
• Order for delivery via Instagram
• $$$$

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17. Olive + Oak

Contemporary

You can measure the impact of Olive + Oak without setting foot in the restaurant. The glimmering heart of the Old Orchard district of Webster Groves — and the thriving dining scene throughout the entire municipality — Olive + Oak has led to direct, beloved sequels in O+O Pizza and the Clover and the Bee as well as the restaurant’s collaboration with Perennial Artisan Ales, Perennial on Lockwood. Through Olive + Oak’s nine years, owners Mark and Jenn Hinkle have raised awareness and funds for pediatric health care and the families it has impacted, theirs included, through the Ollie Hinkle Heart Foundation. Once you do step inside Olive + Oak, you place yourself in the care of chef Jesse Mendica and her team. Mendica’s ever-changing menu is as likely to grab your attention with goat as with its 32-ounce cowboy ribeye. Here in flyover country, I’ve always appreciated her deft touch with seafood, from menu mainstays (oysters, blue-crab gratin, baked clams) to more recent dishes both elegant (monkfish) and rustic (cornmeal-crusted hake).

Last year: No. 20

• 216 West Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves
• 314-736-1370;
• Dinner daily
• $$$-$$$$

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18. Akar

Contemporary, Malaysian

Bernie Lee opened Akar in 2019, so his Clayton restaurant isn’t among those honored in every edition of the STL 100. Lee himself, though, has been a constant presence on this list. His prior restaurant, Hiro Asian Kitchen in Downtown West, was an honoree from 2015-2019. Akar, which opened only a month after Hiro closed, has carried the torch since then. Lee has showcased an incredible range over the past decade. At Hiro, he ladled out several different varieties of ramen, each excellent, while other local spots were still perfecting their tonkotsu style. At Akar, Lee has eschewed trends for a far more personal cuisine. This can be as simple as his favorite dish from childhood, a refreshing salad of pickled Taiwanese cabbage. Or maybe not so simple: the sweet, tangy crunch hides a sharp and surprisingly juicy chile bite. Lee also encourages diners to indulge themselves: tea-brined duck breast, sambal-glazed beef short rib, a recent take on Thai drunken noodles with plump, buttery lobster.

Last year: No. 19

• 7641 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton
• 314-553-9914;
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday
• $$$-$$$$

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19. Jalea

Peruvian

Andrew Cisneros has expanded his reach from St. Charles to the Delmar Loop. Brasas, which opened last year on the Loop’s east side, features pollo a la brasa, Peruvian-style rotisserie chicken. Cisneros introduced his take on this chicken as an early-pandemic pop-up, and it has proven popular enough not only to earn its own restaurant, but also to feature on the menu of his debut restaurant, Jalea. That chicken and a couple of other charcoal-grilled meats are reason enough to visit Jalea, but the menu here showcases the remarkable range of Cisneros’ modern Peruvian cooking. His take on classic lomo saltado is equally assertive and elegant, with hunks of medium-rare beef strip loin in a swanky sauce of veal stock, soy sauce and vinegar. Jalea puts Cisneros on the map for its seafood alone: from the mix of fried fish, shrimp and calamari that gives the restaurant its name to ceviche in an eye-popping leche de tigre you want to sip directly from the dish.

Last year: No. 16

• 323 North Main Street, St. Charles
• 314-303-0144;
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $$$

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20. Bar Moro

Spanish

Who is the most overlooked chef in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½? Consider Anthony Hillis, who moves nimbly across the narrow open kitchen of Bar Moro, Ben Poremba’s Spanish restaurant in Clayton. While Poremba has been hustling to open two restaurants, including Esca (see No. 15), and relocate three others, Hillis has kept Bar Moro’s classic tapas (albondigas, bacon-wrapped dates, pan con tomate with or without anchovies) as sharp as when the restaurant opened in 2022. Hillis has also juiced Bar Moro’s menu of large plates, adding an extraordinary dish of roasted rabbit leg paired with chistorra sausage in a spiced tomato sauce. On a recent visit, he swayed me with a special: crackling-skinned duck breast with chestnuts, grapes and kale in a summery burnt-orange reduction. The flavors here are brilliant enough to speak for themselves. You still need to learn the chef’s name.

Last year: No. 23

• 7610 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton
• 314-932-1088;
• Dinner daily
• $$$-$$$$

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21. Black Salt

Indian

Black Salt was one of the best new restaurants of 2023 and is the foremost example of the past few years’ boom in Indian dining in Chesterfield and beyond, but all of that might prove a mere prologue to its story. Owners Raj Pandey and Sanjiv Shekhar have already opened a second Black Salt in Creve Coeur, and they recently debuted a new concept called Oh London, featuring British and American fare, also in Creve Coeur. Back at the original Chesterfield storefront, I’m still working my way through Madan Chhetri’s elegant menu of familiar favorites (butter chicken, rogan josh) and the chef’s own specialties (biryani, grilled Chilean sea bass in a silky coconut-coriander sauce). I somehow didn’t try Chhetri’s most exquisite dish until recently, grilled lamb chops poised in a bowl of sweet, amber saffron sauce. As camera-ready as these Zafrani lamb chops are, you will find yourself plucking the charry, juicy, sauce-slathered meat from the bones with your fingers and teeth.

Last year: Unranked

1709 Clarkson Road, Chesterfield

• 636-204-6441;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$-$$$

11429 Olive Boulevard, Creve Coeur

• 314-884-2201;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$-$$$

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22. Farmhaus

Contemporary

I’ve previously called red snapper Kevin Willmann’s signature ingredient, and among ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ great chef-driven restaurants of the past two decades, Farmhaus has delivered both the best and the most varied seafood dishes. This is no surprise. Willmann is as passionate a fisherman as he is a talented chef. This year, though, I need to declare Willmann’s spoonbread his essential dish — or maybe his secret weapon instead. The supple spoonbread, not exactly cornbread and not exactly a soufflé, has anchored hit after hit at Farmhaus. Most recently, spoonbread was the centerpiece for plump golden-brown scallops with ham over creamy corn in a peppery sauce anglaise. The dishes at Farmhaus can change week to week or day to day, let alone year to year, but 15 years in, Willman and his longtime lieutenant Dillon Witte (longtime, but still young enough to qualify as a rising star in his own right) are mining a fresh vein of seasonal ingredients, playful plates like local beef-neck meat in a light, crisp empanada shell and, always, the catch of the day.

Last year: Unranked

• 3257 Ivanhoe Avenue
• 314-647-3800;
• Dinner Monday and Wednesday-Saturday, takeout lunch Monday (closed Tuesday and Sunday)
• $$$-$$$$

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23. Beast Craft BBQ Co.

Barbecue

The inaugural edition of the STL 100 in 2015 featured nine barbecue restaurants. When Beast Craft BBQ Co. debuted on the list the following year, there were 10. This year, there are only five. Meggan and David Sandusky’s Beast itself has contracted in recent years from three locations back to the original Belleville location, which debuted in late 2014. I don’t need to belabor the obvious. The great ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ barbecue boom of the Aughts and Teens inevitably ebbed. The pandemic visited hell upon the restaurant industry. Beast has emerged on the other side of this disruption bruised but proud — and still the metro area’s premier barbecue restaurant. You know Beast for such signature cuts as the whopping pork steak or the beef brisket simply seasoned with salt, pepper and garlic, but you know pitmaster David Sandusky also doesn’t take standards like turkey breast, pulled pork or ribs for granted. I certainly didn’t enjoy how we arrived at this point, but for now the reality is bracing: You aren’t guaranteed great barbecue convenient to your home. You need to seek it out.

Last year: No. 18

• 20 South Belt West, Belleville
• 618-257-9000;
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $-$$

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24. Menya Rui

Japanese, Ramen

“Slurp up!� Menya Rui’s website reminds guests that there is a one-hour limit to dining inside the tiny Lindenwood Park ramen shop. The average person in Japan, the site notes, “eats ramen in 5-10 minutes.� Anyone who has waited in line for a bowl of Steven Pursley’s ramen — which is to say, just about anyone who has eaten at Menya Rui over the past three years — will appreciate the notice. This time limit promotes efficiency, of course, but that suggested experience of just 5-10 minutes really is the best way to enjoy Menya Rui. whether you opt for the thin, springy noodles of the pork or chicken shoyu ramen or the thicker noodles of the tsukemen (dipped) or mazemen (brothless) ramen. Pursley and his team craft communal moments. Even when you visit with a friend, Menya Rui is essentially you and your dish of painstakingly prepared and composed ingredients brought together for a few slurping minutes.

Last year: No. 21

• 3453 Hampton Avenue
• 314-601-3524;
• Dinner Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday)
• $-$$

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25. Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria

Italian, Pizza

Katie Lee has gathered a formidable array of talent at Katie’s Pizza & Pasta Osteria. Last year, the acclaimed chef Cary McDowell (the Crossing, Pi Pizzeria and most recently Wright’s Tavern) joined Lee and Katie’s culinary director Jake Sanderson in the “collective� overseeing the menu. Now, Lee has named front-of-house ace Chris Kelling (Niche Food Group and his own Elmwood, Pizza Champ, Burger Champ) director of operations across Katie’s locations in Rock Hill, Town and Country and Ballpark Village downtown. Katie’s could have rested on the laurels its pasta, pizza and other luxe Italian fare has already won, and Lee could have focused only on growing the national reach of Katie’s frozen pizzas. Instead, this restaurant is chasing still greater ambitions. A recent visit needed neither pizza nor pasta to improve delicata squash in a light tempura batter or a crackling piece of chicken Parmigiano stuffed with fontina and prosciutto di Parma, jolted with Calabrian chiles and kissed by wildflower honey.

Last year: Unranked

• Multiple area locations, including 751 Clark Avenue
• 314-942-2416;
• Lunch and dinner daily, brunch Saturday-Sunday (all locations)
• $$$-$$$$

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1929 Pizza & Wine and Patisserie 29

Bakeries & Desserts, Pizza

Amy and Matt Herren have relocated 1929 Pizza & Wine from Wood River to Edwardsville, a culinary homecoming for the couple. Amy ran the late downtown restaurant Fond; Matt was the founder of both 222 Artisan Bakery and Goshen Coffee Co. At 1929, they have crafted their own take on wood-fired pizza, tangy, char-freckled and compelling even in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ crowded field of hearth-baked pies. The signature pizzas from Wood River remain on the menu, including the region’s best take on the classic duo of sausage and peppers and the one-of-a-kind Greens, with a walnut-basil pesto, roasted walnuts and kale. A new offering reimagines the Italian beef sandwich as a pizza, with tender beef, a Parmesan cream sauce and, yes, jus on the side for dipping. The Herrens have also opened a second concept inside their Edwardsville storefront, Patisserie 29, with French pastries both savory (a ham and cheese croissant) and sweet (an outrageously oversized cinnamon roll, a croissant-muffin hybrid with pistachio cream) that are worth a visit themselves.

