About

One reviewer. One opinion. St. Louis.

Somewhere along the way I became the restaurant guy. Friends, family, coworkers, people I've met exactly once. If they're eating out in St. Louis, I'm the text they send. Where should we go? What do I order? Is this place actually any good? I love getting those texts, but I was answering the same questions on repeat, so I built this instead. Now every recommendation I'd give you lives in one place, no text required.

How I rate

Here's the thing about scoring restaurants out of five: I mostly go to places I already have a good feeling about, so almost everything came out a four, and a list where everything is a four isn't much help to anyone.

So instead of scoring, I rank. Every place sits somewhere in a running order against everywhere else I've eaten, and the forks come from where it lands. The forks are a comparison, not a grade. Everything on this site is somewhere I was glad to have gone. The order is just me being honest about where I'd send you first.

5 forks: The best of the best. The meal I'm still talking about six months later.
4 forks: Really good. I go back without thinking about it and send friends without a disclaimer.
3 forks: Good, and I'd happily eat here again. St. Louis is just deep, and a lot of places are ahead of it in the queue.
2 forks: Worth going. I had a nice time and I'd tell you to try it if you're nearby. It's competing against a very good list.
1 fork: Still made the site, which means something got my attention. Often a one-great-thing place, and the write-up tells you what that thing is.

Ice cream, coffee and restaurants each get their own running order, because a cortado and a ribeye were never really in the same race.

A low number here isn't a warning. It just means there's a lot of good food in this city and I can only send you to one place at a time. If somewhere genuinely wasn't for me, I'll tell you why in the write-up, in words, where it belongs.

Charlie's Pick

If a restaurant has a ★ next to its name, that's a Charlie's Pick, the best in its category. Not the only one worth visiting in that lane, just the one I'd send a friend to first. The Top 10 is the running ranking of the whole city; Charlie's Pick is the per-category seal of approval.

About Charlie

I'm a fourth-year medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. I'm not a chef, I've never worked in a restaurant, and I have no real business being this opinionated about food. What I've got is an appetite, a notebook, and no incentive to be nice.