Ian Froeb’s STL 100: The best St. Louis restaurants of 2023

This year, the STL 100 is all the way back.

Here you will find a new list of 100 restaurants, many of which have returned from the 2022 edition — but not all. Back to dining full time, I spent more time exploring restaurants beyond my weekly review subjects than I ever had before. There were so many restaurants deserving of first-time inclusion that I had to make some difficult decisions.

I hope you will use this guide in the spirit in which I researched and wrote it: curiosity, excitement and hunger.

The storied career of sushi chef Noboru Kidera could have ended on a sour note. Nobu’s, his beloved University City restaurant, was forced to abandon its longtime home in a former IHOP due to the sprawling Costco-anchored development at Olive Boulevard and Interstate 170. Kidera did not retire. He and his family — wife Taeko, son George and George’s wife, Noi — relocated Nobu’s to the Delmar Loop and reimagined it as an omakase restaurant, with the now 74-year-old Kidera choosing what nigiri, sashimi and other Japanese dishes you eat. This “new” Nobu’s, which opened in October, is a revelation, even for longtime fans of Kidera’s work. In a modern, Japan-meets-Denmark space that relaxes you as soon as you arrive, your six-course omakase meal unfolds briskly but gracefully through composed dishes (raw salmon with tomato, radish sprouts and a yuzu-lime dressing), soulful chawanmushi, grilled fish, crisp tempura and, of course, impeccable nigiri. The six-course omakase dinner, available Friday and Saturday, is the signature Nobu’s experience, but the three- and four-course omakase meals are both also revelatory. Whichever omakase dinner you choose, do note that reservations are required.

The past few years have transformed Olive Boulevard in University City. This crucible of small, often immigrant-owned restaurants has seen storefronts wiped off the map to make way for a sprawling new commercial development at Olive and Interstate 170. Add in the effect of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, and it’s hard not to feel pessimistic about this vital St. Louis neighborhood. Which is how Cate Zone Chinese Cafe, which not so long ago was one of the upstarts along Olive and which still radiates a youthful energy, has found itself among the neighborhood’s stalwarts. Cate Zone is small, but its menu is capacious. The restaurant essentially introduced St. Louis to the Dongbei cuisine of China’s northeast, also staked a claim to being one of its best Sichuan restaurants and, even if you aren’t interested in China’s regional cuisines, serves a sweet-and-sour pork to have you swear off your favorite restaurant forever.