1929 Pizza & Wine

• 921 Arbor Vitae, Edwardsville
• 618-307-5196;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $$

Patisserie 29

• 921 Arbor Vitae Edwardsville
• 618-307-5196;
• 7:30-11 a.m. Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $

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Italian

Jim Fiala’s the Crossing has ranked in every Top 25 of the STL 100, one of only two restaurants to do so (see No. 12). With Acero in Maplewood, Fiala joins Gerard Craft as the only two restaurateurs to land multiple establishments on all 10 editions of this list. Consistent excellence is a given at a Fiala restaurant, but the highest praise Acero has received over its 18 years is its lack of imitators. For all of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ Italian restaurants, no one has even tried to copy Acero’s rustic luxury, from such signature dishes as the ethereal gnocco fritto with prosciutto di Parma (a.k.a. the meat doughnuts) and the now iconic raviolo cradling a fresh, golden egg yolk to hearty, but precisely composed seasonal dishes like halibut and mussels in a tomato-Calabrian chile fumet. For reasons that have always escaped me, few upscale restaurants have learned from Acero’s four-course dinner, still a goodwill-generating deal beginning at $58 per person.

• 7266 Manchester Road, Maplewood
• 314-644-1790;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

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Afandi Kitchen 🆕

Chinese, Uyghur

A decade of the STL 100 has witnessed the remarkable growth of the region’s Chinese restaurants, both in the regional cuisines represented (Sichuan, Dongbei and Shanghai among them) and in the singular visions of such chefs as Lawrence Chen of Private Kitchen and the late Ying Jing Ma of Chef Ma’s Chinese Gourmet. The latest addition is one of the most exciting. Afandi Kitchen, which opened in October 2024 in Chesterfield, is the metro area’s first restaurant to feature the cuisine of the Uyghurs, the Turkic, predominantly Muslim people of northwest China. Chef Abulaiti Abuliz surveys Uyghur fare with an emphasis on lamb: skewers of grilled lamb; cumin lamb, maybe the best-known Uyghur dish, here stir-fried with leeks; a heady lamb broth with beef meatballs, glass noodles and supple tofu. Abuliz’s other signature dish is laghman, delightfully chewy hand-pulled noodles served with beef or, yes, more lamb.

• 17409 Chesterfield Airport Road, Suite C, Chesterfield
• 636-778-0178;
• Lunch and dinner daily (closed Tuesday)
• $$

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Annie Gunn’s and the Smokehouse Market 🔟

Contemporary, Sandwiches, Steakhouse

Annie Gunn’s and its adjacent gourmet grocery and sandwich shop the Smokehouse Market have undergone the most obvious physical transformation of the 14 restaurants honored in every year of the STL 100. The Sehnert family has expanded Annie Gunn’s with the Fáilte Room, an imposing, barn-inspired event space. At the restaurant itself, though, under the longtime stewardship of chef Lou Rook III, I wouldn’t change my description from 2015 of “an upscale dining destination, a clubby steakhouse and the Chesterfield Valley’s living room.� What has changed in the intervening decade is the rarity of Rook’s approach, an unabashedly American, unabashedly carnivorous luxury that has largely vanished since the Great Recession — and that might seem entirely foreign to younger diners raised on pop-ups and counter-service. Here amid the more obvious pleasures of steaks and chops you might begin your meal with foie gras or sweetbreads before preceding to quail or calves’ liver. As ever, Glenn Bardgett oversees Annie Gunn’s acclaimed wine program.

Annie Gunn’s

• 16806 Chesterfield Airport Road, Chesterfield
• 636-532-7684;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

Smokehouse Market

• 16806 Chesterfield Airport Road, Chesterfield
• 636-532-3314;
• 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $

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August the Mansion 🆕

Contemporary

The O’Fallon, Illinois, mansion built in 1857 by August Wastfield is almost too picturesque for fine dining. What else could fill its tree-framed, red-brick façade but a safe, fusty menu of steaks, chops and potatoes? At August the Mansion, first-time restaurateurs Candice and Justin Mills don’t avoid familiar pleasures, but chef Jessica Hickman distinguishes the restaurant’s upscale fare with her fresh, seasonal approach. Her touch can be as slight as the local smoked gouda gilding the burger, as electric as the Peruvian chicken thighs’ aji verde, as sweet as last summer’s peach-Champagne glaze on the whopping pork rib chop. Amid these heartier dishes, Hickman’s signature might be an appetizer of Brussels sprouts with accents both expected (bacon) and wonderfully surprising (cranberry, pistachio and feta).

• 1680 Mansion Way, O’Fallon, Illinois
• 618-607-8040;
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $$$-$$$$

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Bagel Union and Union Loafers

Bakeries & Desserts, Breakfast, Pizza, Sandwiches

When Bagel Union debuted on last year’s STL 100, I listed the Webster Groves restaurant separately from its older sibling, Union Loafers in Botanical Heights. After visiting both restaurants for this year’s list, I knew each again deserved its own spot — but believed they were still more impressive together. Since Sean Netzer and Ted Wilson opened Union Loafers in 2015, they have built a modern empire of dough. It began and continues to revolve around Wilson’s exemplary Light & Mild sourdough bread and other loaves, which are available for retail sale and anchor Union Loafer’s sandwich menu. When Union Loafers expanded its menu to include pizza for dinner, the restaurant developed its own style, evoking the char of Neapolitan style without the wood-fired oven. For Bagel Union, Wilson and Netzer studied up on a different baking process altogether and nailed the glossy, chewy target in styles both traditional (salt, everything) and not (cherry crunch, a recent schmear of cream cheese flavored like cacio e pepe sauce).

Bagel Union

• 8705 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves
• 314-320-7556;
• 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday) 
• $

Union Loafers

• 1629 Tower Grove Avenue
• 314-833-6111;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday, lunch Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$

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The Biscuit Joint

Breakfast, Sandwiches

Truth when the STL 100 launched in 2015, truth 10 years later: ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ needs more hyper-focused restaurants. Cut those menus down to the bone — to the marrow. The Biscuit Joint is exactly what the name claims, a counter-service Midtown restaurant based around a biscuit recipe Elliott Brown learned from a former boss. These, Brown believed, are “the best biscuits ever.â€� He’s not wrong. The buttermilk biscuits are flaky, buttery, golden-brown and (again) buttery. Hyper-focused doesn’t mean singular, though. Brown, a veteran of Niche Food Group, Vicia and Winslow’s Table, pairs those biscuits with gravies as thoughtfully composed as haute-cuisine sauces, from classic sausage to schmaltz-rich roast chicken with paprika oil to a mushroom-sage option no less flavorful than the meat options. He builds biscuit sandwiches with fried chicken and sausage patties smashed on the griddle like skinny burger. That doesn’t mean your order can’t be singular: one Biscuit Joint biscuit with a side of sorghum butter makes for a lovely breakfast.

• 2649 Washington Avenue
• 314-769-9434; thebiscuitjoint.toast.site
• 8 a.m.-1 p.m. daily
• $

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Blues City Deli

Sandwiches

There are exactly two ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ restaurant lines in which I not only expect to wait to order but will also do so happily: Blues City Deli and Pappy’s Smokehouse. At Vinnie Valenza’s Benton Park institution, when the weather is pleasant and the blues are cranked up, I can think of few better ways to while away a lunch hour. In a town with no shortage of great sandwiches, Blues City Deli is a destination for multiple styles and often multiple choices within those styles: a classic Italian beef and versions with capicola and pepper jack (the Knuckle sandwich) or roast pork, provolone and pepperoncini (the Creole Deluxe). The pastrami smoked in house with cherry wood makes an ideal Reuben but needs nothing more than mustard and Swiss (the Old School). Following last year’s closure of pastrami destination Nomad in Dogtown, Blues City Deli is as essential as ever.

• 2438 McNair Avenue
• 314-773-8225;
• 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $

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Bolyard’s Meat & Provisions

Breakfast, Sandwiches

Back in the day — say, 2015, when the STL 100 debuted — I might have imagined a future dining scene full of restaurants like Bolyard’s Meat & Provisions. Not literally copies of Chris and Abbie Bolyard’s Maplewood restaurant and retail butchery, but with the same commitment to top-notch ingredients and transparency. At Bolyard’s, you can look through a window and watch butchers break down animals while you eat. (Note: you don’t have to look through this window.) The intervening decade, with the pandemic rearranging restaurants’ ambitions and diners’ priorities, dashed my imaginings. Also, to follow Bolyard’s example would be difficult in ideal circumstances. The food is both impeccably sourced and invariably delicious. The menu draws on Chris Bolyard’s fine-dining background for grace notes like the black garlic aioli on the mushroom-Swiss smash burger or that aioli and duxelles on the Fiesty Bull pulled beef sandwich. It also embodies the butchery’s whole-animal ethos with fries cooked in tallow, pork rinds as a side and broths for sipping.

• 2733 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood
• 314-647-2567;
• 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday (closed Monday)
• $

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Italian

In March 2024, Kendele and Wayne Sieve introduced the space below their acclaimed Noto Italian Restaurant in St. Peters (see No. 11) as the Venetian-inspired Bacaro, featuring cocktails and small bites. The couple was already tweaking Bacaro’s menu from customer feedback when a trademark claim led them to scrap the concept entirely and replace it with the Alpine-influenced Bormio. Call it kismet. Better yet, grab your alpenhorn and blast a song of tribute through the mountains. Bormio delivers a thrillingly different take on Italian cuisine. Pork glazed in Ricola — yes, as in that Ricola — lends Wayne Sieve’s elegant, herbaceous cooking a Swiss accent, while he puts an Italian spin on sauerbraten with a bed of creamy polenta. Bormio retains some of the Sieves' original vision for its space, with cocktails and smaller (though not small) bites like baked oysters with ‘nduja and plump, gooey spinach-cheese dumplings.

• 5105 Westwood Drive, Suite A, St. Peters
• 636-244-0874;
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $$$

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Bowood by Niche

Breakfast, Sandwiches

Last fall, when I put together my picks for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ best breakfast dishes, Bowood by Niche stumped me. The menu at Gerard Craft’s Central West End cafe includes no fewer than five dishes that would be any other breakfast restaurant’s signature: blueberry pancakes, a hybrid of French toast and bread pudding, a waffle with Vermont cheddar, cacio e pepe scrambled eggs and eggs benedict. Settling on eggs benedict didn’t help because Bowood offers it two ways: a swanky take on the classic form, with prosciutto playing the role of Canadian bacon, and a version with Maryland-style crab cakes (close to the real deal, says this Baltimore native) and Cajun-spiced hollandaise. I took the easy way out and picked both benedicts. Go with a large enough group, and you can try the whole breakfast slate and a couple of the can’t-miss lunch dishes, too, like the smash burger and the Reuben with peppery, sumptuous housemade pastrami.

• 4605 Olive Street
• 314-454-6868;
• 9 a.m.-3 p.m. daily
• $$

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Peruvian

Chef Andrew Cisneros continues his dazzling exploration of Peruvian cuisine at the small, sleek Brasas on the east side of the Delmar Loop. A sequel to his debut restaurant Jalea in St. Charles (see No. 19), Brasas is named for the dish that kickstarted Cisneros career in an early-pandemic pop-up: charry, juicy rotisserie chicken marinated in an elixir of beer, citrus, herbs, oyster sauce, more herbs and pepper paste. Available as a quarter, half or whole bird with your choice of sides (fries, garlic rice, Peruvian bean stew), pollo a la brasa alone justifies Brasas’ presence on this list.  Yet the restaurant’s narrow storefront can’t contain Cisneros’ talents. He grills tender beef heart over embers for his take on Peruvian anticuchos and explores the influence of Chinese cuisine on Peru with chaufa aeropuerto, fried rice with beef, pork belly and shrimp topped by a light omelet.

