Lost Tables: St. Louis Restaurants of my youth

This site is a trip down memory lane: http://www.losttables.com/index.htm

I remember my parents talking about Gaslight Square, Medarts, the Green Parrot Inn, Pope's, and Miss Hullings. My grandfather, Al Weinstock, loved Ruggeri's. There were lots of great restaurants on the Hill.

I have warm memories of tea rooms. My mother would take us out of school every December to go downtown to see Santa Claus, and we'd have lunch in the ladie's tearoom at Stix Baer and Fuller. The women's tea room was separate from the men's restaurant. I'd watch businessmen march past us, to the Missouri Rom at the rear. When spending the weekend at Grandma Pete and Aunt Pudgie's, I  would always order hamburger and chocolate milk for lunch during our ritual Saturday shopping excursion  at the Westroads Stix Baer and Fuller.  Later, as a preteen and teenager, Mom, Pudge, Grandma and I would go shopping on Saturdays, often to the Clayton Famous-Barr or the Crestwood Stix, and have lunch.  How many bowls of Famous' French Onion Soup did my mom and I consume? Until she was diagnosed as a Type II, she always followed the soup with apple pie, beneath a scoop of cinnamon ice cream; I would have a concrete sundae.

My dad loved Flaming Pit, and occasionally we would go there for dinner. He'd always get a Caesar salad and New York Strip Steak. We had our rehearsal dinner there, Friday evening, June 29, 1979.The guy who developed Flaming Pits also created Noah's Ark,   Fifth Street at Highway 70, in St. Charles. We ate there a couple of times as a family, but it was so far away...just like my memories now of these lost tables.