St. Louis Food Tour: Gilded-Age Central West End Walk

Overview

Join a St. Louis local on a leisurely 2-mile walk through the Central West End, where America's richest families built their mansions at the turn of the 20th century. We call it the "Taste of Two Cities" tour because you'll get both sides of St. Louis along the way. You'll taste dishes only St. Louis could invent: toasted ravioli, gooey butter cake, St. Louis-style pizza with its unmistakable Provel cheese, and more from neighborhood mainstays. Most guests skip dinner afterward. Between bites, you'll hear stories guidebooks skip — how a Gilded-Age neighborhood of beer barons, shoe magnates, and railroad heirs became the backdrop for the 1904 World's Fair, aviation firsts, young T.S. Eliot, and the long arc of American wealth, race, and power that still shapes this city. We don't dress up the uncomfortable parts: displacements, redlines, moments that made national news. This isn't a Chamber-of-Commerce tour. Come hungry for the real story of a real American neighborhood.