If you just want to look at the contractor list, it’s here.
Basic Knowledge
Living in the USA usually also means driving and owning a home. And we need some knowledge about the cars and the house. Even if we live in condo or apartments – in those cases we typically don’t need to mow the lawns and in the case of apartment, the leasing or the management company usually is responsible for things such as refrigerator, HVAC (AC and furnace), cooking stove, built-in microwave, windows and doors. And sometimes carpets too: if it’s worn out. We need to know basics such as the AC is usually for summer, heat is for winter; windows usually has a screen, lock the dead bolt for the main door over the night – in the good old days, I left the keys in the door overnight a few times, with family, kids and so on, I am more careful on those type of things.
Once, the furnace at my condo had issues, as you can read from this blog post (search “minor scare”). After that I learned a bit more about how the heat is generated in our home in winter. Note there are two main energy sources for the furnace: electricity – which is the one at my old condo, and the gas – which is more common in the Single Family Homes in the area.
Single Family Home(SFH)
If one owns a home, it will need more knowledge and work. For example, the home owners are usually responsible for the trees in the front and back yard. The tree requires quite a bit of work, in addition to picking up the broken limbs, branches, the leaves and sometimes the sweet gums (or other nuts) if the tree produces lots of nuts such as acorn.
Sometimes broken tree branches hang on the tree. I think it’s best to remove them, because it could potentially fall, and hit someone or something. It actually happened to me once: the broken branch hit my roof, and caused a small damage. I knew the branch was there, and I was hoping it didn’t fall. Hoping is never a strategy, btw. Recently when this sort thing happened again, I contacted the tree company and asked them to take out the dead tree branch, in addition to trimming the branches. Trimming is a common task too, especially when the branch is approaching a electric wire, or the roof.
Sometimes, when the temperature is extremely low, such as this week, I found the garage door cannot automatically close. It seems the door needs some lubrication. I think I probably need to do some research on YouTube and do it. The door worked fine when the temperature bounced.
The Major’s Contractor List
The Google sheet view only is here. If you like to contribute or participate as an editor, please email me: minjie DOT xu AT gmail DOT com, and we can go from there. I did think about post it on GitHub, so that we can have some version history etc. But I haven’t decided it yet.
(Update 01-23-2025) Recently I started attending more group exercises classes at the J. Right now I am mostly doing the Saturday morning (7:30 am) and Sunday morning (8 am) weight training classes. I feel I need those. Honestly I need a lot more. But I will do my baby steps and slowly ramp up.
(Original 01-02-2024) It’s the beginning of the year, and one common theme or joke is people sign up the gym membership in January. This is probably true. I do think we should look long term for the fitness and health. Personally I am not a believer of new year resolution, but at the same time, I do believe in milestone, and each year end/year beginning do offer suc an opportunity to review important things in our lives: families, health, savings (401k) and so on. Or better yet, we can review it periodically.
I joined JCC back in year 2012, when I was working for a coal mining company. The company has a benefit that basically they pay 3/4 of the monthly due (membership fee), and I pay 1/4. I usually go to the J Creve Coeur for swimming and showering before lunch. I didn’t work for the company for a long time though. But I kept the membership. In fall 2014, I was looking for a job, and I almost left STL, because the employer (Nordstrom) is based in Seattle, and they asked me for onsite interview. I think around that time, in that summer our younger daughter was born, and sometimes I still take our old daughter to the J, or other playgrounds that’s suitable for her (such as this one).
I recall one September morning, I went to the J outdoor pool, and I don’t remember exactly whether I brought my older daughter or not. But I felt this is a type of community I want to live. That’s one reason I stayed in STL: another reason is my wife didn’t think it’s a good idea to move at that time, with new born baby and everything. But the stress from the day job for me was real at that time. I recall I even did some research on the neighborhoods in Seattle area, and so on. But eventually I decided not go there for the onsite interview.
