Food & Drink >>

• Best Fast Food
  Noodles & Company
  National Public Radio draws plenty of sponsors. One hour is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the next owes its existence to a civic-minded law firm. But one morning last fall, the honey-voiced announcer imparted, "This hour is brought to you by Noodles & Company, soon to open... More >>
• Best Pizza (Thin Crust) (4 Comments)
  Pizza-a-Go-Go
  Pizza-a-Go-Go neatly sidesteps the contentious which-thin-crust-is-best debate. A pie from this modest, rec-roomesque south-city joint — there's a piano in the dining room and a fridge for your BYO beer fer chrissake — is neither the cracker-crusted, Provel-topped pizza of St. Louis... More >>
• Best Pizza (Thick Crust) (1 Comment)
  Pizzeria Della Piazza
  Husband-and-wife owners John and Ann Piazza offer three crust options at their Daggett Avenue institution, Pizzeria Della Piazza: a thin semi-St. Louis style (made with mozzarella instead of Provel), a thick "Pan Style," and a monstrous "Stuffed Pizza." They're all dandy, but we're all over the... More >>
• Best Burger
  Llywelyn's Pub
  International Society for Hamburger Improvement Executive Board Annual MeetingSeptember 27, 2007Present: Mid-Priced Chain Restaurant, Four-Star Chef, Llywelyn's Pub, the HamburglarAbsent: Backyard barbecueQuorum? Yes- Meeting called to order at 7:30 p.m. by the chair, the Hamburglar.- The... More >>
• Best Burger (Non-Beef Division)
  Green Chili Turkeyburger
  Eating a turkey burger is often like choosing to wear sensible pumps instead of high-heeled stilettos: You know it's practical and good for you, but it's just not quite as much fun. Leave it to the Schlafly Bottleworks to make its Green Chili Turkeyburger as sassy and flavorful as a pair of... More >>
• Best Burger (You Ate What? Division)
  Baseball's Best Burger at GCS Stadium
  When historians look back on American eating habits of the late-20th and early-21st centuries, who will they consider the era's most influential culinary figure? Not Mario or Emeril or (thank God) Bobby Flay. Our money's on Homer Simpson. While a select few enjoy the benefits of America's foodie... More >>
• Best French Fries
  Franco
  Now that we've entered the latter half of the decade and that whole us-versus-the-French unpleasantness has passed — that Sarkozy is one handsome, charismatic bastard, n'est �e pas? — can we finally admit that the French make better French fries than we do? 'Cause they do. Doubt it?... More >>
• Best Hot Dog
  The Sweetheart
  Oh, the poor, derided hot dog! Once celebrated at the backyard barbecue, the frankfurter has been abandoned by those who used to love its salty meatiness, and it has been relegated to the kids' table. No fair! You need to reclaim the hot dog, and ordering the $6.25 all-beef Sweetheart at... More >>
• Best Barbecue (1 Comment)
  17th Street Bar & Grill
  The Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest is also known as the Super Bowl of Swine. That makes 17th Street Bar & Grill owner Mike Mills the Joe Montana or Tom Brady of the barbecue world. He has won the contest three times, a feat that has allowed him to open a chain of... More >>
• Best Fried Chicken
  Young's Restaurant & Ice Creamery
  Every other day a truck of freshly slaughtered chickens leaves an Arkansas farm and makes a delivery to Young's Restaurant & Ice Creamery, where owner Grant Young and his crack staff of local teens and twentysomethings plate up what just might be the tenderest, juiciest poultry west of the... More >>
• Best Calamari
  Trattoria Two
  Every now and then a giant squid will wash up on a beach or get caught in a fisherman's net. And by giant we mean freakin' monstrous — just this year a squid measuring 26 feet from top to tentacle tip and weighing 550 pounds was found along the Australian coast. Whenever this happens,... More >>
• Best Chicken Wings
  Pujols 5 Westport Grill
  Wing aficionados used to split into three camps: those who preferred the middle joint (what most diners consider "the wing"), those who loved the "drumette" and those who didn't care as long as there was blue-cheese dressing and celery on the side. Although armed conflict among the three groups... More >>
• Best Toasted Ravioli
  Gentelin's on Broadway
  Archaeologists exploring the caves beneath St. Louis recently discovered what they believe to be the petrified remains of the first toasted ravioli. Although estimated at 75,000 years old and bearing scars from the crude (and inexplicable) hammerings of some Paleolithic tool, the ur-T-rav looks... More >>
• Best Use of the Worst Cheese
  Margherita Pizza
