A Taste of Two Cities - Food + History Walking Tour
Eat your way through the Central West End — toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, STL-style pizza, and more — on a 3-hour walking tour of the neighborhood St. Louis built at its wealthiest, and reckoned with at its most divided.
Join a St. Louis local — a foodie, storyteller, and guide with deep roots in the city — on a leisurely 2-mile walk through the Central West End, the neighborhood where America's richest families built their mansions at the turn of the 20th century.
You won't leave hungry. We'll sample a full spread of dishes invented right here in St. Louis — toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, St. Louis-style pizza with its unmistakable Provel — pulled from neighborhood mainstays along the route. There's a closely-held recipe at a Maryland Plaza market that sells more than 40 tons of it every year, plus the kind of small surprises we'd rather not give away. Most guests tell us they skip dinner afterward.
Between bites, you'll hear the stories most guidebooks skip. How a Gilded-Age neighborhood built by beer barons, shoe magnates, and railroad heirs became the backdrop for the 1904 World's Fair, a young T.S. Eliot, the check that bought "The Spirit of St. Louis," and the long arc of American wealth, race, and power that shaped (and still shapes) this city. We'll walk past the Cathedral Basilica — home to the largest mosaic collection in the Western Hemisphere — through Maryland Plaza, past the world's largest chess piece, and into Holy Corners, where we'll get into how the Delmar Divide got drawn and why it persists.
We don't dress up the uncomfortable parts — the displacements, the redlines, the moments that made national news. If you're looking for a sanitized Chamber-of-Commerce tour, this isn't it. If you want the real story of a real American neighborhood, come hungry.
About 3 hours at an easy pace. Wheelchair accessible — flat, paved sidewalks the whole way. Well-behaved kids and most fitness levels welcome.
About dietary needs: the lineup is fixed. Vegetarians can find enough items to enjoy the tour, though some stops feature meat. We cannot accommodate gluten-free, vegan, or specific allergy requests.
Come for the food. Stay for the stories.