What makes St. Louis Chinese food different
St. Louis has its own Chinese-American food identity, shaped by decades of family-run kitchens serving the Delmar Loop, the Grove, and neighborhoods across the metro. The city's version of cashew chicken — battered, deep-fried, and finished with a savory brown gravy over rice — is a local invention you won't find on menus in most other cities. Any guide to the city's food scene has to start there.
Beyond cashew chicken, look for kitchens that still make their own wonton wrappers, hand-fold dumplings to order, and keep a wok station running hot enough to actually char vegetables instead of steaming them in sauce.
How to spot a strong menu
- A soup section with at least three options, not just one generic wonton soup.
- Szechuan dishes that are genuinely numbing-and-spicy, not just sweet with red pepper flakes.
- A vegetable section deep enough to suggest the kitchen respects produce, not just protein.
- Daily lunch specials, which usually signal a kitchen built for repeat neighborhood customers.
What to order on a first visit
Start with hot and sour soup and an order of pot stickers to get a read on the kitchen's knife work and seasoning balance. From there, order one dish you know well (like General Tso's chicken) as a benchmark, and one dish you don't, like mapo tofu or a Szechuan double-cooked pork. That combination tells you quickly whether a kitchen is playing it safe or cooking with real technique.
Our take
At St. Louis Kitchen, we built our menu around that same idea: familiar Cantonese-American comfort dishes alongside sharper Szechuan flavors, all cooked to order in a wok that never really cools down during service. If you're building your own tour of the city's Chinese food, we'd love to be one of your stops.
Ready to try it?
Explore the full menu or order online for pickup and delivery.