• 6138 Delmar Boulevard
• 314-256-1937;
• Dinner Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday)
• $$-$$$

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Brasserie by Niche 🔟

French

French restaurants claim meager territory in the STL 100, reflecting their relative scarcity in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. The few this list has loved and lost over the past decade — Franco’s cosmopolitan charm, Bar Les Frères’ snug, sexy brio — have left an outsized absence. Through it all, Gerard Craft’s Brasserie by Niche has been glowing in the Central West End, beckoning diners for cocktails and gougères on warm patio evenings and red wine and cassoulet on cold winter nights. In the inaugural STL 100 a decade ago, I described that cassoulet as “peerless,â€� and I stand by this judgment after my latest visit. Each component is prepared to exacting standards, and the pork belly, Toulouse sausage, duck confit and navy beans harmonize deliciously. After 16 years, Brasserie’s menu of classics can still surprise, like a newer dessert of refreshingly tart passionfruit mousse folded inside an airy crepe.

• 4580 Laclede Avenue
• 314-454-0600;
• Dinner daily, brunch Sunday
• $$$-$$$$

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Byrd & Barrel 🆕

Fried Chicken, Sandwiches

Few restaurants return from a five-year hiatus. Fewer still come back exactly as you want them to be. Bob Brazell has relocated Byrd & Barrel to the restaurant space in his Tamm Avenue Bar in Dogtown, but this is essentially the same Byrd & Barrel fans have been mourning since the original Marine Villa location closed in 2020. Byrd & Barrel is one of the pioneers of local, chef-driven fast-casual dining. Crunchy, juicy Nugz anchor the menu, the nuggets’ breading seasoned so well that you don’t need a dipping sauce. (You should still get the Byrd sauce and the homemade ranch.) The Mother Clucker ranks as one of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ best fried chicken sandwiches with its garnishes of Red Hot Riplets, red-pepper jelly and a bechamel sauce made with Provel. Brazell’s fine-dining background — he cooked at Monarch and Niche — reveals itself in the bechamel and a roast-cauliflower appetizer with cashews, a peppadew aioli and a jalapeño hot sauce.

• 1221 Tamm Avenue
• 314-261-4901;
• Lunch and dinner daily (closed Tuesday)
• $

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Charlie Gitto’s

Classic Fine Dining, Italian

The Hill is changing, with new housing and a small, but growing new generation of leading restaurants like Sado and Pizzeria da Gloria. Old-school fine dining is changing, too — dwindling. When 2025 ends, the year’s biggest restaurant news will likely be February’s closure of Tony’s after 79 years downtown and in Clayton. For those of us who love the Hill and a classic fine-dining meal, Charlie Gitto’s is an ideal keeper of tradition. Crucially, Charlie Gitto Jr. and his team have kept the restaurant a buzzing operation, crammed at prime times, merely packed on “quietâ€� evenings. Gitto’s appeals to those seeking homey lasagna or housemade fettucine in an alfredo sauce creamier than egg nog and those dreaming of rustic bucatini all’Amatriciana that could have been delivered directly from Italy. And with toasted ravioli that claim a direct line to the reputed original of the species, Gitto’s is a beacon not only for the Hill, but for all of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.

Charlie Gitto’s on the Hill

• 5226 Shaw Avenue
• 314-772-8898;
• Dinner daily
• $$$-$$$$

Charlie Gitto’s at Hollywood Casino

• 777 Casino Center, Maryland Heights
• 314-770-7663;
• Dinner daily
• $$$-$$$$

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Chez Ali

Afro-Caribbean, Caribbean, Ivorian, Senegalese

Now in its fourth year, the Food Hall at City Foundry in Midtown has evolved from a delay-plagued project to a blockbuster debut to an essential part of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ dining landscape. Its vendors have launched a brick-and-mortar satellite (Chicken Scratch) and a terrific standalone restaurant (Alex Henry’s El Molino del Sureste, born from his Food Hall stand Sureste, see No. 7). But if I had to pick a single vendor to represent the Food Hall’s success, it would be Alioun “Aliâ€� Thiam’s Chez Ali. Here was an unheralded (to my chagrin as a food writer) talent ready for the spotlight to shine on his Afro-Caribbean and West African cooking. Chez Ali’s core menu is as indispensable as it is brief: smoky jerk chicken with a fiery boost from scotch bonnet chiles, warmly spiced curry chicken and the citrus-vinegar jolt of Senegalese yassa chicken.

• Food Hall at City Foundry, 3730 Foundry Way
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $-$$

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Chiang Mai

Thai

This year’s STL 100 finds Thai cuisine in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ in a hesitant place. On the one hand, the restaurant at the summit of the list and its Top 10 sibling — Nick Bognar’s Sado and Pavilion on the Hill and Indo in Botanical Heights — showcase a significant Thai influence, as does 10-time STL 100 honoree Lona’s Lil Eats. Still, right before the pandemic and even into its first year, the metro area seemed on the cusp of an evolution in its Thai restaurants that has since stalled. Chiang Mai, which Su Hill founded in the COVID fall of 2020 in Webster Groves, remans a fount of possibility. The menu has adapted to diners’ apparent preferences over the past four years, but at its heart is the fare of the city that gives the restaurant its name and Thailand’s north more broadly: the rippling layers of pickled greens and coconut-red curry broth in the signature khao soi noodle soup; the subtle, rustic sweetness of the hung lay curry; the touch of honey in meaty roasted pork ribs.

• 8158 Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves
• 314-961-8889;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$

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ChiliSpot

Chinese, Sichuan

I should dedicate a year to making my way through ChiliSpot’s expansive menu. In multiple visits to the University City Sichuan restaurant over the years, I somehow hadn’t tried its version of one my favorite Sichuan dishes until now: dandan noodles, noodles and ground pork buzzing with the mala combination of chile heat and numbing Sichuan peppercorn. I’m adding it to my ChiliSpot favorites alongside Chongqing chicken, homemade tofu and braised greens with black mushrooms. Don’t just listen to me, though. Rob Connoley, whose Bulrush ranked No. 1 on the 2024 STL 100, is the biggest fan of ChiliSpot I know. In an interview last year before Connoley announced Bulrush’s closure and his eventual departure from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, he told me he at ate ChiliSpot at least once a week. His dinner there might feature dry-pot chicken and the appetizer Mr. & Mrs. Smith with cold beef tendon and tripe. At ChiliSpot, he said, “(the) menu is so large, and the quality is so good across the menu, that you really can’t go wrong.â€�

• 7930 Olive Boulevard, University City
• 314-925-8711;
• Lunch and dinner daily (closed Wednesday)
• $$

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Clara B’s Kitchen Table

Breakfast, Food Truck, Sandwiches, Southern

The breakfast burrito at Clara B’s Kitchen Table wraps up everything I love about Jodie Ferguson’s food truck and Belleville restaurant in a dish you can hold in your hand — until the overstuffed package inevitably falls apart. The burrito was a no-question inclusion in my 2024 survey of the metro area’s best breakfast dishes. Well, I did have one question. Which version of the burrito would be available on my most recent visit: with brisket or with a combination of bacon and chorizo? I was lucky that day. The chorizo-bacon duo is great. The brisket burrito is otherworldly. Ferguson grew up in Lockwood, Texas, the heart of brisket-crazed central Texas, so she knows how to smoke the tricky cut to render tender, smoky beef beneath a gnarly crust. This is a chef’s burrito, with delicate eggs and precisely cooked potatoes. Ferguson brings this level of attention to her full spread of breakfast fare (especially the buttery, cheesy grits) and sandwiches.

• 720 South Illinois Street, Belleville
• 618-416-1812;
• 7 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday and Thursday-Friday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday (closed Tuesday-Wednesday)
• $

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Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Creamery

Bakeries & Desserts

In a review column last year, I wrote about my decision to quit drinking. I mention it again here only to provide context for my love of Clementine’s Naughty & Nice Creamery. First, gratefully embracing one of the clichés of sobriety, I now eat a lot more ice cream than I used to. And I have always loved ice cream — especially Clementine’s high-butterfat variety. Second, ruling out the Naughty side of Clementine’s menu has hardly limited my choices at Tamara Keefe’s chain of parlors, which boasts eight locations as well as local delivery and nationwide shipping through Goldbelly. If anything, her vegan options are at least as intriguing as the boozy ones, with sophisticated flavors like coconut fudge and tahini chocolate chip as nearly as creamy as the real thing. The classic ice cream ranges from childlike joy (Gooey Butter Cake, Blue Moon) to grownup elegance (Espresso Royale, Truffled Manchego Honey) to better than the beloved original (strawberry, but with balsamic and white pepper).

• Multiple area locations, including 730 DeMun Avenue, Clayton
• Noon-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, noon-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday (all locations)
• $

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Contemporary

Cleveland-Heath is singular among the 14 restaurants that have been honored in every edition of the STL 100. Its upscale comfort fare has succeeded across three owners: founders Jenny Cleveland and Ed Heath, successors Kari McGinness and the late Keith McGinness, and current operators Evan and Gina Buchholz. That includes dishes dating back to Cleveland-Heath’s 2011 debut, and for one meal here, you still can’t top the signature pork chop with a sunny-side-up egg and cheddar-jalapeño bread pudding followed by cherry pie for dessert. As chef, Evan Buchholz has honored the restaurant’s spirits while investing it with his own voice, from confident global touches throughout the menu to clever new dishes like a recent sandwich that pairs the sophistication of shaved ribeye in a peppercorn bechamel with the wondrous mess of a cheesesteak.

• 106 North Main Street, Edwardsville
• 618-307-4830;
• Dinner and lunch Monday-Saturday, brunch Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $$-$$$

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The Curry Club

Indian

Since opening in late 2018, the Curry Club has been a forerunner of nearly every trend that has swept across ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ Indian restaurants in recent years, not least in its location in Chesterfield. Hardly a month passes without word of a new Indian restaurant in that city. (Though this is the place to mourn 2022-2024 STL 100 honoree Khanna’s Desi Vibes, which closed last year in Chesterfield; yes, another Indian spot, Bayleaf, has replaced it.) The Curry Club’s menu focuses on India’s south, and its format breaks from what is typical of Indian restaurants here. Rather than an expansive lunch buffet followed by a more formal dinner service, the Curry Club is counter-service with a curated cafeteria-style lunch buffet featuring rotating chicken curries and vegetable dishes as well as made-to-order dosas. That lunch menu is so appealing in flavor and value that not only do many of those new Indian restaurants struggle to compare, I’m also overdue to visit Curry Club for its weekend or dinner specials.