  While some signature St. Louis foodstuffs have managed to find fans outside the 314/636/618, Provel don't get no love. Same goes for the other St. Louis creation with which it goes hand in hand, the oxymoronically named St. Louis-style pizza. Generally speaking, Rigazzi's, an institution on the... More >>
• Best Macaroni & Cheese (1 Comment)
  Growlers Pub
  When you break it down, macaroni & cheese is simply that: noodles and curdled milk. But why would you want to talk that way about the most heavenly side dish ever? It's a warm-you-from-the-inside-out casserole on a blustery winter's day, and it's a comforting cushion for icy cold beers during... More >>
• Best Caesar Salad
  The Vine Wine Bar & Bistro
  In the past few years it has become all too easy to take the Caesar salad for granted. Imposing itself on two out of every three menus, spilling across ever bigger plates, crying for help from the portion police, the king of salads has, alas, been relegated to a mere commoner. Caesar Cardini,... More >>
• Best Spring Rolls
  Banh Mi So
  How do we know Banh Mi So has the best spring rolls in town? Because the restaurant displays a neon sign on its storefront that says "Best Spring Rolls in St. Louis." OK, so just because a restaurant claims to have the "best" anything doesn't mean it's true. Except when it comes to Banh Mi So.... More >>
• Best Bibimbap (2 Comments)
  U-City Grill
  Bibimbap — "mixed rice," in Korean, and spelled a zillion different transliterated ways — has to be one of the world's best comfort foods. At the hands of Yong Sup Sim and his wife So La Sim, owners of the nineteen-year-old U-City Grill, the dish does take you back to the blithe old... More >>
• Best Cure for What Ails You
  Pho
  Mom? There's something I need to tell you. Yes, you'd better sit down. Here — take this box of tissues. So you know how you've always said there's nothing better than chicken soup for the common cold or a tired soul? Well, you're wrong. Try this. It's a bowl of pho from Pho Long, a tiny... More >>
• Best Torta
  Taqueria el Torito
  The key to the torta — the classic Mexican sandwich: meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, cheese and jalapeños — is the bolillo, a plump roll with a crusty exterior and a soft, white interior. It needs to stand up to the sandwich's ample filling, but it also must have... More >>
• Best Guacamole
  KoKo
  Let's play a game with prepositions. (Wait, please keep reading.) Which would you rather have: guacamole before dinner, guacamole with dinner or guacamole on dinner? OK, so it's a trick question. What we're interested in is guacamole for dinner — especially when said guac comes from KoKo,... More >>
• Best Salsa
  Nachomama's
  The great Western philosopher Marshall Mathers once declared, "My salsa makes all the pretty girls want to dance." With all due respect to Señor Shady, the most delicious, most danceworthy salsa can be found at only one place: Nachomama's. This colorful Rock Hill eatery offers some of the... More >>
• Best Beer
  Wheach
  Yee-haw! Hey, everybody, it's me: the Wheach peach. Surely you've seen my likeness emblazoned on a six-pack of O'Fallon Brewery's fine summer brew. That's right: I'm the li'l guy who looks like the lovechild of Pac-Man and Scooter the Talking Baseball. But I'm all peach, baby, and you need only... More >>
• Best Sandwiches
  Stellina Pasta Cafe
  Too often we take the sandwich for granted. Anyone can throw together some cold cuts, cheese, vegetables and condiments between two slices of bread and call it a sandwich — the result is usually satisfying, sometimes good. But to make a great sandwich takes the same attention to detail... More >>
• Best Sammiches
  Iron Barley
  Some say the best sandwiches are those whose bread is entirely incidental to the flavorful fill. The best sammiches, found only at Iron Barley in south St. Louis, follow this same rule, and raise it a pile of chips. The hearty innards of these tasty local heroes are supercharged with the gusto... More >>
• Best Grilled Cheese Sandwich
  Tin Can Tavern and Grille
  As soon as the weather turns cold, our thoughts turn to roaring fires, wool blankets and comfort food: hot soup, hot chocolate and grilled cheese sandwiches. Especially grilled cheese — which, like peanut butter and jelly, is a favorite holdover from childhood. While the concept of the... More >>
• Best BLT (1 Comment)
  The BLTA
  No, the "A" in Big V's BLTA does not stand for "Awesome" — although it should. Nor does it stand for "Another," because if you put away more than one of these sandwiches in a single sitting, you will need a BLTAmbulance. What it does stand for is "Avocado" — fresh, vibrant, creamy... More >>
• Best Fish Sandwich
  City Diner