J is more than a Fitness Center
I understand the J is more than a fitness center. They also have summer camps (btw, here is my post on Summer Camps in the STL area), early childhood centers, youth and team sports and other arts and programs suitable for grownups, including the mature adults too. I do understand their membership fee is a bit steep: compared to others. But they also have one of the best facilities (two fitness centers, Creve Coeur and Chesterfield), and group exercise classes. They do have scholarship for families in need. And on the spot, the membership office can offer some discount (for certain employers) or promotions. I think the money is worth it if you have kids go to their summer camp, and use their facilities for exercises etc.
For about 5 years I went there for swimming etc. (2012 to 2017?): including the years I worked for the credit card company, at that time I used the Chesterfield J as well, because it’s on the way to and back from work. I recall one front desk lady knows my name and call me by first name 🙂
One thing to remind though: always lock the lockers in the locker room. Here is a real life lesson from my 13 year old. Many years ago I heard similar stories from a friend at Washington U. gym (locker room) as well. Personally I almost always lock the lockers. And in some cases I could no longer open the locker for whatever reason, I called the custodians many times at the J. Just remember don’t try to do it before an important work meeting or work tasks 🙂
LifeTime Fitness: I saw their location next to Plaza Frontenac. I heard good things about them, but I also heard their membership is more expensive than the J. So until I win the $1 m lottery, I will stay with the J.
YMCA: I visited one YMCA (at Brentwood). Note they have many centers, and my understanding is there are two tiers of membership, one allows access to all the YMCAs, and another one limiting to the certain branch.
Last but not least, some offers free trial or day pass: I think it’s a great idea to try out.
Frontenac: I just noticed the Woodsmill club joined them. Many years ago (2006 to be exact), on some Friday evenings, I go there with friends, and they have a deal ($5 or $8, not a lot of money anyway), and they have pizzas and the indoor tennis court. I think the reason why Woodsmill joined the Frontenac club is probably economical. I heard in the last 5, 6 years the tennis playing population dropped and at the same time the Pickleball is getting hot. I saw some efforts in some clubs converting the tennis court to pickleball court, in addition to opening of standalone (or commerical) places such as Chicken N Pickle and Paddle and Pickle Olivette.
Or no exercise at all
This seems worked at least for one famous person: the great investor Charlie Munger, as I heard from him on YouTube video, that he rarely exercises. But on the other hand though, I do believe he went to great length to avoid unnecessary risks, including in his older years avoiding fall at all cost. Personally I think this is rare. Note Warren Buffett, who is about 7 years younger than Charlie Munger, did have personal training in his 70s and 80s. I don’t know how he does now: Warren is about 93 years old.
Last but not least: this is something I have been thinking about for a while. I think everyone is different, ultimately it’s up to us to take care of ourselves in terms of health. We cannot depend on our partners or our kids. Also, we need to listen to our bodies and nowadays smart watches such as Apple Watch has a lot of useful feature to keep track of things including fitness.
Indoor play spaces
(stlmag) St. Louis escape rooms, bowling alleys, arcades, play spaces, and more that kids will love
For hiking or walking. Some are paved, while others are not. By nature I mean there are trees etc. around the trail. I am adding difficulty levels (categories) for hiking or walking. By easy, I mean it’s suitable for family. By moderate, I mean, the old or the young may have some challenge complete the whole trail due to distance, or the surface.
Easy
Gentry Park at Bridgeton: paved
Malcolm Terrace Park: some nature walk, 1 mile round trip from the pavillion (the longer loop).
Millennium Park: paved.
Stacy Park: some nature walk, newly installed in last few years.
Venable Park: full name is Dr. Phillip Venable Memorial Park.
Warson Park: Stacy Park: some nature walk, newly installed in last few years.
Chesterfield central park: all paved
Creve Coeur Lake (paved), the loop is about 3.6 miles. Gets popular in nice days (weather). Note many St. Louis county parks have the exercises equipment or station along the trail, sometimes my kids would like to play with them during the walk. The only thing we need to be careful is: sometimes an equipment could be broken – stay away from it. Don’t attempt to work on the broken equipment, and got hurt (then sue the county park division 🙂
Powder Valley: mixed paved vs gravel. There are a few short distance trails.
