Located in Lafayette Square along Park Avenue just a few steps east of Lafayette Park, Park Avenue Coffee features a large selection of coffee and espresso drinks and St. Louis's very own favorite dessert, gooey butter cake. The coffee all starts with locally roasted Chauvin Coffee beans and comes in a variety of drink options, including flavored mochas and lattes, a "Cubano" with raw sugar, or on ice as a caramel macchiato and Thai coffee with sweetened condensed milk. Park Avenue also serves blended frappicanos, teas and fruit smoothies with real fruit and nonfat yogurt. They offer a few bagels and other baked goods, but the real eats at Park Avenue begin and end with gooey butter cake, with more than 70 different flavors available for order, all beginning with eggs, butter, cream cheese and powdered sugar, and followed by several different fine-tuned flavors. Among the top-selling flavors Park Avenue offers are red velvet, white-chocolate blueberry and key lime, plus t
One of the most popular restaurants on the square (though technically, it's a few blocks away), Eleven Eleven Mississippi is the perfect spot for a dinner party or an intimate dinner date for two. The restaurant bills itself as a "Wine Country Bistro," and the wine list is up to the challenge along with a menu featuring variations on casual Northern Italian and California fare. Wild boar is a house specialty that's right, wild boar. The soft lighting and graceful décor helps create an intimate atmosphere to ensure things go well on that first date.
Upscale dining destination Vin de Set, operated by the same folks that run 1111 Mississippi and Moulin Events, sits atop the old Centennial Malt House on Chouteau. Open for lunch and dinner, guests at the rooftop restaurant can partake in French-inspired dishes. Lunch selections include a Monte Cristo sandwich and the quiche du jour. Dinner offers diners grilled quail, cheese plates and steak au poivre. Vin de Set's wine list is extensive, with an emphasis, natch, on French wines. Guests should dress to impress.
Ricardo's has been cooking up Italian fare since 1989, serving as an engine of renewal in Lafayette Square. Starters include calamari and the requisite T-ravs, with sandwich, wrap and panini options as well. Ricardo's also boasts an ample selection of pastas, such as tortellini Roberto, which is stuffed with pork and chicken and covered in a cream sauce with peas and ham. Other entrees include steak, chicken, seafood and veal or, for veggie lovers, the linguine Dolano with pine nuts, fresh basil and sun-dried tomato sautéed with olive oil and fresh garlic. The lunch specials offer terrific value, but come dinner you will want to take your time, enjoy a glass of wine from the Italian-heavy list and savor several courses of hearty, comforting classics.
Finally, master mixologist Ted Kilgore gets a house of his own with Planter’s House. This Lafayette Square temple to mixology is a showroom for Kilgore and company’s (wife, Jamie, and business partner, Ted Charak) inspired cocktail artistry. Drinks run the gamut from the approachable “Planter’s House Punch” to the esoteric wormwood-laden “Unusual Suspect.” The joint is, first and foremost, a cocktail room, but it features an inspired food menu. The poutine is magnificent thick, red-wine pork gravy covers a platter of fried and smashed fingerling potatoes. Or try the duck burger, a mammoth mix of ground duck, pork and bacon is served open-face on a pumpernickel bun with Gouda and a fried duck egg. It’s quite possibly the perfect way to soak up all of that booze.