  Fish sandwiches are a conundrum. The term "fish sandwich" is far too vague (you wouldn't call a hamburger a "meat sandwich" — that would be gross). And the fish sandwich itself is kinda vague, too. Order one most places, and you get...some sort of whitefish pressed into a square and then... More >>
• Best Roast Beef Sandwich
  Blues City Deli
  Located in still-flowering Benton Park, Blues City Deli acts as a kind of gustatory crossroads for the varying strains of sandwich styles. New Orleans-style po' boys sidle up to Memphis BBQ plates, and the Italian sandwiches rival anything found on the Hill. All these are superb, but the... More >>
• Best Grocery Store
  Trader Joe's
  Trader Joe's is like that laid-back, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing friend who's always experimenting with something new. He's funny, helpful and always in-the-know. The first local outpost of this California-based chain opened in October 2004, and now Trader Joe's boasts four area locations — in... More >>
• Best Meat Counter
  Mateker's Meat & Catering
  Mateker's is a mecca of meat, a place where all forms of flesh are cut, cured and combined for your gustatory pleasure. Hidden away in a little slab of south county not far from the behemoth Ronnie's 20 Cine, Mateker's trumps its competitors with not one, not two, but three meat counters: one... More >>
• Best Fresh Seafood Counter
  Olive Farmers Market (Olive Supermarket)
  Peruse most any seafood counter in our third-coast city and you're likely to find a few formerly frozen salmon steaks, a cut or two of graying ahi tuna and the cloudy-eyed remains of a few river fish. Not so the seafood counter at Olive Farmers Market. On any given day, a visit to this Chinatown... More >>
• Best Cheese Counter
  The Wine Merchant
  There are many places to buy cheese in St. Louis. But at most of them, a question like "What's the difference between Stilton and Kraft Blue Cheese Crumbles?" would probably classify as a stumper. That's why we love the Wine Merchant. We've been known to while away an hour at the Wine Merchant's... More >>
• Best Farmers' Market
  Ferguson Farmers' Market
  A perfect Saturday morning of errand-running between April and October begins at the Ferguson Farmers' Market, a mile or so north of I-70 on South Florissant Road. There, next to the gazebo on the Ferguson Victorian Plaza, awaits the bounty picked just a few hours prior by at least a dozen local... More >>
• Best Takeout Counter (Grocery Division)
  Whole Foods Market
  So you're having a dinner party. During past forays into entertaining, your sole consideration was whether your guests preferred sausage or pepperoni. Drink options? PBR and Busch — if they were lucky. But your relationship with the pizza-delivery guy has become strained recently, and the... More >>
• Best Takeout Counter (Gourmet Division)
  The Smokehouse Market
  The Smokehouse Market nearly drowned in the great flood of 1993. Now it's sitting on top of the world, with a selection of cheeses, meats and its signature sauces so good that you'd drive from anywhere else in the metro area all the way out to Chesterfield without thinking twice. Those who live... More >>
• Best Delicatessen (3 Comments)
  McLozzi Deli & Marketplace
  Here's a good rule of thumb: Don't trust a deli that doesn't make a good sandwich. McLozzi Deli & Marketplace — named for its location at the corner of McNair Avenue and Pestalozzi Street in Benton Park — makes a damn good sandwich. Several of them, in fact, including a delicious... More >>
• Best Whole Roast Chicken
  La Tropicana Market & Cafe
  Chicken: a domestic fowl developed for its eggs, feathers and juicy flesh. Mojo: Cuba's signature marinade, existing in many variations and subject to the whims of its creator, but often including garlic, jalapeño, scallion, lime, cayenne, cumin, sour orange juice and vinegar. Whole roast... More >>
• Best Asian Market
  Seafood City
  Unless you have a passing knowledge of how to read Chinese, Thai or Korean, your typical Asian market can be a tad intimidating. In this respect, Seafood City is no different: It has aisle after aisle of jars filled with slightly menacing pastes cryptically labeled with names like "Sauteed... More >>
• Best Bagels
  Companion Baking
  Bagels must be big; it's one of the rules. Here's a quick test: if you think a bagel is kind of big, then it isn't big. Likewise, a bagel must be dense without being heavy, and chewy without being sticky. You must have stamina to eat it, but not get tired. Companion Baking, in operation since... More >>
• Best Doughnuts
  Eddie's Southtown Donuts