Boot Leg Trails at Creve Coeur Lake: note this is a trail sometimes the bikers riding bikes. Most of them are mindful of the hikers, but in general try not to listen to AirPods (especially with the noise cancelling features) so that you don’t get hit by a bike. I think the Lost Valley in St. Charles are like that too.
Quneey Park: this along with the Boot Leg, are probably two popular longer trails in the St. Lous county. I recall I ran once at the park during the SnowBall series a few years ago (maybe year 2017 or 2018?). There are two popular winter run series in the STL area, the other one is Frost Bite. I am running the latter series last year and this year. Both are good. I had quite some memories over the years from the Snowball series, including once, had to run briefly in the Creve Coeur lake (paved) trail in the melted snow water: one gentleman fell unfortunately, and that’s the reason I remembered.
Lost Valley: St. Charles. We did a large portion of the trail during the rock runner morning run. Below is quote from Andy K. who is the organizer of Rock Runner
Technical Level Yellow as the trail includes a variety of the following: single track, gravel road, creek crossings, dirt and semi rocky trails, switch-backs, moderate climbs and descents
For the History Buffs among us, here is a great link with tons of information and pics surrounding the unfortunate events in the 1940’s in the surrounding area of the park. Lost Valley area history
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Mastodon: Jefferson County
More nature trails
I also maintain a Google doc that has more nature trails in the area. I intend to maintain that google doc as time goes. Probably hike (re-hike) some of those trails too.
During 2020 to 2022, we (as a family, many times with friends) hiked quite a few places, especially in the year 2020 and 2021 (due to pandemic, I guess the moms were worried about kids’s well beings, and they don’t like kids glue their eyes to the iPads all day). Unfortunately “gluing to iPads or computer” is the new normal now with the pandemic is largely behind us 🙁
In Summer 2022 I also joined the Rock Runner by Fleet Feet and got to hike or ran in some of the area nature trails.
PS: AllTrails has a nice website and app for the trails in the US. I used their paid app in couple years and they allow the map to downloaded so that even in the trails (a lot of times we don’t have reliable cell data), we can still have the map and GPS.
I hope so. Last October the Costco U city opened, Oct 25, 2022 to be precise. A year later, we have a few more restaurants etc. opened, Raising Canes, Panera Bread, Chase Bank, Chipotle, and Chick-fil-A (open this Friday 11/17/23?). And now I walk around the area, I think it’s a notch above the fast food restaurants on the nearby Page Ave (north of Olive).
The Market at Olive 🫒: 我个人不是很喜欢面包店这种新的的咖啡机，以前在信用卡公司，还有一些旅馆比如说上海虹桥的嘉轩Hyatt Place 也有类似机器。我觉得这种咖啡里加了太多的creamer. Costco好市多对面的Chick Fil A 好像本周五会开。听说原计划里的靶子点(Target), 和本村较高端的买菜店Dierbergs 不来了。
Also, I took a video on the area (Panrea and the neighborhood) and uploaded to YT recently.
(Update 02-19-2024) Noticed an old article In the Path of a University City Costco, the Displacement Has Already Begun when googling “Olivette gentrification”. The original University Place is now called “The Market at Olive”. Let’s hope the original lot slated for Dierbergs and Target stores find new tenants soon.
(Update 08-05-2024) Target to open its largest St. Louis store in University City (fox2now). Earlier there was talk about Target not coming. It could be something happened during the negotiation (hit a snag or something), and now it seems they are coming. Now if they can persuade the Dierbergs to come too. Also note both Dierbergs and Target have stores a few miles down I-170 (inner belt) at Promenade: I understand sometimes people make jokes about that place (the plaza where Target is located) due to its traffic.
Reading Time: 3minutes杏花楼广式月饼 and 稻香村苏式月饼 from 亚米网
And eat some moon cakes. I just realized I wrote something about mid autumn festival way back in year 2007. I believe I was in Shanghai when I wrote this, and it was after we had honeymoon in San’ya, Hainan, China.
