Saint Louis Recommendation

Table of Contents

So you’re coming to Saint Louis? Here are my recommendations for activities, food and more.

This list is far from exhaustive.

If you have questions on any of the below, or want more specific recommendations, send me a note.

Activities #

Museums #

All of our museums are free. The Saint Louis Art Museum is my favorite. I go by once at least once a month, and I live here. Every Friday, the paid exhibitions are also free. Plus if you go, you get to see Art Hill and the coolest statue in the city of our patron Saint.

The Science Museum is great but more for kids.

Skip the History Museum unless you have extra time or are a history buff, instead, go checkout our Zoo, which is world class. The penguin house is my favorite part. Nowhere else I’ve ever been are you able to get < 1ft from probably a dozen different species of penguin.

The City Museum is actually insane. It’s more fun with kids, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for adults traveling solo as a priority, but they do have grown ups only event programming that can be very fun. A unique date night experience.

If you like graffiti art, we have a unique walking path called Mural Mile which as the name indicates, is a mile long stretch of flood wall along the Mississippi River which consists of a number of different graffiti art displays along the path. The only other thing like it I’ve ever been to is the stetch of graffiti art on the Berlin wall in Germany.

Flowers #

Our Botanical Gardens is a hit depending on the time of year. Even in winter that have a unique display of glass art that comes around seasonaly and in the summer for a stretch they do free concerts every Wednesday.

Chess #

Do you like Chess? We’re the chess capital of the United States. You can go see the world’s biggest chess piece, the world chess hall of fame, and a chess club with grandmasters on staff all on the same street in the Central West End.

Parks Parks Parks #

The city has a ton of great parks. I am biased for my closest, Fountain Park, but as far as the major ones go for a first visit:

Forest Park
Tower Grove Park
Lafayette Square Park

… in that order.

Food & Night Life #

See an extended list here, but below are some of my top picks by flavor:

Brasserie by Niche | French
Louie on De Munn | Italian
Egg@Midtown | Breakfast
Sushi Koi | Sushi
Esca | Mediterranean
Salt and Smoke | BBQ
Sasha’s | Wine Bar (Both De Munn and Shaw locations are great)
Brennen’s | Cigar Lounge and Tappas
Clementine’s | Local Ice Cream Chain with Boozey Flavors

Coffee Shops #

Omen Coffee
Northwest Coffee
Quarrelsome Coffee
Coma Coffee

Sports #

As a passive sports fan at best, I don’t have much to say here. Go Cardinals! We have the Blue’s Hockey team, I prefer that to baseball.

A few years ago, the Rams left to LA. This led to a lawsuit filed by the city since there was a bunch of money poured into infrustructure for the Ram’s by the city and they left before the end of their contract. We ended up getting $790 million in the settlement and used a good portion of that to build a new top of the line soccer stadium in the heart of downtown.

This is my favorite sport to go watch if I go out at all, but there is so much demand, tickets are still quite expensive.

Neighborhoods #

Where to Stay #

The Central West End all the way. Whenever I know someone’s coming to town, I recommend staying in once of the hotels here, either the Chase Park Plaza or the AC Hotel by Marriott depending on vibe and budget preferences. Even if you aren’t staying at The Chase, it is worth a walk through. Come in at the side door off Maryland Ave and make your way through to the exit door on Lindell.

Vibe Check #

Central West End - All around best
Tower Grove - Hipster
Lafayette Square - Affluent
Delmar/U-City - Hope you like college kids
Cherokee - Tacos and Beer
Soulard - Party
The Grove - ‘Diverse’ aka Gay
Clayton - Finance/Posh
Downtown - uuuhhhhhh

A note about crime #

In 1876, Saint Louis City elected to separate from the county. Sort of like Brexit. This is where the hub of commerce was happening and the city wanted to break-off and direct all of it’s tax revenues into growth internally vs amortizing them over infrustructure in the County. This was great until it wasn’t. Two major factors eventually led to the decline of Saint Louis City’s poputation:

Manufacturing, textiles and other major industries left the region for more cheaper headquarters or overseas
The decision by to make Chicago the nexus for all central rail transit in the United States.

Over the last 100 years our population has fallen from over a million to less than 300,000.

This said, the per capita crime statistics that are now prevalent in the ~4 mile jurisdiction of the city are not amortized over the surrounding region as they are in many other major cities, or even over a higher population in the metro area. While Saint Louis is often referred to as #1 for crime, this is its ranking on a per capita basis. On a total murder count, Saint Louis doesn’t even make the top 10, in fact, we are 16th.

We fail to make the top 10 in other major considerations. This is a good blog on this.

For annecdotal evidence, here is a leading Reddit thread of someone who asked about crime in Saint Louis that had many StL Redditors hop in to give their perspective.

My own perspective is that in recent years, I feel less safe everytime I travel to Denver and San Franciso than I ever do at home here, and I live in the ‘bad’ part of town.

Scavenger Hunt #

If you run out of time and want to check out some more Saint Louis easter eggs, try and find each of the below:

The above blogs were written by a buddy of mine named Tanner Thiessen. Before Legacy Interviews, my business partner Vance and I were contracted by a local bank to increase their brand awareness in the region. Our strategy was to find things with good search volume people were searching about in Saint Louis, and write the authoritative post answering that question or telling that story.

In short, it was a blog strategy based around creating content people actually wanted to read. We quantified something like $80,000 in traffic value that we were able to deliver organically. The cost we charged for the work was less than half of that.

I say this not only to subtly shill our services, but because it was a year of work that made me really grow to appreciate our region and sell others on what Saint Louis has to offer.

I hope you’ve found this valuable. This list is far from exhaustive.

If you have questions on any of the above, or want more specific recommendations, send me a note.