• 1635 Clarkson Road, Chesterfield
• 636-778-7777;
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $

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Damn Fine Hand Pies 🆕

Bakeries & Dessert, Breakfast, Sandwiches

“Nothing in the world makes me feel like pie,â€� says Madeline Hissong, co-owner of the new Shaw bakery Damn Fine Hand Pies. “And I just wanted to share that with people.â€� Hissong traces her love of baking back to her great-grandmother, who sold pies out of her house in Indiana. Hissong herself launched Damn Fine Hand Pies in 2021 as a cottage-law bakery based in her south city home. After building a following at the Tower Grove Farmers Market, she and employee-turned-business-partner Gene Bailey opened a cozy brick-and-mortar location in June 2024. Naturally, hand pies savory and sweet lead the menu with their crackling laminated crust, but these are just one reason Damn Fine is ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ best new bakery in years. Doughnuts both simple and elaborate distinguish themselves in our doughnut-mad town, and the apple fritter might sway your fierce loyalty elsewhere. You will leave feeling exactly as Hissong intended: damn fine.

• 4000 Shaw Boulevard
• 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday and Thursday-Sunday (closed Tuesday-Wednesday)
• $

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DD Mau Vietnamese Eatery

Vietnamese

Since 2018, Julie Truong has delivered her Vietnamese fare through the unforgiving efficiency of the counter-service format without losing any of the food’s freshness, vibrancy or personality. This was impressive when Truong operated only the Maryland Heights location of DD Mau Vietnamese Eatery. Given the degree of difficulty in expanding an independent restaurant without sacrificing its charms, it has been more than doubly impressive at the original DD Mau and, since 2021, its Webster Groves spinoff. DD Mau can sate your lunchtime craving for a quick, fun mashup snack like roti tacos, bao sliders or crisp, juicy, feisty Thai chile wings. It can also patiently coax more soulful flavor into a bowl of pho than most fast-casual restaurants can manage in a lifetime. Though not a vegan or vegetarian restaurant, DD Mau doesn’t condescend to those diners. Truong has fashioned a verdant vegan pho to soothe any appetite.

11982 Dorsett Road, Maryland Heights

• 314-942-2300;
• Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $

20 Allen Avenue, Suite 120, Webster Groves

• 314-926-0900;
• Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $

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Dressel’s Public House

Pub Fare

When Dressel’s Public House appeared on the inaugural STL 100 in 2015, it was different from the cozy Central West End pub Jon Dressel had founded in 1980. You could still order chips and rarebit and other signature dishes, but Benjamin Dressel, Jon’s son, had remade the menu for that era of the gastropub. (Remember those?)  The Dressel’s on this year’s list is different from both the original and the 2015 model, though no less appealing. The pandemic prompted Dressel to close the pub for three years for a thorough renovation. The menu applies the best lessons of those gastropub years —quality ingredients, a chef’s touches — to classic dishes like fish and chips, a burger (beef or lamb) and the Porchetta Louie roast-pork sandwich featured on a 2012 episode of Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.� The Dressel’s of 2025 is also different from last year’s pub. The brewhouse Dressel added during the renovation is now up and running as Rock & Horse Brewing Co.

• 419 North Euclid Avenue
• 314-361-1060;
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday, lunch Wednesday-Sunday (closes at 6 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday)
• $$

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Ed’s Delicatessen 🆕

Sandwiches

When chef Ed Heath moved from the metro area to Salt Lake City a few years ago, he left his name behind as his legacy. Cleveland-Heath, which he and former partner Jenny Cleveland founded in 2011, continues an anchor of downtown Edwardsville under its current owners — and one of the few restaurants to make every edition of the STL 100. Now Heath has returned with a name to spare and a new legacy for Edwardsville’s Main Street. Heath opened Ed’s Delicatessen in September 2024 with business partners Tim Foley and married couple Samm McCulloch and Rick Kazmer, and the sandwiches here showcase the same creativity and attention to detail that distinguished Heath’s upscale comfort food at Cleveland-Heath. Appealing takes on classic styles abound, from a roast beef with jus to a Vietnamese banh mi. Ed’s also rewards indulgence with its buttered ham-and-cheese sandwich and a luscious crab roll with zippy chili crisp.

• 222 North Main Street, Edwardsville
• 618-560-5213;  
• Lunch Monday-Saturday, dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday) 
• $-$$

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¹ó²¹°ù³¾³Ù°ù³Ü°ìÌý🆕

Contemporary, Food Truck

The Cardinals suffered a lackluster season in 2024, but the organization did get one thing right last year, bringing in Samantha Mitchell’s Farmtruk as a Busch Stadium vendor. Farmtruk has long been a standout among ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ food-truck fleet, and its Busch Stadium season was an overdue spur for its inclusion in the STL 100 — and a reminder to seek out the truck at Tower Grove Farmers Market and its other stops this year. Mitchell cut her teeth as a cook at Annie Gunn’s in Chesterfield, where she worked for seven years before leaving in 2016 to launch Farmtruk. That upscale, ingredient-focused background is evident in dishes like sliders with pork belly (smoked and confit), tomato jam and a jalapeño cream cheese. Farmtruk’s signature dish on the truck and elsewhere pairs falling-apart beef brisket on a bed of decadently creamy mac and cheese, all of it topped with crumbled Red Hot Riplets.

• Food truck 
•  
• Check website and social media for locations and times 
• $

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The Fattened Caf

Barbecue, Filipino

This year marks the Fattened Caf’s third consecutive year on the STL 100, but only now is ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ seeing the full vision of the Filipino restaurant from Charlene Lopez-Young and Darren Young. After beginning as a pop-up and then operating inside the now-closed Earthbound Beer, the Fattened Caf now occupies its own storefront on South Jefferson Avenue at Cherokee Street in Gravois Park. The new location of course features the Filipino barbecue that has already won acclaim: the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½-tribute pork steak and the sweet chicken longganisa, a smoked sausage that you can order as a platter or tucked into an ube hot-dog bun. The expanded menu might tempt you from these favorites with such new dishes as piyanggang chicken, smoked chicken in a sweet, earthy burnt-coconut gravy. The spacious dining area includes a lounge area perfect for enjoying the Fattened Caf’s selection of Filipino coffee drinks.

• 3405 South Jefferson Avenue 
• 314-899-0088;  
• Lunch and dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday) 
• $-$$

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Fleur STL

Breakfast, Burgers, Diner

If you needed a reminder to take no restaurant for granted, the past year delivered a couple of bitter reminders from opposite ends of the price scale. Last October, Uncle Bill’s Pancake House ended its legendary run in North Hampton. This February, fine-dining icon Tony’s said farewell. You don’t need to dwell in nostalgia, though. New owners, the real estate company Garcia Properties, will reopen Uncle Bill’s. They should seek inspiration from Fleur STL. Tim Eagan Jr. moved into the former Eat-Rite Diner building south of downtown and didn’t succumb to the temptation to open Eat-Rite 2.0. He has invested the tiny space with his own style, diner fare with an unfussy, but unmistakable soigne touch, from the seasonally shifting preparation of eggs benedict to the patty made from USDA prime beef that is the heart of the exceptional burger as well as — for those of you who do want to dwell in a little bit of deliciously messy nostalgia — Fleur STL’s take on the classic slinger.

• 622 Chouteau Avenue 
• 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday (closed Monday-Wednesday)
• $-$$

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Gioia’s Deli 🔟

Sandwiches

The inaugural STL 100 only hinted at the future growth of Gioia’s Deli. Back then, third-generation owner Alex Donley (his grandmother bought it from the Gioia family) had recently launched a food truck for the century-old Hill sandwich shop. The truck has since been retired, and Gioia’s first satellite downtown closed during the pandemic, but the restaurant is thriving. Late last year, Gioia’s expanded to O’Fallon, Missouri, joining outposts in Creve Coeur, Maryland Heights and Valley Park. Against my usual wariness about local, independent restaurants proliferating rapidly, I can imagine even more Gioia’s storefronts. The restaurant has maintained the quality of its signature hot salami even as it has scaled up its operations. (You can even ship Gioia’s hot salami and sandwiches nationwide via Goldbelly.) For all the region’s sandwich shops, Italian or otherwise, none can compete with that tender, subtly spiced sausage, a shoo-in for the Mount Rushmore of iconic ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ foods.

• Multiple area locations, including 1934 Macklind Avenue 
• 314-776-9410;  
• Lunch Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday; Maryland Heights closed Saturday-Sunday) 
• $

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Golden Chicken and Mazaj Mediterranean

Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Palestinian

With the unfortunate closure of 2024 STL 100 honoree West Bank Street Eats in O’Fallon, Illinois, I must now head west instead of east to find the metro area’s best beef shawarma at Golden Chicken in St. Peters. I was already going to Golden Chicken for the eponymous spit-roasted golden chicken, the signature dish since Amjed Abdeljabbar and his uncle Mahmoud Abualizz opened the restaurant in late 2020. From the beginning, though, the spits of juicy, char-kissed beef and chicken shawarma have competed with the rotisserie chicken for diners’ attention. (And, unlike the rotisserie chicken, you don’t need to call an hour ahead to guarantee an order of either shawarma.) Golden Chicken’s Palestinian cuisine has also brought it to the Food Hall at City Foundry, where it operates under the name Mazaj Mediterranean and serves chicken shawarma, gyros, falafel and more. The rotisserie chicken and beef shawarma remain exclusive to Golden Chicken in St. Peters.

Golden Chicken

• 632 Jungermann Road, St. Peters
• 636-244-3031;
• Lunch and dinner daily (closed Thursday)
• $-$$

Mazaj Mediterranean

• Food Hall at City Foundry 
•  
• Lunch and dinner daily 
• $-$$

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Grace Meat + Three

Fried Chicken, Sandwiches, Southern

Grace Meat + Three opened in 2017, two years after the STL 100 debuted, but chef and owner Rick Lewis has made every edition of this list: in 2015 at Quincy Street Bistro in Princeton Heights; for the next two years at Southern, his Midtown partnership with the Pappy’s Smokehouse team; and since 2018 here in the Grove in Forest Park Southeast. From Quincy Street to Grace, Lewis has honed his approach to Southern comfort fare to an entire menu of can’t-miss dishes, from the holy fried trinity (chicken, shrimp and catfish) to the array of sides from which you could build an entire meal (collard greens, mac and cheese) to the milkshake of the month. His expert chef’s approach is subtle, but vital, like the obligatory smash burger’s dry-aged beef and tangy comeback sauce. This year will see the next big step for Lewis and Grace, with the spinoff Grace Chicken + Fish slated to open in the former King Edward’s space in Crestwood.

• 4270 Manchester Avenue 
• 314-533-2700;  
• Lunch and dinner Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday) 
• $-$$

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Havana’s Cuisine

Caribbean, Cuban, Sandwiches

The latest chapter of Tamara Landeiro’s remarkable journey from Cuban refugee to acclaimed ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ restaurateur has moved Havana Cuisine’s from Washington Avenue downtown to snug new digs in the Central West End. For a business that has already grown from Soulard Farmers Market stall to food truck to brick-and-mortar location, this relocation feels more like a homecoming — an opportunity for Landeiro to showcase the full range of her talents. Sandwiches are still the heart of Havana Cuisine’s menu: the classic arrangement of ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, mustard and pickles; that luscious roast pork by itself; ropa vieja. Now she is also playing with the very idea of Cuban cuisine. Hot wings aren’t Cuban, but she has fashioned a compellingly feisty version with the punch of habanero and the sweetness of mango. Meanwhile, I’ve found a new favorite among her sides, red beans and rice in a pork gravy.