Time flies. Now we have 2 kids, and I don’t see any special mid-autumn festival logos on Baidu or Google home pages. But I saw one at Google Vietnam page. I did see this (浓情迎中秋) at Baidu 热搜。
For me this year, I bought some 杏花楼广式月饼 and 稻香村苏式月饼 from 亚米网 (yamibuy.com). We bought moon cakes at Costco in the past: not a big fan of those。我们以前经常在百利买加州的生计月饼（Sheng Kee bakery，我记得去过一次她家的Milpitas 分店. As the name suggests, this is a Hong Kong/Cantonese style, and I visited their bakery at Milpitas CA once many years ago）。今年百利可能卖完了，好像没看到生计月饼。
Local Bakeries in the STL area
I think when I was new to the US and studied at Rolla. The fresh baked mooncakes at the WeiHong Bakery (味香饼家) was a treat. Now it seems there are other choices (not mooncake), such as The Foundry Bakery: and recently I added it to my Authentic Asian Food In The STL Area post. I just heard from an Indian friend that their Naisu Milk Bun 奶酥面包 is fantastic. Before pandemic I go to a Korean bakery near Olive and 141 once a while too. Last but not least, the La Boone Bouche at Olive and Tempo drive is so busy nowadays.
A meme on mooncake
The Mooncakes Cometh!
(Who knew the alien invasion would start this way?)
Baidu Zhidao: 上海面包店有哪些牌子 Note many bakeries in Shanghai makes and sells mooncakes (a mostly seasonal item). Below are the list.
克莉丝汀 – I remember once I got 美式咖啡 from there, there are quite a lot Christen’s Bakeries in Shanghai. About 10 years ago, I found when I visit China, it’s hard to get black coffee (not instant coffee). I am a coffee drinker, and I found the places that I can always get good or decent American black coffee (pot coffee, basically we make them via grounded coffee at many American homes), is McDonald’s and Starbucks (not many small cities have McDonald’s and Starbucks). And add the Christen’s Bakery in Shanghai too.
静安面包房
85度C: this is a chain started in Taiwan. I recall visited their store in one of those places (Lan’xi or Quan’zhou). They are in California too.
苹果园
香特莉
季诺
可颂坊 (the link is their mobile website): I recall seen or being there before 1997. Baike 百度百科 link here.
元祖 (Wikipedia): another chain started in Taiwan. I went there once, and it surprised me that their products are quite expensive.
Last but not least, a bit explanation on the Mid Autumn Festival on Wikipedia. Since I left home for college, I rarely had opportunity to be back to my parents home on those holidays, though. Again 2007 was probably one of the years that I was in China for the holiday. For that matter, it’s the only year since 1998 that I spent significant amount of time in Shanghai (and China), and I wrote quite a bit on my observations on my blog. This is just one example.
This was actually the second dental office I visited in the US, it’s at Bridgeton near the #STL airport. The 1st one was near the apartment I was living at the time (River Des Peres and Chippewa Street, year 2004 or early year 2005). But the hygienist was quite judgmental to my dental hygiene or overall dental health. See, I came from China and we didn’t have proper dental care when I grew up. Also, I probably had too much candy (and sugar) when I grew up, and didn’t brush teeth properly. I did go to hospital (or dental office) at Chuan’shan (Ningbo, my hometown) a few times, to pull out the baby teeth or to fix some issues.
I am changing my dentist and the dental office I went to probably since year 2005. I have seen a few dentists in that office, but since this year, it seems they cannot get hygienist (this seems related to the labor shortage post pandemic, as explained here, and here. Btw, both articles are interesting to me.), also the dentist I was seeing in last few years is retiring. And last but not least, it seems the ownership (and the office name) changed as well. I still tried to call them twice in last few weeks, but they never returned my phone. And I think it’s time for a change.
