By Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner | December 19, 2019
St. Louis is a city people come home to. A place where chefs like married couple Michael and Tara Gallina return after working in one of the nation’s best restaurants, Dan Barber’s Blue Hill, to do their own thing. Where entrepreneurs, like former corporate VP Tamara Keefe churn passions into dream careers, as seen in her Oprah-approved ice cream business, Clementine’s (named after her grandmother’s best friend). It’s a city one of my closest New York friends moved home to following a family tragedy, and now can’t leave—partially because she fell in love with her new husband there, but not least because she fell in love with the city, as so many who visit St. Louis do.
There’s a reason you’ve been hearing a lot about St. Louis lately. Or maybe that’s just from me, since I can’t stop talking about it. The major metropolitan area just south of the Illinois border at the Mississippi River is home to just over 318,000 Missourians and more than 25 million visitors annually. New York, a city of more than 8.6 million, is expected to get 67 million visitors in 2019, which proportionally, is significantly less than three times the amount of visitors St. Louis will see. So why are so many flocking to this small Midwestern city?
Food, friendliness, and notable affordability in St. Louis’s critically acclaimed restaurants, nationally renowned attractions and getaway-worthy hotels.
Flights are frequent to St. Louis Lambert International Airport, and midwesterners can also reach the city via Amtrak to Gateway Station.
Locals don’t typically rely on limited public transit to get around town, so if you’re not comfortable renting a car (a major St. Louis selling point is the area’s lack of traffic and generally courteous drivers), ride-shares like Uber and Lyft are easy to acquire in the city and surrounding area. Electric scooters, like Bird, are also rampant throughout St. Louis, so you can scoot through town on the cheap.
The Gateway Arch is nearly synonymous with St. Louis itself, and visiting the 630-foot monument is a must for first-timers. Visitors can admire the structure from all angles while strolling on the waterfront. Those who don’t suffer from claustrophobia can ride a compact tram ($32 tickets for adults, $18 for kids, book in advance) to the top, for views of the Mississippi River and sprawling city below, but if you'd rather stay on the ground then you can appreciate the grandiose object just as well from the grass.
Opening in St. Louis on December 25, 2019, is the St. Louis Aquarium at Union Station. The $187 million state-of-the-art aquatic project allows visitors to stroll through an immersive 250,000-gallon shark canyon, interactive exhibits on river life, and more highly curated experiences showcasing a diverse range of marine life. Nearby, the newly opened St. Louis Wheel ($15 adults, $10 kids) takes visitors for a few loops in enclosed gondolas with city views, and an indoor rope course keeps thrill-seekers satisfied just a few steps away.
Animal lovers can also visit the completely free St. Louis Zoo in massive Forest Park. Open year-round, the zoo is home to primates, lions, tigers, zebras, bears, and more, and is a nice place to linger while also exploring the surrounding 1,326 acres. Eager to get on the water? Stop by the Boathouse for a bite and paddle boat rental.
For those who prefer wandering to chasing landmarks, City Museum ($16 tickets), a quirky, multi-faceted collection of objects and installations housed in a rehabilitated shoe warehouse, is famously known to be map-free. Guests of all ages are encouraged to explore at their whimsy, whether that’s in front of vintage arcade games or observing a collection of antique home goods or preserved insects. Adults can visit on Fridays until midnight, when in-the-known creatives flock to the cavernous museum for cocktails, art, and a totally transportive ambiance.
St. Louis has quickly become one of the most exciting food cities in the U.S., perhaps evidenced by the city’s two go-to local food publications: Sauce and Feast. Restaurants are trendy, accessible—and most importantly—fairly priced.
At lunchtime, lines wrap outside the door at Balkan Treat Box, where husband-and-wife team Loryn and Edo Nalic pull hefty wooden peels of Turkish wood-fired flatbread out of an oven, served alongside a hearty menu of grilled sausage, fresh fish, and delightfully blistered seasonal vegetables until food runs out, around 3 p.m. daily. Union Loafers also remains a local favorite for all-day dining centered around homemade breads and pizzas. Sold by the pie and with optional dipping sauces for the crust, the cheesy slices are enough to make a New Yorker question if their city really is the country’s pizza epicenter. For more carbs, head to Louie for dinner, a pasta-centric Italian restaurant with a sleek bar and dining room.
Vicia, the darling of St. Louis’s recently revived upscale restaurant scene has quickly become a staple, notably for the family-style Farmers Feast ($55), in which James Beard Award-nominated chef Michael Gallina (along with the hospitality of spouse and co-owner, Tara) treats the table to a three-course selection of seasonal, innovative dishes. One highlight is the restaurant’s signature turnip shell tacos: thinly sliced root vegetables that are folded in diners’ hands and filled with mushrooms or pork, plus black beans, yogurt, marinated kale, pickled red onions, and salsa verde. Sushi lovers will want to splurge on a seat at the omakase counter at Indo, where for $150 per person, diners are guided through a pleasantly gut-busting 20-plus course tasting menu by James Beard Award semi-finalist Nick Bognar, who is eager to chat all things food while serving bowls of crab rice and fatty slices of tuna. A la carte menus are also available.
Sugar fiends should also ink in Clementine’s Creamery on their itineraries. It’s St. Louis’s only microcreamery (that means the artisanal ice cream is made by hand in small batches), which boasts proprietary boozy flavors, as well as excellent renditions on the classics, like an intensely vibrant Madagascar vanilla.
Downtown is a visitor’s best bet for proximity to local attractions and a dose of Midwestern hospitality. The Four Seasons St. Louis (rooms from $230/night) is a getaway in its own right, with spacious, well-appointed rooms (many with an Arch view), a cabana-equipped outdoor pool, full-service spa and a restaurant, Cinder House, run by locally beloved chef Gerard Craft.
A short walk away from the St. Louis Aquarium and Wheel, St. Louis Union Station Hotel (rooms from $130/night) encompasses all the opulence of an antiquarian transit hub, with intricate stained glass windows and sky-high ceilings, and the modern conveniences of a Hilton offshoot.
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