The 20 Best Restaurants in St. Louis

For the last 10 years, St. Louis restaurants have seen an almost exponential uptick in national food media attention. Local chefs have been featured in major food magazines. Area restaurants have popped up on cable food programs. News came frequently that a restaurant received an important nomination, award, or honor. Non-locals seemed surprised by the diversity and caliber of cuisine to be enjoyed in The Lou — but they were catching on.

The mid-sized city has a curiously inordinate preoccupation with food and drink. If good food exists anywhere in the 314, St. Louisans will come. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the breadth of the city’s culinary talent, bolstered in recent years by chefs with impressive resumes from high-profile restaurants in New York and Los Angeles who have opened their own places in St. Louis, where the cost of launching a new…