2 weeks Ago By Ian Froeb St. Louis Post-Dispatch
F amiliar names dominate this list of 2024’s best new restaurants. One of St. Louis’ most acclaimed chefs dared to open two new restaurants this year while relocating three others, all to the same up-and-coming district.
Another great chef returned to the metro area after a few years in another city. Still another, his legacy already secure, decided to throw a Mediterranean dinner party. The owners of one of St.
Louis’ best and most beloved restaurants cast their magic on breakfast fare. (Speaking of familiar names, a shoutout to three restaurants that I reviewed in 2024, but each of which opened in 2023 and were included in this year’s STL 100: the Biscuit Joint in Midtown, Le Ono in O’Fallon, Illinois, and Madrina in Webster Groves. I didn’t include them in consideration for this list.
) New voices did muscle their way into the conversation, not least the best new bakery in years and a destination restaurant in O’Fallon, Illinois. But throughout 2024, wherever I traveled in the region, I felt the tension of restaurateurs and customers alike, uncertainty about both the economy and what today’s diners want or expect. If that backbeat of fear made for a shorter list of best new restaurants than I have assembled in previous years, it’s a list I still present with enthusiasm.
1. Esca In this cautious year, the acclaimed chef and restaurateur Ben Poremba hasn’t played it safe. He has opened two new restaurants in the Delmar Maker District, the casual Israeli cafe Florentin and the upscale, charcoal-fired Esca.
He is also relocating three existing restaurants — his flagship duo Elaia and Olio as well as Nixta — to this same stretch of Delmar Boulevard in the Central West End and Academy neighborhoods. At Esca, the standout debut of 2024, Poremba is also gambling that diners still believe in the magic of restaurants. Is a tower of butter made in house and displayed in a brass cauldron fundamentally ridiculous? Well, yeah, but not when you’re already lost in the buzz of conversation, cocktails being shaken and chefs gliding nimbly around the ferocious Josper hearth.
Of course, Esca uses this coal-fired oven to enrobe chicken in crackling skin and steaks in crusts worthy of competition barbecue, but the kitchen understands the subtler arts of fire. This spring, I relished asparagus and even strawberries brushed with embers. The potential of Esca’s laid-back, broadly Mediterranean format is limitless.
The restaurant asks only that you surrender to the pleasure of the moment. In 2024, that counts as cutting-edge. WHERE: 5095 Delmar Boulevard MORE INFO: 314-365-2686; bengalina.
com/esca 2. Damn Fine Hand Pies The hand pies at Damn Fine Hand Pies are indeed damn fine. So are the doughnuts.
So is anything else from Madeline Hissong and Gene Bailey’s tiny Shaw bakery. Hissong is continuing her family’s legacy — her great-grandmother sold pies out of her Indiana home — and she and Bailey opened their storefront having already gained their own following from their Tower Grove Farmers Market stand. Even returning customers will find the hand pies (savory and seasonal fruit) a revelation.
Hissong’s laminated dough crackles like a croissant. Sourdough brioche dough gives Damn Fine’s doughnuts an irresistible airy bounce, and the brown butter-glazed apple fritter joins the short list of the area’s very best. (Both a vegan glazed doughnut and a vegan apple fritter are available.
) Damn Fine Hand Pies is easily St. Louis’ best new bakery in years and one of its best new restaurants, period. WHERE: 4000 Shaw Boulevard MORE INFO: damnfinehandpies.
com 3. August the Mansion In a year when new projects from familiar names crowd this list, here is a true debut — and yet another reason to visit O’Fallon, Illinois. August the Mansion owners Candace and Justin Mills are first-time restaurateurs, and Jessica Hickman (a Niche Food Group veteran) takes the starring role in the kitchen.
Hickman reaches the upscale heights of destination dining with her own style, not least in a Brussels sprouts dish with bacon, feta, cranberries and pistachios that stands on its own as an appetizer. Seasonal touches abound, like summer’s pork chop in a peach-Champagne glaze. When Hickman takes inspiration from global cuisines (Peruvian grilled chicken thighs), she doesn’t sacrifice her voice.
The mansion of August the Mansion, from 1857, is a lovely dinner setting, while the more recently built bar area is ideal for casual, walk-in visits. WHERE: 1680 Mansion Way, O’Fallon, Illinois MORE INFO: 618-607-8040; augustthemansion.com 4.
Telva at the Ridge Loryn and Edo Nalic had already expanded Balkan Treat Box from a beloved food truck to an even more beloved, nationally acclaimed brick-and-mortar restaurant, so I wasn’t surprised when their new project was a blockbuster more or less from day one. Still, I wasn’t expecting Telva on the Ridge to debut with St. Louis’ best breakfast sandwich, a fiercely competitive field.
It helps that Telva’s simple stack of egg, cheese and (if you like) sausage or bacon is cradled on bread baked in Balkan Treat Box’s wood-fired hearth. But Telva succeeds on its own merits as the Nalic family focuses its Balkan cooking on breakfast fare, from toasts (moussaka-inspired as well as avocado) to cilbir, a dish of eggs in tomato-chile brown butter with yogurt as gorgeous as it is delicious. WHERE: 60 North Gore Avenue A, Webster Groves MORE INFO: 314-395-2760; telvastl.
com 5. No Ordinary Rabbit A new restaurant from Steve Gontram of the late, great Harvest and the still vital Five Star Burgers is cause for celebration. Fittingly, No Ordinary Rabbit is a swanky, swirling dinner party you don’t want to leave.