I did my 1st root canal in the dental office I visited for long time here in the US. I did twice (the second time was at the recommendation of my dentist). I also saw a periodontist in last 2 years (again at recommendation of my dentist): I talked about this last year. It was basically a deep scaling.
Today I found a new dentist and dental office. It’s more close to where I live. And I saw them when I visited the St. Louis Kolache next door. And my 1st experience was good too. It just happened the hygienist and I both know a couple (my former colleagues).
This is probably my 3rd or 4th visit to the Jeff City (I recall one of my American friends used to call it Jeff City). I had to admit I forgot most of it as my last visit was probably more than 20 years ago. I recall in the Thanksgivings of 1997 and 1998, I visited the Governor’s Mansion because my American host family (Bob and Sue’s family) are the family friends of Governor Mel Carnahan. They are all Rolla native. I can explain their family relationship if you are interested. Please note host family is not where I stayed when I was in Rolla, but I interacted with them quite a bit and they helped me quite a bit in terms of learning / practicing English, as well as learn American culture and heritage.
Sophia our 9 year old decided she wanted to visit a place that’s about 2 hours drive, as recently saw a name for it “trip with one tank of gas” (don’t know how to measure it with EVs 🙂 And she picked the Jeff city. Probably because she likes the name. And I booked hotel which is the Hampton Inn near Capital Mall.
The day before the trip, my girls especially my 13 year old asked “dad, did you plan for the trip”? No I didn’t. So I did google and found Missouri State Penitentiary (tour booking website) on the top of the TripAdvisor list. So we kind agreed we will visit it on the second day (a Sunday). For Saturday we plan to drive there and stroll around the state capitol.
Half the fun is on the road, as the old saying goes. We took the highway 70 west from Wentzville, and took exit 148, drove highway 54 to the Jeff city. On highway 54 we passed Fulton, the Westminster College there is the location where Winston Churchill (the former prime minister of Great Britain) delivered the famous Iron Curtain speech. I understand that’s what Westminster / Fulton are famous for (for me). But I am fairly certain they have much more to offer. Below is from Westminster College website (if you scroll down a bit, you will see):
When you hear about Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri – you may also hear about Sir Winston Churchill, and for good reason. On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered “Sinews of Peace,” a message heard round the world that went down in history as the “Iron Curtain Speech.”
It was a quite hot afternoon, the capitol was closed to visitors. We went back Sunday morning to get a better view of the front side of Capitol, including the Missouri river.
I was surprised to find the sculpture of Monroe etc, which was about the Louisiana Purchase. I had to admit I didn’t brush up my Missouri history before the trip. Some of the other sculptures and memorials are also pretty good / impressive. The girls liked the Lewis and Clark monuments especially the dog.
For food, we had the Fuji Japanese restaurant, and Aunt Annies at the Capital Mall, also the Central Diary ice cream (this is the place to visit for the cancelled 4th graders field trip in 2020, when my 13 year old was a 4th grader). I am glad we finally made it after 3+ years 🙂
But we have a bonus this time, that is the Missouri State Penitentiary (Wikipedia). We picked the most popular 2 hour history tour. And I am a history junkie to be honest. The tour beat my expectation and there was one small scare moment: we toured the dungeon cell which is for the punishment of convicts (offenders => residents). It was totally dark for a few minutes. The tour guide Kathy was quite knowledgeable on the history and the penitentiary as she previously worked in the system, so was James the tour assistant. We toured the gas chamber at the last.
I understand it’s a bit ironic the most popular tourist destination is the penitentiary. But the capital mall is not bad either, with the stores and other entertainments, such as the little animals ride-ons (electric chargeable). Sophia liked it and the owner / operator is from China and she even offered free ride to her after she rode once. We were ready to leave though – we took a slightly different way back, as I saw some bad traffic / accidents on highway 70 (I-70), and decided to take highway 50 / I-44 instead. I had a little fun driving the more rural highway 50, a large portion of which is two lanes highway. But I survived with only 3 cars passing me 🙂
Both my daughters’ passports expired. They are kids and it looks like they will have to get new ones. My wife was thinking we just go to to the USPS office on Saturday (which is how we do in the good old days), and I promptly stopped her. Because from my own experience, a lot of things changed since pandemic. So I went to the USPS website for passport application including renewal.