• 12 South Euclid Avenue 
• 314-899-9977;  
• Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday) 
• $-$$

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Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats 🆕

Breakfast, Sandwiches

If you had told me when the STL 100 debuted 10 years ago that one day the list would feature two biscuit restaurants, I wouldn’t have believed you. Two isn’t a trend, but something is in the air — or in the dough. (A lot of butter is one of those somethings, I suspect.) Married duo Meredith and Michael Shadwick have grown their biscuit business from a stall at the Kirkwood Farmers Market to a food truck to the Honey Bee’s Biscuits + Good Eats storefront in downtown Kirkwood. The towering honey-glazed buttermilk biscuits are Honey Bee’s main attraction, but the recipe for Michael’s herbaceous gravy (sausage or vegetarian) came first. These are also ideal biscuits for sandwiches, holding their form against the trio of cheese, egg and bacon, pork sausage or spicy chicken chorizo. Three is a trend, and Kirkwood is now trending the Shadwicks’ way. The couple also operates Tropical Moose Shaved Ice and took over the iconic Spencer’s Grill.

• 200 North Kirkwood Road, Kirkwood 
• 314-650-0762;  
• 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday) 
• $

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´³¾±²Ô³ú±ð²ÔÌý🆕

Chinese, Japanese, Korean

You’ve eaten fried rice before, of course. You live in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, after all. But you’ve never eaten fried rice like the Volcano Fried Rice at Jinzen, the Chinese, Japanese and Korean fusion restaurant that opened at the end of 2023 in Clayton. Co-owner Lynn Li drew inspiration from her childhood near Sichuan province in China, when her father would make fried rice with leftover kung pao chicken. She combined this with her love of American breakfast skillets. At Jinzen, a server pours beaten egg around a mound of fried rice on a sizzling skillet. The presentation is thrilling. The dish is delicious, as is everything else on Jinzen’s ambitious menu. Here you can find both hearty tonkotsu ramen and the North Korean noodle soup naengmyeon, served bracingly cold with braised beef, apple, kimchi and chili sauce, both bibimbap and bite-size sea cucumber dumplings.

• 8113 Maryland Avenue, Clayton 
• 314-354-8086;  
• Lunch and dinner daily (closed Tuesday) 
• $-$$

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J’s Pitaria

Bosnian

J’s Pitaria can’t contain its ambitions. Josi and Zamir Jahic’s Bosnian restaurant serves a large menu despite its small south ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County storefront — a menu that has grown considerably since the original J’s Pitaria in Bevo Mill opened offering only stuffed pita and a few other dishes. On my most recent visit, I ordered at the counter only to realize that the Jahics have now added table service. We have thankfully abandoned the idea that counter service is, by definition, lesser than table-service, but if you believe the latter conveys more respect, then no food is more deserving. The signature dishes haven’t changed since Bevo Mill: the stuffed pita, the Sarajevo-style Bosnian cevapi (beef sausages) and the best doner kebab in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. In South County, J’s Pitaria has also claimed a standout array of flatbreads, from pide and lahmacun to the overwhelming J’s Malenica, stuffed with cevapi, smoked mozzarella and creamy kajmak and then smothered in parsley-flecked yogurt sauce. A tray barely contains it.

• 91 Concord Plaza Shopping Center, south ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County 
• 314-270-8005;  
• Lunch and dinner Wednesday-Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday) 
• $-$$

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Kain Tayo 🆕

Filipino

In early 2023, Sally and Randy Arcega relocated their Filipino restaurant Kain Tayo from Trenton in the Metro East to the ambitious new Midtown restaurant development on Locust Street a block west of North Jefferson Avenue. When I first visited that spring, the restaurant looked spare, but the food compelled my return. By the time I came back this past summer and fall during my STL 100 research, the dining room’s décor was in full flower, and a literal flower garnished my sisig, citrusy morsels of deep-fried pork belly with alternating bites of sharp red onion and fierce red chile This is just one of three versions of sisig (chicken and chicken with pork are the other two) at Kain Tayo, where the menu has continued to grow since its Midtown debut. First-time visitors might start with the warming spice and garlicky vinegar smack of chicken adobo, and those seeking a more intense pork-belly experience than sisig can provide should proceed directly to Kain Tayo’s lechon kawali.

• 2700 Locust Street 
• 314-396-2110;  
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday) 
• $-$$

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La Patisserie Chouquette 🔟

Bakeries & Desserts

La Patisserie Choquette, the only bakery to be honored in every edition of the STL 100, has always been unique. No other bakery in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ looks like Simone Faure’s: a patisserie, obviously, but also a tearoom and, if you believe a simple macaron and an elaborate wedding cake alike can aspire to art, then a gallery, too. Now, though, unique feels more apt than ever. With Pint Size Bakery founder Christy Augustin selling that bakery to new owners last year, Faure alone remains from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ bakery Big Bang early last decade. After Elaia and Olio closed to relocate, La Patisserie Choquette is the lone restaurant standing from the dramatic initial transformation of the intersection of Tower Grove and McRee avenues in Botanical Heights. Without any of this context, you would find La Patisserie Choquette compelling thanks to Faure’s elegant takes on tarts, muffins, cream puffs and laminated pastries — especially her signature chocolate croissant, the Darkness.

• 1626 Tower Grove Avenue 
• 314-932-7935;  
• 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday) 
• $

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Lefty’s Bagels

Bakeries & Desserts, Breakfast, Sandwiches

Scott “Lefty� Lefton and Doug Goldenberg probably would have been welcomed as heroes if they had simply brought passable bagels to Chesterfield after the Bagel Factory in nearby Creve Coeur closed in 2022. Instead, the brothers-in-law have created an entire ecosystem at Lefty’s Bagels, a two-year-old shop that feels as if it has been part of the community for decades. It begins with those bagels, of course, which the duo perfected well beyond passable before opening their storefront. You don’t need a sandwich, a schmear of cream cheese or a supple slice of lox to appreciate each gently chewy boiled-and-baked bite, though Lefty’s curates a selection of all three accompaniments and more. Though bagels are obviously Lefty’s focus, Lefton and Goldenberg have also filled the area’s need for a Jewish deli with such classic fare as pastrami, corned beef, smoked whitefish and matzoh-ball soup.

• 13359 Olive Boulevard, Chesterfield 
• 314-275-0959;  
• 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday) 
• $

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Le Ono

Contemporary, Polynesian

 Le Ono by itself makes O’Fallon, Illinois, a dining destination. Talani Mo’e’s unique French-Polynesian cooking debuted on last year’s edition of this list, and it has grown even more compelling since then. When I returned this year, I hardly minded the absence of my two favorite dishes, pork cracklings with a Gruyère fondue and a macadamia-encrusted red snapper. (For the latter, Mo’e had substituted a panko-coconut crust.) Instead, I marveled at his playful interpretation of fried chicken and waffles, with juicy pineapple-marinated chicken paired with crisp, fluffy and very purple ube waffles in maple syrup charged with Thai chiles. An appetizer reimagined shrimp toast as succulent fried morsels to be tucked inside lettuce wraps. With a cheery, cocktail-forward attitude, Le Ono shames higher-profile restaurants with far lesser ambitions.

• 101 South Cherry Street, O’Fallon, Illinois 
•  
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday) 
• $$$-$$$$

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Levels Nigerian Cuisine

Nigerian

The recent STL 100 track record for ambitious new downtown and Downtown West restaurants isn’t great. The Last Hotel’s Last Kitchen debuted on the 2020 list with an appealing modern menu from a rising-star chef. It emerged from the depths of the pandemic minus that chef as an Italian restaurant. This March, the entire hotel abruptly shut down. Wunderkind chef Juwan Rice’s Rated Test Kitchen was a standout newcomer on the 2024 STL 100. Rice will close Rated in May to bring it to other cities. So I’m going to insist you visit another stellar debut from last year’s list, Ono Ikanone and Justice Johnson’s Levels Nigerian Cuisine. With its selection of jerk-spiced wings, Nigerian soups and whole grilled fish, Levels encourages the festive communal vibes a restaurant in the heart of the city should. It’s right there in the name of the signature Party Jollof, rice with chicken, beef or goat and a scotch-bonnet kick to clear out your head and let you see the neighborhood anew.

• 1405 Washington Avenue 
• 314-571-9990;  
• Dinner Wednesday-Saturday, lunch Wednesday-Friday, brunch Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday) 
• $$-$$$

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Locoz Tacoz 🆕

Mexican

Patience is an underrated virtue in restaurants. Tyler Garcia has taken a dozen years to grow Locoz Tacoz from a food truck into one of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ premier taquerias. The truck launched in 2013 as an offshoot of Garcia’s parents’ Bridgeton restaurant La Tejana Taqueria. After a couple of years, he rebranded it as his own Locoz Tacoz. By the time the original Locoz Tacoz storefront opened in 2021 in Tower Grove South, Garcia had dialed in the menu. His carne asada ranked among the area’s best tacos of any style. Since closing that location in 2022 and reopening a year later in Maplewood, Garcia has gradually expanded his menu, adding lengua and tripe to his core lineup of carne asada, chicken and fish tacos. He has also succumbed to customer demand for birria. Taking the slow-cooked lamb at his parents’ restaurant as inspiration, Garcia knows great birria is also about patience.

• 7374 Manchester Road, Maplewood 
• 314-899-0222;  
• Lunch and dinner daily 
• $-$$

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Lona’s Lil Eats 🔟

Chinese, Thai

Lona’s Lil Eats was six months old when the STL 100 debuted in 2015. Lona Luo had already won fans at her Soulard Farmers Market stand when she opened this brick-and-mortar restaurant in Fox Park, but whether a hybrid of her deeply personal cooking and the fast-casual format would flourish was an open question. A decade and many dozens of Luo’s dumplings later, that question seems stupid. If anything, Lona’s Lil Eats is ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ preeminent example of how dining has transformed in this first quarter of the century. Here, in fast-casual fashion, you order your meal by number or build your own bowl or plump rice-paper wrap. Whichever you choose, your meal will feature Luo’s unique blend of Thai and Chinese regional fare: herbaceous, often fiery and deeply flavorful whether based around meat, seafood or tofu. If the meal you order is No. 8, you will get smoky, tender beef brisket that is only more remarkable as the area’ s conventional barbecue boom fades further into the past.

• 2199 California Avenue 
• 314-925-8938;  
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday) 
• $

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Madrina

Italian

Madrina sommelier Alisha Blackwell-Calvert is a 2025 James Beard Award semifinalist for “Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service,� a nationwide category. Please allow the Post-Dispatch to puff our chests in her honor. We named Blackwell-Calvert a rising star in 2018, when she was leading the wine program at the late Reeds American Table in Maplewood. The key, she told us then, is patience, asking customers questions to learn what kind of wine they might like: “That’s the art to it.� Blackwell-Calvert’s involvement was an early sign that the owners of Robust Bistro & Wine Bar and Parkmoor Drive-In meant business when they teamed to open the swanky old-school Madrina in late 2023 in Webster Groves. At its best, Madrina infuses new energy into such familiar dishes veal Parmesan and especially chicken marsala as overwhelming on the plate as a thick steak. As Blackwell-Calvert might tell you, the classic Italian-restaurant formula can still age as well as fine wine.

