Here's the thing about building a St. Louis food tour menu: you're not curating a list of "good restaurants." You're making an argument. Every stop is a claim about what this city is and what this neighborhood has meant to the people who built it. The bar is high. The competition is real. And the guests are going to go home and tell people about it.
That's the standard behind the Taste of Two Cities menu. Not "bites" — a full spread. Most guests leave full and skip dinner. That's not an accident.
The St. Louis Inventions
Three dishes on this tour are genuine St. Louis inventions that you cannot get elsewhere in their original form. Toasted ravioli — breaded, deep-fried pasta stuffed with meat, served with marinara and a snowfall of Parmesan — was born here, possibly at Ruggeri's on The Hill, possibly by accident, depending on which story you believe. St. Louis-style pizza with Provel cheese is its own entire argument: a processed cheese blend of provolone, Swiss, and white cheddar that was developed specifically for St. Louis. And gooey butter cake, the coffee cake that collapsed in the wrong direction one morning in the 1930s and became so beloved it has its own aisle at the grocery store.
Three St. Louis inventions. A Cuban sandwich insane enough to earn OMGs from travelers nationwide. Chicken salad on a Red-Hot Riplet. And that's before the November specials.
The Neighborhood Mainstays
Beyond the iconic STL originals, the tour weaves through the actual institutions of the Central West End — the restaurants and shops that have been here long enough to be part of the neighborhood's identity rather than its current moment. Dressel's Public House, where Jon Dressel built a Welsh pub on Euclid in 1980 that his son Ben still runs today. Straub's Market, delivering groceries to CWE households since 1949. Havana's Cuisine, where Tamara Landeiro's Cuban sandwich arrives on bread shipped in from a Tampa bakery and the empanadas are the kind of thing you think about for days afterward.
And The Gramophone, where the weekly sandwich specials are so good that missing an entire week feels like an actual loss.
The Philosophy
The food on this tour is not decoration for the history. It's evidence of it. Every stop is a business with a story — about who built the neighborhood, who was displaced from it, who came back, and who built something new. The food and the history are the same conversation. You just happen to be full by the end of it.
The Tour
Two miles. A full spread. The real St. Louis.
The Taste of Two Cities runs Thursday through Saturday at 2pm. Starts at Dressel's on Euclid. Book direct for the best rate.
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