  South city is a haven for doughnut lovers. Within a three-mile radius, one can pick from such long-john luminaries as World's Fair Doughnuts, O'Fashion Donuts and Donut Drive-In. While those mainstays are all dandy, there's a new kid in the neighborhood. Tucked away in the Southtown... More >>
• Best Baklava (1 Comment)
  Al-Tarboush Deli
  As the novice pastry chef will quickly learn, phyllo, a.k.a. the flaky part of baklava, is the temperamental genius of the baking world. Working with the difficult dough can be quite frustrating: Is it moist enough? Is it too moist? Is it chilled? Or should it be a little less chilled? And don't... More >>
• Best Bakery
  The Cupcakery
  It's been years — years — since other urban dwellers have benefited from the cupcake craze launched by New York City's famed Magnolia Bakery. Now, at last, cupcakes take St. Louis, with thanks to baker Nicole Panepinto. She and co-owner Ericka Frank have enjoyed several years of... More >>
• Best Bread
  Breadsmith
  Here's the good news about Breadsmith: Every day brings a new loaf (raisin cinnamon, honey oat, honey whole wheat, rosemary garlic ciabatta, Asiago cheese, gluten-free, Greek olive, and more and more). Every day features the wildly popular apple pie bread, a lip-smacking, calorie-loaded... More >>
• Best Local Honey
  Gibbons Bee Farm
  If you come across a honeybee in St. Louis County, it might well belong to Sharon Gibbons. The sixtysomething beekeeper has more than 150 hives scattered around the county: in back yards, near streams, on the edges of fields and on working farms. The result? A toothsome honey heady with clover... More >>
• Best Coffee
  Chauvin Coffee
  In the early 20th century, St. Louis was as much a coffee town as it was a beer town. Makes sense: Put away a few too many barley pops at night and you're bound to require a caffeine jolt in the morning. But while the A-B eagle spread its wings across the whole dang globe and microbreweries like... More >>
• Best Tea
  Cornucopia
  The great sage Lao Tzu referred to tea as "the froth of the liquid jade." Lao Tzu was a romantic. Up until World War II, tea bricks (densely compressed blocks of tea leaves) were still used as currency among the nomadic peoples of Siberia. Clearly, the Siberians are a pragmatic people. At... More >>
• Best U-Pick
  Lakeview Farms
  Lakeview Farms, a sunny spot out where St. Peters meets O'Fallon, is a family-oriented U-Pick, with raspberries as big as quarters...strawberries the size of tennis balls...pumpkins that peak at the knees. The cook of the family gets to forage for Lakeview Farms' luscious bounty and consult... More >>
• Best Smoothie
  St. Louis Smoothie
  Very soon you and the rest of us will be using alternate routes. We'll be spending more time on the road, which means eating right and exercising are bound to be sacrificed. Dunno about you, but rather than expanding our waistline along with our familiarity with creative ways to get to the... More >>
• Best Milkshake
  City Diner
  City Diner's rich, creamy, thick (but not too thick) hand-dipped milkshakes prove that when life sucks, all you need is a straw. To learn what flavors are available, just ask your server. Syrups can range from hazelnut, Irish cream and caramel to raspberry, watermelon and orange. Stick with... More >>
• Best Alternative to a Milkshake
  Avocado Juice
  It's a little hard to wrap your head around the idea of avocado juice. "How can you juice an avocado?" we wondered, but we were too intrigued by the table of Ethiopian soccer players eagerly gulping (or shall we say, slurping, not without difficulty) them down not to try a glass of the cool... More >>
• Best Chocolate
  Bissinger's: A Chocolate Experience
  There are no accidents at Bissinger's, only calculated choco-crimes. On a recent evening, a friend had the nerve to suggest otherwise: "I accidentally ate your half of that truffle." Our hostility over the pilfered confection (a dark-chocolate Champagne truffle, to be precise) was mitigated,... More >>
• Best Frozen Custard (2 Comments)
  Silky's Frozen Custard
  If you turn a Silky's concrete upside down, will the custard stay in the cup? Uh, who cares? Why risk spilling such an awesome dessert? Dessert — or dinner, because your average Silky's concrete is thick enough to serve as a meal. Silky's menu offers more than a few ways to pimp out your... More >>
• Best Ice Cream Parlor (1 Comment)
  Crown Candy Kitchen
  Crown Candy Kitchen has been a treasure trove for sweet-toothed St. Louisans (and a nightmare for the city's more self-righteous dentists) for nearly a century now, but the north-side landmark wears its age well. Squeeze into one of the small booths and read how Harry Karandzieff and Pete... More >>