Driving across the country, we received recommendations to see the arch in St Louis and stop for a BBQ lunch in Kansas City. The problem with many mid-sized cities is no one really knows anything about them beyond a kitschy tourist highlight. While the arch is huge, and Kansas City has great BBQ (worth way more than just 1 lunch), we’d like to add some other reasons to extend your stay to more than an hour in these cities that deserve far more than a passing glance.
St Louis – Cocktails
While searching for cocktail recipes one night, we were surprised and excited to find a post praising the cocktail scene in St Louis. Even when not seeking out cocktails in this city, it was easy to run into well-crafted menus in places one wouldn’t normally look, like stodgy hotel lobbies. As an aside, don’t miss the Union Station Marriott hotel lobby – where we did not stay, but we did stop for a refreshment and to gawk.
Having one craft cocktail bar is reason for excitement (ahem: Embury) outside of major cities. St Louis has many. They win international awards. They serve delicious classics. They create new concoctions that will be copied around the country. But unless you’re a true cocktail geek, they are hardly known outside of the region. If you aren’t a cocktail geek, you should go to St Louis, and you might become one. Start at Taste.
Kansas City – The Arts Scene
Kansas City has two alt-weekly’s, and both of them have guides for planning your attack to the monthly gallery crawl. It becomes clear why these guides exist while wading your way through thousands of people to visit a sampling of over 60 galleries adding in stops for street art, boutiques, food trucks, restaurants, bars, buskers, general mayhem, and listening to live music. Throughout the country, gallery crawls have become the way to draw people into downtown areas at night. Kansas City has exceeded their goals.
We don’t know how, but Kansas City has become a magnet attracting artists from the sparsely populated neighboring states of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, and of course Missouri. Despite our efforts, we didn’t come close to visiting all of the galleries. Our feet were sore; it was 90 degrees at 10PM, and there was just too much to see in one evening.
We’d come back to Kansas City for barbecue, but we’d make sure it was on a First Friday.
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