Gontram, co-owner and cocktail ace David Zitko and chef Stephen Kovac have imbued the former Nixta space in Botanical Heights with a breezy Mediterranean vibe. Build a full meal from the menu’s sprawl of snacks (skinny onion rings zinged with za’atar), dips (feisty muhammara), small plates and main courses. Or simply enjoy a drink and a few bites at the bar.
Kovac lets vegetables take center stage — charry Brussels sprouts with harissa honey; grilled eggplant with pops of mint and pomegranate — but he can also throw down plump meatballs in tomato sauce and a whopping braised lamb shank in a lentil, fennel and parsnip vinaigrette. WHERE: 1621 Tower Grove Avenue MORE INFO: 314-696-2010; noordinaryrabbit.com Read my full review of No Ordinary Rabbit on Thursday (Dec.
12). 6. Brasas The second restaurant from chef Andrew Cisneros continues the exploration of Peruvian cuisine that he began at Jalea in St.
Charles, 2022’s best new restaurant. A narrow storefront on the east side of the Delmar Loop, Brasas is more an adjunct to Jalea than an entirely new experience. Pollo a la brasa, Peruvian-style rotisserie chicken, is the featured dish, and its golden-brown skin and juicy, herbaceous meat alone demand a visit.
(The steak fries, the go-to side for pollo a la brasa, are also excellent.) Cisneros showcases his creativity and impeccable technique in the dishes that fill out Brasas’ compact menu: ember-grilled beef heart; a neon-yellow chicken “curry” starring Peru’s signature chile, aji amarillo; Peruvian fried rice with steak, pork belly and shrimp (each perfectly cooked) under a delicate omelet streaked with chili crisp and scallion. WHERE: 6138 Delmar Boulevard MORE INFO: 314-256-1937; brasas-stl.
com 7. Ed’s Delicatessen After several years in Salt Lake City, Ed Heath has returned to Edwardsville, where he was the co-founder and acclaimed original chef of Cleveland-Heath. His new project with partners Tim Foley, Rick Kazmer and Samm McCulloch brings his winning approach — a knack for both contemporary ingredient-conscious, globally influenced cooking and unfussy comfort fare — to sandwiches.
The menu at Ed’s Delicatessen scans as straightforward, but the Ham and Cheese sneaks a deliriously rich French jambon-beurre onto your plate, with ham and Swiss on a buttered baguette. A riff on the Vietnamese banh mi understands the dish’s vital lightness and brightness even as Heath gives you luscious braised pork belly as the main component. Be sure you consider the soup of the day and save room for a lemon bar or another of pastry chef Ben Rudis’ desserts.
WHERE: 222 North Main Street, Edwardsville MORE INFO: 618-560-5213; edsdelicatessen.com 8. Pizza Via The ideal Scott Sandler pizzeria needs nothing more than Sandler himself and a wood-fired oven.
Fortunately for diners, Pizza Via also offers tables and chairs, if few other frills. The founder of the Neapolitan-inspired Pizzeoli in Soulard and the New York-influenced Pizza Head on South Grand, Sandler draws from both styles at his new Central West End restaurant, but these compact, cold-fermented, char-kissed pies — just airy enough, just tangy enough — are wholly his own. Sandler, a vegetarian, didn’t serve meat at his previous restaurants, but pepperoni is available at Pizza Via in both big slices and cupping coins.
Still, Sandler’s pizzas shine most brightly when minimalist and meatless, like the signature Spinach Pie: the star ingredient on a bed of mozzarella and Parmesan with garlic and a finishing balsamic glaze. WHERE: 4501 Maryland Avenue MORE INFO: 314-587-8000; instagram.com/pizzaviastl 9.
Jinzen Asian Fusion Is fusion no longer a culinary f-word? Jinzen Asian Fusion, which opened at the end of 2023 in Clayton, is helping to rescue the term. Broadly speaking, the fusion here brings together dishes from China, Japan and Korea on one menu. The kitchen does each justice, from porky tonkotsu ramen dashed with black garlic to the bracingly cold (as in, served with ice cubes) North Korean noodle dish naengmyeon with brisket, kimchi, apple and a chile wallop.
But there is also Jinzen’s signature Volcano Fried Rice: kung pao chicken fried rice with beaten eggs poured tableside onto the sizzling platter, a tribute to both the fried rice from co-owner Lynn Li’s youth in southern China and American breakfast skillets. You don’t have to call this dish fusion if you don’t want to. You do need to try it.
WHERE: 8113 Maryland Avenue, Clayton MORE INFO: 314-354-8086; jinzenstl.com 10. Napoli Bros.
Pizza and Pasta In 2024, the Pietoso family added two restaurants to a roster that already included their Clayton flagship Cafe Napoli and its spinoffs in Town and Country and St. Charles. Napoli Kirkwood opened too late in the year to be considered for this list, but the Pietosos could have claimed 2024 as a triumph if they had only debuted Napoli Bros.
Pizza and Pasta in Chesterfield. Remarkably, Napoli Bros. mines a previously untapped vein in pizza-crazed St.
Louis: very thin, very crisp coal-fired pies in the style of New Haven, Connecticut. The restaurant honors New Haven tradition with both a tangy, herbaceous tomato pie and a white pie loaded with clams, but its charry crust is just as tasty topped with pepperoni, sausage, pancetta and caramelized onion on the pizza that shares the restaurant’s name. WHERE: 17081 North Outer 40 Road, Suite 205, Chesterfield MORE INFO: 636-200-6300; napolistl.
com/location/the-napoli-group-napoli-bros/.