• 101 West Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves 
• 314-963-1976;  
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday) 
• $$$$

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Mai Lee 🔟

Chinese, Vietnamese

Mai Lee is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2025. Given what the Tran family has accomplished over the past four decades — introducing ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ to Vietnamese cuisine, thriving after relocating from their original location in University City to an (at the time) unlikely new home on the ground floor of a parking lot in Brentwood — it feels incidental to note that Mai Lee is also one of the 14 restaurants honored in every edition of STL 100. But this list would be incomplete and probably fatally flawed without Mai Lee’s big bowls of pho, its stir-fries verdant with lemongrass and feisty with chiles, its fried calamari and crab Rangoon. In the January 1987 review that put Mai Lee on the map, the late Post-Dispatch critic Joe Pollack compared finding this fare in what was then mainly known as a Chinese restaurant was like entering the Twilight Zone. Forty years later, a meal at Mai Lee feels like coming home.

• 8396 Musick Memorial Drive, Brentwood 
• 314-645-2835;  
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday) 
• $$

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Malinche Mexican Culinary Experience and Mestiza

Mexican

If the drive to Ellisville has kept you from visiting the great Malinche Mexican Culinary Experience, 2025 has delivered good news. Owners Angel Jimenez-Gutiérrez and Alex Ayala have opened Mestiza in Lindenwood Park. Mestiza expands Malinche’s twice-weekly taco menu into a full-fledged taqueria, with tacos both familiar (al pastor, birria, carne asada) and seldom seen in the area (stew-like taco guisados, a vegetarian riff on al pastor made with hibiscus). You still need to go to Malinche, though. Here Jimenez-Gutiérrez and his mother, María Gutiérrez Molina, continue to dazzle diners with their deeply personal Mexican fare. I’ve eaten some beautifully plated dishes at Malinche, but on a recent visit I was floored by the confident simplicity: quesabirria so flavorful and juicy that it doesn’t need consommé; a slab of pork belly with guacamole, housemade queso fresco and crickets to add to taste; chicken in a soulful mole verde with pepitas and dusky dried chiles.

Malinche Mexican Culinary Experience

• 15939 Manchester Road, Ellisville 
• 636-220-8514;  
• Dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday) 
• $$-$$$

Mestiza

• 3279 Hampton Avenue 
• 314-645-7676;  
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday) 
• $

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Mayo Ketchup

Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan

In February, Mandy Estrella closed the original Lafayette Square location of Mayo Ketchup, but fans of her Cuban, Dominican and Puerto Rican fare — myself included — didn’t need to wait long for their next visit. Mayo Ketchup reopened in March in the Midtown storefront where Estrella and partner Bradley Payne had debuted the Colombian- and Venezuelan-focused Salsa Rosada in 2023. The new Mayo Ketchup consolidates the two concepts on one menu, with her Cuban sandwich alongside both Colombian- and Venezuelan-style hot dogs (the former with pineapple sauce among its many garnishes, the latter bacon and corn sauces). For this year’s STL 100, I visited the original spot before the news of its relocation broke, but the ropa vieja in one of the restaurant’s signature bowls was as succulent as always. Don’t just take this critic’s word on it: Mayo Ketchup is also a go-to caterer for MLB teams visiting ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.

• 3135 Olive Street 
• 314-696-2699;  
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday) 
• $-$$

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Milque Toast Bar 🆕

Breakfast, Contemporary

Milque Toast Bar is tiny. It remains so even after Colleen Clawson relocated her restaurant a short distance along South Jefferson Avenue from its miniscule original home to marginally bigger digs in the former California Do-Nut Co. building in Benton Park. The case it makes for the relevance of the casual, idiosyncratic neighborhood restaurant in the post-pandemic era is expansive, though. The menu covers breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the particulars changing often. Clawson’s global influences range from crepe-like Norwegian pancakes with seasonal fruit to Spanish-style tortillas to a spring 2024 riff on choucroute garnie with apple alongside the sausage and sauerkraut. Even Clawson’s salads are distinctive — her take on a Caesar with grilled broccolini could pass for a main course — and she pays tribute to her new building’s history with a plate of miniature doughnuts.

• 2924 South Jefferson Avenue 
• 314-833-0085;  
• Breakfast, lunch and dinner Monday and Friday-Sunday (closed Tuesday-Thursday) 
• $$

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Napoli Bros. Pizza and Pasta 🆕

Italian, Pizza

If you like, you can count this as a joint entry for the entire Napoli Group of restaurants. Over the past five years, the Pietoso family has expanded from the original Cafe Napoli in Clayton and its Town and Country spinoff to include two restaurants in St. Charles (Napoli III and the adjacent Napoli Sea), a Kirkwood location and Napoli Bros. Pizza and Pasta in Chesterfield. I’ve enjoyed meals at each of the restaurants to open since 2020, but I’m singling out Napoli Bros. Pizza and Pasta because, while its menu features some elegant pastas in the Napoli tradition (cacio e pepe gnocchi), here the Pietosos have brought something new to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. The pizza is New Haven, Connecticut-style: very thin crust pies blistered crisp in a 550-degree coal-fired oven. Dive into the style with a classic white pizza with clams or an oregano-drunk, cheese-free tomato pie.

• 17084 North Outer Road, Suite 205, Chesterfield 
• 636-200-6300;  
• Lunch and dinner daily 
• $$-$$$

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Nathaniel Reid Bakery

Bakeries & Desserts, Sandwiches

When we decided to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the STL 100 by putting a birthday cake on its cover, we knew exactly where to go next: Nathaniel Reid Bakery. As usual, though, once I arrived at the Kirkwood bakery, I couldn’t choose just one of Nathaniel Reid’s jewel-like pastries as this cake. Instead, I assembled a greatest-hits collection: the Amber’s caramel cloud on a sablé Breton, the Guyana’s dark chocolate mousse-chocolate crème brulee dream team and the Ruby’s raspberries among them. Reid himself is celebrating this year. His bakery is a James Beard Award semifinalist for “Outstanding Bakeryâ€� nationwide. It has ranked as ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ premier bakery since its 2016 — in no small part for its broad appeal. The individual pastries I’ve listed here, as intricate as they are, cost $7.25 each, and they share a display case with such everyday indulgences as the bakery’s croissant, kouign-amann, brownies and cookies.

• 11243 Manchester Road, Kirkwood 
• 314-858-1019;  
• 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday) 
• $

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Nixta

Mexican

Nixta is the first of the three restaurants Ben Poremba is relocating from Botanical Heights to the Delmar Maker District to arrive, and it has set a daunting path for his flagship duo Elaia and Olio to follow. Nixta’s new space, which debuted in the final days of 2024, is a revelation. This is what the Mexican restaurant should have been from its 2016 debut: airy, colorful, rollicking. I lost count of how many plants decorate the dining rooms, but they send a message. Nixta isn’t simply back. It’s vibrantly alive. Wisely, Poremba and chef Juana Caballero haven’t reinvented Nixta’s menu. The arrangement of seafood and tacos is both familiar and welcome. The Baja taco with cod and chile-lime mayo might be the best fish taco in town right now. Nixta’s signature octopus is one of the few large plates, but don’t overlook the showstopping pavo en mole negro, roasted turkey thighs in a mole poblano with the bittersweetness of cacao and a simmering heat.

• 5232 Delmar Boulevard
• Dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)
• $$$

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No Ordinary Rabbit 🆕

Contemporary, Mediterranean

Younger diners know Steve Gontram for Five Star Burgers in Clayton, where he slings a green-chile cheeseburger to rival New Mexico’s finest. Those of us who remember dining without our phones in our hands think first of his late Harvest, one of the best ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ restaurants of the past 30 years. No Ordinary Rabbit, which Gontram and Dave Zitko opened last year in Botanical Heights, leads Harvest’s culinary legacy into the era of shared plates and sipped cocktails. Chef Stephen Kovac kindles familiar Mediterranean fare with inspired touches. Toasty pepitas garnish butternut-squash hummus. A splash of Pernod enlivens warmly spicy Merguez meatballs in tomato sauce. No Ordinary Rabbit is also one of the most vegetable-forward of recent debuts. Build a feast from charred Brussels sprouts with harissa honey, roasted carrots in agrodolce and grilled eggplant popping with pomegranate.  

• 1621 Tower Grove Avenue
• 314-696-2010;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday (bar opens 3 p.m.; closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$

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O’B Que’s 

Barbecue

Pitmaster John Maness continues to surprise at O’B Que’s, the barbecue restaurant adjacent to the minimart of a Chesterfield gas station. That location was surprising enough when Maness and the team behind O’B Clark’s in Brentwood opened O’B Que’s in 2023, as was Maness’ under-the-radar resume. The Austin, Texas, native’s decades of experience include the famous Driftwood, Texas, joint the Salt Lick BBQ. Texas-style brisket has been a highlight from the beginning at O’B Que’s, and the restaurant’s burnt ends are the best in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ right now. (Get there early before the latter sell out.) But Maness has also introduced something new — to me, at least — with his smoked pork tenderloin, served on Wednesdays in juicy slices glistening with tangy, subtly sweet sauce. Alluring on its own, the tenderloin also shows Maness’ range with pork. Its texture fits perfectly between O’B Que’s bark-encrusted, properly tug-from-the-bone ribs and luscious pulled pork.

• 158 Long Road, Chesterfield 
• 636-778-9675;  
• 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Saturday; 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday
• $-$$

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O+O Pizza

Italian, Pizza

Will I ever order pizza at O+O Pizza again? Absolutely. The pizza here — a thin, crispy hybrid of New York and New Haven, Connecticut, styles and its own quirks — earned its place in the restaurant’s name when Webster Groves superstar Olive + Oak transformed its original location into this casual Italian restaurant in 2020. Since then, however, chef Mike Risk keeps distracting me with his takes on Italian and Italian-American fare both familiar (swanky toasted ravioli stuffed with pancetta as well as beef and cheese) and wholly his own (corzetti pasta with bone marrow and grilled octopus). Risk can overwhelm you with a dish known simply as the Chicken: a plate-spanning breaded and seared cutlet topped with blistered blobs of mozzarella and set in a vodka cream sauce that still tastes of ripe tomato. He can also sneak up on you with the unshowy luxury of braised beef short ribs and fettucine in a silky buffalo-butter sauce.

• 102 West Lockwood Avenue, Webster Groves
• 314-721-5422;
• Dinner daily
• $$-$$$

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Pappy’s Smokehouse 🔟

Barbecue

When the STL 100 debuted in 2015, three barbecue joints placed in the Top 25. Of that trio, only one has maintained its presence on this list through today: Pappy’s Smokehouse, the Midtown restaurant that launched the great ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ barbecue boom when Mike Emerson, John Matthews and pitmaster Skip Steele fired up the smokers 17 years ago. There are more smokers today, a different dining room and a second location out west in St. Peters. Matthews is the main operator now. Folks still line up down a hallway and, sometimes, out the door for the exceptional pork ribs. A half-slab combo with a quarter-pound of sweet, falling-apart burnt ends is my go-to order, though nowadays I’m likely to take half of that home for later. On the other side of the barbecue boom, the spirit is willing, but the body is much older. Pappy’s and its family (Bogart’s Smokehouse in Soulard and Dalie’s Smokehouse in Valley Park) is still there for us nevertheless.

