Ian Froeb

6 days ago | stltoday.com | Ian Froeb

Each week, I publish the First Course, an email newsletter that dishes insight, news, tips and more from St. Louis’ thriving dining scene. Exclusive to the newsletter is a weekly recommended dish from an area establishment. Here is a sampling of the recommendations I’ve offered in recent weeks. If you want to read these items as soon as I send them every Thursday morning, visit stltoday.com/newsletters and subscribe to the First Course.

1 week ago | stltoday.com | Ian Froeb

Obviously, you can’t fit an entire city into the Creve Coeur restaurant Oh London. Bring your tape measure to be sure, though. This is a cavernous space, with a bar area bigger than most dining rooms and a dining room like a castle’s great hall. The size inspires fanciful comparisons. It doesn’t suggest a locally owned restaurant where the executive chef might visit the table during your meal. For several years, it was home to a location of the Granite City Food & Brewery chain.

2 weeks ago | stltoday.com | Ian Froeb

The Hill grocery store John Viviano & Sons will close this weekend after 75 years. The building at 5139 Shaw Avenue is already under contract, according to an online listing. The final day for Viviano & Sons is Saturday, according to Fox 2 (KTVI), which first reported the store’s impending closure. A call to Viviano & Sons on Tuesday was not immediately returned. According to the store’s website, Italian immigrant John Viviano arrived in St. Louis 1926 and worked at a macaroni factory.

2 weeks ago | stltoday.com | Ian Froeb

Marconi Mercato is an audacious debut by St. Louis standards, a big new Italian restaurant in the heart of the Hill. It opened last fall at no less fabled an address than the former Amighetti’s, directly across Wilson Avenue from St. Ambrose Catholic Church. When church bells ring the hour during dinner, you feel it in your bones. You will find a market inside the entrance of Marconi Mercato, and on a quick visit, you might mistake this cafe-esque part for the whole.

3 weeks ago | stltoday.com | Ian Froeb

I needed a good laugh. Not a rueful, borderline nihilistic chuckle. Those remain cheap and plentiful, free from inflation and tariffs. I mean a joke you must immediately share, even with a stranger. At High Bar, which opened in November on the 11th floor of the AC Hotel St. Louis in Clayton, I mean a photo I immediately took with my phone and texted to my wife. “Well,” I told her, “this is one way to serve a steak.”I’d ordered steak frites. You can probably imagine what this looks like.