3106 Olive Street

• 314-535-4340;
• 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday (closed Tuesday)
• $-$$

5246 North Service Road, St. Peters

• 636-244-5400;
• 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday)
• $-$$

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Paul Manno’s Restaurant

Classic fine dining, Italian

Why did a pasta special of linguine with clams at Paul Manno’s Restaurant hit me so hard this March? I sopped up the garlicky, buttery sauce with bread after I ate the noodles and clams and considered scooping up the dregs with the discarded shells — the dining equivalent of full-body sobbing. Maybe because the dish reminded me of a favorite pasta from the late, great Tony’s, which had closed just the month before. Maybe also because this Chesterfield restaurant inspires big emotions alongside big appetites, lamb chops like a rack of Thor’s hammers and shrimp you mistake for lobster tail rolling through the rollicking dining room on carts. The comparisons grow outsized, but the cooking is as precise as the briny snap of each caper berry strewn over those lamb chops or the colossal shrimp in the gamberone scampi. I did order only an appetizer-sized portion of the linguine with clams special. That was big, too.

• 75 Forum Shopping Center, Chesterfield
• 314-878-1274;
• Dinner Monday-Saturday (closed Sunday)
• $$$-$$$$

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±Ê²¹²õ³Ù²¹°ù¾±²¹Ìý🔟

Italian, Pizza

When the STL 100 debuted in 2015, Gerard Craft’s Niche was No. 1. I didn’t need to think hard about this decision. Niche closed in 2016, but Craft’s Pastaria and Brasserie by Niche have stood tall on this list throughout its 10 years. I don’t need to think hard about either restaurant’s inclusion. Pastaria nailed its menu of pasta and wood-fired pizza from day one in Clayton: delicate pistachio ravioli and hearty bucatini all’ Amatriciana, charry pizzas both classic and signature (with Salume Beddu’s nduja or Allen Benton’s country ham), all of it even more impressive for the restaurant’s high volume.  From the beginning, Pastaria has also been family-friendly. Those of us who came of age during America’s culinary explosion between Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential� and the Great Recession — an era that includes Craft opening the original Niche in 2005 in Benton Park — are middle-aged now, many of us with kids. Those boom years have passed, but restaurants like Pastaria keep the spirit alive for the next generation.

• 7734 Forsyth Boulevard, Clayton
• 314-862-6603;
• Dinner daily, brunch Sunday
• $$-$$$

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Pie Hard Pizzeria

Pizza

ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is spoiled for great pizza right now. Pizzerias have dominated the recent editions of the STL 100 as barbecue joints did the early years. I could have included a few more on this year’s list had I wanted to risk nudging the sublime into the ridiculous. You don’t need to travel far from your home to find one of those great pizzas, but you should travel to Michael and Megan Pastor’s Pie Hard. This tiny Waterloo pizzeria bridges the smoky, tangy crust of Neapolitan-inspired pies with unabashedly American inspirations (candied ham and pickled pineapple in the Island pizza, buffalo chicken in the Buffy Summers). Want a break from pizza? Early each year, Pie Hard hosts a series of weekly pop-up menus. These let Michael Pastor flex his chef’s muscles with, say, seafood dishes like sweet, meaty crab fritters or a rich seafood pot pie with a flaky cheddar-biscuit crust.

• 122 West Mill Street, Waterloo
• 618-939-4273;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $-$$

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Pizza Via 🆕

Pizza

Under any other owner, Pizza Via would have been 2024’s most confounding debut. This Central West End pizzeria opens for only a few hours a week. Its amenities include tables and chairs and little else. Even if we restricted the competition to wood-fired pizzerias, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ offers too many other options to bother with this, right? Except Pizza Via marks the return of Scott Sandler, who last decade founded the Neapolitan-style Pizzeoli in Soulard and the New York-inspired Pizza Head in Tower Grove East. At Pizza Via, Sandler has fashioned a new wood-fired pie that marries the char and tang of Naples to the compact chew of New York.  The crisp crust is the ideal bed for a classic cheese or pepperoni pizza, the latter a change from Sandler’s previous vegetarian ventures, and you will save Pizza Via’s limited hours on your Google calendar for its signature spinach pie with garlic, mozzarella, Parmesan and a finishing balsamic glaze.

• 4501 Maryland Avenue
• Dinner Friday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Thursday)
• $$

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Pizzeria da Gloria

Pizza

In matters of pizza, I already knew I would follow Joe Kurowski anywhere. Kurowski opened his wood-fired Hill restaurant Pizzeria da Gloria in the pandemic maelstrom of November 2020, and it was one of the first restaurants I sought out when I resumed reviewing the following spring. His distinct style, cooked at a lower temperature than traditional Neapolitan pizza, yields a crisp, lightly chewy and wonderfully tangy crust. Kurowski can make classic pepperoni and sausage pies taste new again, but Pizzeria da Gloria convinced me ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ most exciting pizza then — and now — is his Bonci, a sauceless vegan pie starring gossamer slices of eggplant and garlic-chile oil. More recently, I trusted Kurowski to top his crust with a hazelnut pesto, a touch of sweet, green spring in the dead of December. And if you, too, want to follow Kurowski, you don’t need to visit the Hill. He has introduced a mobile pizza oven to bring his pies to the Tower Grove Farmers Market and other venues.

• 2024 Marconi Avenue
• 314-833-3734;
• Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$

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Sabroso Cocina Mexicana

Mexican

Sabroso Cocina Mexicana has opened a second location in downtown Maplewood, which should broaden the appeal of one ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ best Mexican restaurants — and not simply because of its greater geographical reach. The original Sabroso in St. Ann has won admirers since its 2021 debut for Miguel Pintor’s cooking, which ranges across Mexico’s regional cuisines, with an emphasis on Yucatán’s cochinita pibil and Mexico City’s tacos. (Pintor’s mother has operated a taco stand in Mexico City for decades.) Due to a quirk of its location, however, the St. Ann Sabroso can’t acquire a liquor license. In Maplewood, those who enjoy a beer, margarita or other adult beverage with their meal will find a full bar. Everyone will dig into the expansive selection of tacos, tortas, quesabirria and that signature cochinita pibil, slow-roasted pork available as a plate, in a taco or as a panucho, with refried beans and pickled onions on a corn tortilla.

11146 Old St. Charles Road, St. Ann

• 314-918-5037;
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $-$$

2726 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood

• 314-335-7295;
• Lunch and dinner daily
• $-$$

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Salt + Smoke 🔟

Barbecue

When the STL 100 debuted in 2015, Tom Schmidt’s Delmar Loop barbecue restaurant wasn’t yet a year old. A decade later, Salt + Smoke boasts five locations from Ballpark Village downtown through ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Hills out west to Ellisville and St. Charles, with new locations pending in south ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County and Kirkwood. (That doesn’t include the Central West End storefront that didn’t return after a 2022 fire.) Through this expansion, Salt + Smoke has been one of only two barbecue joints honored in every edition of the STL 100, an especially remarkable feat given how a few other prominent local restaurants have lessened their appeal as their numbers have grown. Credit Schmidt and Haley Riley, who joined Salt + Smoke as pitmaster before also becoming a co-owner, with focusing on quality alongside empire-building. The core smoked meats (beef brisket, pulled pork, pork ribs) and unique offerings (cherry-smoked salmon, cheddar-jalapeño bologna, burnt ends toasted ravioli) have not lost their luster from location to location and year to year.

• Multiple area locations, including 6525 Delmar Boulevard, University City
• 314-727-0200;
• Lunch and dinner daily (all locations)
• $-$$

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Shorty’s Smokehouse

Barbecue

The stories behind Shorty’s Smokehouse could power the STL 100 by themselves. That name, for instance. Shorty is the late grandfather of co-owner Anthony Hassler. Shorty was short and didn’t like his actual name, Orville. Shorty also couldn’t cook. Hassler and co-owner Brandon Bauza bonded over barbecue while working together in aviation, but their friendship might have been kismet. Hassler went to school with Bauza’s future wife in Washington, Missouri, while Bauza went to school with Hassler’s future wife in Waterloo. Waterloo is also where the two men turned their amateur barbecue into a serious profession (Hassler has also built and sold smokers) into a destination for some of the best beef brisket in the metro area alongside standout turkey, pork ribs and housemade pork ribs. Theirs is the kind of unexpected restaurant story that has fueled 10 years of the STL 100 and (I hope) many more.

• 121 South Main Street, Waterloo
• 618-939-7665;
• 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday, 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Sunday (closes early if sold out; closed Tuesday)
• $-$$

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Sides of Seoul

Korean

Five years after the pandemic forced Sides of Seoul and every other restaurant to close their dining rooms, the Korean restaurant in Overland remains takeout-only. The adaptation has proved a keeper — though I do miss its kimchi jjigae (a pork-tofu stew the color of a fire engine and the temperature of the fire it was sent to extinguish) delivered hissing and spitting directly to my seat. The storefront is unmistakably a business, with a refrigerated grab-and-go case of kimchi and traditional Korean side dishes, but the heart of Sides of Seoul has always been Lee family matriarch Mimi’s home cooking, and getting food to go here feels like spiriting leftovers home from a festive home dinner, complete with foil-wrapped kimbap for snacking. Yet even before shifting to the takeout-only model, the Lees were in tune with modern dining habits, with a menu based around those kimbop, rice bowls (bulgogi, spicy pork) and other dishes both delicious and convenient.

• 10084 Page Avenue, Overland
• 314-942-8940
• Lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday (closes at 3 p.m. Wednesday, closed Sunday)
• $

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Sister Cities Cajun

Cajun/Creole

Sister Cities Cajun was an inaugural STL 100 honoree in 2015, but I can’t count Pamela and Travis Parfait’s restaurant among those featured in all 10 editions. It’s a quintessentially ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ technicality. Sister Cities missed the 2017 list because it was closed to relocate after errant cars struck its original building in Dutchtown twice in four months. The Parfaits bounced back later that year with an expansive new location in Marine Villa, and now I can’t imagine Sister Cities anywhere else. I certainly can’t imagine its smoked wings, shrimp po’ boys and etouffee absent from this list. Travis Parfait, proud son of Dulac, Louisiana, would earn a spot on the STL 100 if he served nothing but his bewitching seafood gumbo — shrimp, crawfish and catfish in a dark roux — by itself or smothering smoked chicken thighs and dirty rice in my favorite dish, the Dirty Chick, which bridges Parfait’s mastery of Cajun cuisine and barbecue.

• 3550 South Broadway
• 314-405-0447;
• Lunch and dinner Monday and Thursday-Sunday (closed Tuesday-Wednesday)
• $-$$

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Songbird

Breakfast

Songbird is the rare breakfast joint where you should make a reservation whether you plan to visit for weekend brunch or at 10 a.m. on a random Wednesday. Seating is limited at Chris Meyer’s Forest Park Southeast restaurant, especially if the weather doesn’t permit outdoor dining, and when Meyer and Mike Miller founded Songbird in 2020, a devoted fanbase followed them from their stand at Tower Grove Farmers Market and their previous restaurant, Kounter Kulture. Market regulars knew Songbird would become the home of the Combo breakfast sandwich, a new ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ icon with bacon, egg, white cheddar, sea salt and honey. Kounter Kulture diners knew a tiny kitchen wouldn’t keep Meyer and her team from sweating the details. Baker Bryan Russo makes the sprouted-wheat English muffins for Songbird’s other great breakfast sandwich with egg, chicken sausage and pickled onion. He also bakes Polish-style bialys to pair with my favorite dish here, lox cured in house with Scottish salmon.

• 4476 Chouteau Avenue
• 314-781-4344;
• 8 a.m-2 p.m. daily (closed Tuesday)
• $-$$

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Southwest Diner

Diner, New Mexican

Recent years have taken a toll on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½â€™ classic greasy spoons. The Eat-Rite Diner south of downtown closed in 2020, and the Courtesy Diner on South Kingshighway followed in 2022. Last year, Uncle Bill’s Pancake House shuttered its longtime South Kingshighway location. Fortunately, there is a solution: fresh thinking. New owners with a proven vision for the neighborhood will reopen Uncle Bill’s. Eat-Rite has reopened as the diner Fleur STL, a three-time STL 100 honoree. (Courtesy Diner is now a hot-chicken joint, but at least it’s a good hot-chicken joint, Chuck’s.) Jonathan Jones and Anna Seidel have led the way for this era of “newâ€� diners at Southwest Diner, where the food is as distinct as the coffee is hot and ready to pour. If you’re going to get eggs your way in this economy, pair them with Southwest’s carne adovada (pork shoulder braised with red chiles) or cheesy grits. Both the green-chile cheeseburger and the torta are as messy as any old slinger — and far tastier.

• 6803 Southwest Avenue
• 314-260-7244;
• 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday and Wednesday-Friday, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday (closed Tuesday)
• $

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Sugarwitch

Bakeries & desserts

Sugarwitch was made for this moment. As “Wicked�-mania swept through movie theaters this winter, the cozy ice cream parlor and bakery in the Patch neighborhood could dish up one of its signature sandwiches, the Elphaba: green mint-chip ice cream paired with a salted mint brownie. For a time, Sugarwitch’s seasonal options let you pair the Elphaba with the Galinda, a sandwich of vegan strawberry-chocolate chip ice cream with a fudgy brownie. Name a more iconic duo. (The Galinda, gluten-free as well as vegan, also showcases how inclusive Sugarwitch makes its menu.) Sugarwitch regulars know to pounce on specials like the Harrow sandwich — dark chocolate-chip ice cream and marshmallow fluff with a dark cocoa brownie — before they disappear for the season or just sell out for the weekend. Regulars also know that founders Sophie Mendelson and Martha Bass and their team cultivate a joyous, community-minded and proudly queer space. Sugarwitch is made for this moment.

• 7726 Virginia Avenue
• 3-9 p.m. Friday, 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, 1-7 p.m. Sunday (closed Monday-Thursday)
• $

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SweetArt

Bakeries & Desserts, Sandwiches, Vegan/Vegetarian

Update: SweetArt has closed its storefront at 2203 South 39th Street to relocate to 3701 Lindell Boulevard. SweetArt Too is open daily.

Reine Keis has embarked on a transformative 2025 for her plant-based bakery and cafe SweetArt. In February, she opened SweetArt Too at the Food Hall at City Foundry in Midtown, bringing her vegan dishes both savory and sweet to the venue’s all-star ensemble. Soon, she will relocate her flagship from its home in Shaw, where it debuted in 2008, to the Coronado building near ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ University in Grand Center. I’m always nervous on behalf of restaurants making big changes, but I can already attest that SweetArt’s baked goods are just as delectable at the Food Hall. There I encountered a new (to me) version of the signature Big Momma Cinnamon Roll elevated even higher by a gently sweet pistachio icing. Keis’ plant-based fare has always been ahead of the curve — her Sweet Burger, which doesn’t pretend to be a “realâ€� burger, predated and has outlasted the faux beef patty trend. When SweetArt pauses to relocate, the rest of us can catch up.

SweetArt

• 2203 South 39th Street (closed to relocate to 3701 Lindell Boulevard)
• 314-771-4278;
• (Closed for relocation)
• $

SweetArt Too

• Food Hall at City Foundry, 3730 Foundry Way
• Open daily
• $

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Telva at the Ridge 🆕

Balkan, Breakfast, Bosnian, Mediterranean

A basic description should sell Telva at the Ridge. At this Webster Groves restaurant adjacent to Rolling Ridge Nursery, the great Balkan Treat Box (see No. 9) uses its wondrous cooking and warm hospitality on breakfast. Telva’s charms are obvious even if you have never visited its older sibling, though. The botanical décor anticipates the fresh herbs chef Loryn Nalic showers over the Turkish dish cilbir, two eggs in glimmering swirls of tomato-chile brown butter and garlic yogurt. Throughout Telva’s menu, Nalic gives the egg the attention its current cost and fraught availability demand. A perfectly fried egg garnished with oregano and shaved double-cream feta is perched atop the Sloppy Mustafa’s stack of toast and moussaka-spiced ground beef, while the orange yolk of a runny egg gilds the hearth-baked bread of Telva’s extraordinary breakfast sandwich.

• 60 North Gore Avenue A, Webster Groves
• 314-395-2760;
• 8 a.m.-3 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday (closed Monday-Tuesday)
• $

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Tiny Chef

Korean

Should I still be checking Instagram regularly for restaurant tips? I’m old — too old to invest much time in TikTok or whatever else the cool kids are using instead — so while the Instagram algorithm increasingly buries the restaurant pictures I want under videos I didn’t ask for, I keep checking the cursed app. Tiny Chef is a prime reason why. Melanie Meyer’s Korean restaurant follows no model but its own. The compact core menu of this walk-up kitchen in the Bevo Mill bar and pinball arcade the Silver Ballroom is attraction enough, thanks to Meyer’s Korean tacos and bowls of bibimbap with juicy steak and fiery, fizzy kimchi. Regulars know to check Tiny Chef’s accounts on Instagram and Facebook for the week’s specials, which can range from homey stews to kimchi pancakes to Meyer’s incendiary Nuclear Noodles. If you pay close enough attention, you might catch the announcement of one of Meyer’s infrequent, but legendary crab boils.

• The Silver Ballroom, 4701 Morganford Road
• 314-832-9223; ;
• Dinner Monday and Friday-Sunday (closed Tuesday-Thursday)
• $

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Vegan Deli & Butcher 🆕

Sandwiches, Vegan/Vegetarian

Vegan Deli & Butcher makes me think about barbecue restaurants. No, smart alecks, not because I’m still hungry. Among the many charms of chef Chris Bertke’s vegan sandwich shop, the portions are generous. Don’t wait to grab your share. Like many barbecue joints, Vegan Deli & Butcher adds an “or until sold out� qualifier to its posted hours, and when you scroll through its Instagram posts, sellout notices appear often. When Bertke opened Vegan Deli & Butcher in 2023, he’d already gained a following for his vegan “meats� from pop-ups, a short-lived earlier version of his own restaurant in St. Charles and his pre-pandemic cooking at the late Utah Station in Benton Park. His technique is astounding, sketching both the flavor and the texture of Italian cold cuts, Bosnian cevapi and Maine lobster. Even when he reveals artichoke hearts as the secret to that buttery lobster roll, the wonder doesn’t dissipate.

• 5003 Gravois Avenue
• 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (or sold out) Wednesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Tuesday)
• $

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³Õ±ð°ù¾±³Ù²¹²õÌý🔟

Contemporary

When we launched the STL 100 in 2015, I could learn how to wrangle a list this long only by making it from scratch. In retrospect, I would have done many things differently, but I’m proud to have included the Stitt family’s Ellisville restaurant and wine shop Veritas from the beginning — even if my write-up in that inaugural edition hardly did right by Mathis Stitt’s cooking. I mentioned his oft-changing dinner menu, Veritas’ main attraction, almost as an afterthought. This is always a remarkable experience, in tune with contemporary trends, yet wholly Stitt’s own. Over the years, I have eaten everything from cornbread with bacon jam and foie-gras butter to an inspired shellfish stew with lobster bisque as the base and — why not? — lamb sausage added to the mix of mussels, shrimp and scallops. This year, I bring things full circle to remind you Veritas isn’t only upscale dinner, but a spot for sandwiches, happy hour and weekend brunch, where Stitt plates juicy fried chicken with fluffy waffles.

• 15860 Fountain Plaza, Ellisville
• 636-227-6800;
• Dinner and happy hour Wednesday-Saturday, lunch Wednesday-Friday, brunch Saturday-Sunday
• $$-$$$

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Westchester

Contemporary

One evening this winter at Westchester, chef and co-owner Matthew Glickert topped tater tots — just ordinary tots like you would toss in the air-fryer at home — with caviar, crème fraiche and shaved black truffle. I chuckled as the bartender described the special, did a double-take when the generous portion arrived and ate more than I should have. These haute-r tots might not be regular Westchester fare, but they prove the appeal of this three-year-old Chesterfield restaurant. Here is higher-end dining that doesn’t take itself too seriously, a place for a special dinner, a snack at the bar (consider the smoked and fried pork belly if no tater tots are available) or a bowl of onion soup. Glickert is loyal to local growers (Lucky Dog Farms and tomatoes from Tony’s Family Farms make regular appearances) and attuned to the season. A more typical winter dish paired pan-seared duck breast with a vegetable hash over the earthy sweetness of a parsnip puree.

• 127 Chesterfield Towne Center, Chesterfield
• 636-778-0635;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

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Yellowbelly

Contemporary, Seafood

Yellowbelly returns to the STL 100 for the first time since 2020. Before this winter, I hadn’t visited the Central West End restaurant or its adjacent cocktail bar, Lazy Tiger, in three years. When I did finally make it back, I found the crackling energy a refreshing change from our current early-bedtime dining scene. That energy carried over to my dinner. Seafood remans Yellowbelly’s lure: both literal seafood, like shrimp ceviche in a leche con tigre simmering with chile and citrus contrasted with cool avocado; and the seafood-adjacent, like a fun riff on a certain seafood chain’s signature cheddar biscuits. This kitchen can just plain cook right now, from the prime hanger steak marinated with koji to give the meat a little dry-aged-like funk to butter-tender charred carrots with a sprinkling of crumbled macadamia nuts. Co-owner Tim Wiggins is one of the area’s most celebrated mixologists, and while I no longer drink, Yellowbelly’s no-nonsense Faux-jito and Piña Co-nada mocktails hit the spot. Here’s toasting the 2025 STL 100 and 10 more years.

• 4659 Lindell Boulevard
• 314-499-1509;
• Dinner Tuesday-Saturday, brunch Saturday (closed Sunday-Monday)
• $$$-$$$$

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