One thing to keep in mind for the kids passport app: “Both parents/guardians must authorize the issuance of a child’s passport. The best way to give consent is for both parents/guardians to go with the child when applying.” I think I can understand the intention behind this: both parents being present. That is to prevent any dispute of child custody and to prevent one parent takes child away from another. In practice though, this may put more burden on any hourly working parent. Because they may have to leave work (unpaid) to get the passport application in. So there is that.
Also make sure both parents have valid IDs. The cost is $100 for the state department, and $50 for the post office. Since we applied for 2 kids, so the total is about $300. The state department portion has to be cash, debit (there is a small fee) or check (no fees for check), it cannot be credit card. So make sure bring a checkbook as needed. Btw, the clerk at USPS office is very friendly. She took my older daughter’s picture for a few times to make sure it’s good.
Btw, noticed the California Pizza Kitchen in Creve Coeur only offered takeout yesterday evening. We took our friends to the Bristol’s instead. A few days ago I noticed the Noodles and Co. has a lot of takeout customers too, I think mostly probably offered via web or mobile app. Very few people ate inside the restaurant.
PS: Covid pandemic definitely changed things around. I recall renewing the license plate online during the pandemic: “I saw long lines at the license office at Olivette yesterday too. I also just did a first-time online license plate renewal 2 days ago. It’s not the sharpest website but it works. I think we should try new things, especially considering the pandemic. (not everyone can renew online)”
“No short cut; and I wish I could get those sleepless night back but I do understand no pain no gain in life sometimes.” -MXU April 2023
Everyone knows the prices for single-family houses (SFHs) in the US went up since the pandemic, and this is applicable to the SFHs in the Ladue School District (LSD) too. It may go up more than the national average. Luckily for us, we bought our starter home, a nice little ranch house, about 9 months before the pandemic shut down in March 2020, and we were grateful that we have the room to spread out, both for virtual school and our Work From Home (WFH) jobs. It’s not perfect, but it put us in a better position than the 2 bedroom condo we had earlier.
I lived in the LSD since the year 2005: I bought a condo across the street from the Schnucks/Monsanto in April 2005, at a price which is the market top at the time. Note that condo prices topped before the actual housing/financial crisis in 2007/2008. At the time I have basically two choices, and I think I still made the right choice looking back. The other choice was a 1st-floor condo near Creve Coeur Mills Road and Olive Road (Parkway School District, PSD): the condo was facing north which is not the best direction in terms of facing (it will be cold in winter and hot in summer). Plus the LSD is considered a notch above PSD (this is probably subjective opinion).
Since our 2nd daughter was born in the Summer of 2014, our 2 bedroom condo basically needs one more room, not in a hurry but in a time ticker bomb – as we believe eventually our younger daughter needs her own room. We didn’t put her in a separate room when she was an infant (same for our old daughter). When we hired a nanny when Sophia was a newborn, note it was customary to have some external helper in Chinese culture when there is a newborn in a family, the nanny had to sleep in the living room. My wife, myself, and Sophia were in one bedroom, Serenity the big sister took the other bedroom.
Fast forward a few years, I changed jobs in June 2015 and started working for the credit card co., hoping to make a few more bucks for the new house down payment. I recall probably in the summer of 2017 I joked with a few friends that the SFH is out of reach. Also, I don’t miss the sleep deprived nights and on calls while I worked for the credit card co: it’s basically a “sweatshop” that pays better than a normal sweatshop 🙁
In the Summer of 2018, we almost bought an SFH (Zillow link), and my wife had a second thoughts after realizing the house didn’t have a dishwasher. So we backed out after inspection while it was still in the cooling period. I really liked the backyard, but over the years I learned to listen to my wife. East or west, listening to the boss is the most important 🙂
Fast forward one more year, Sophia is also about to start attending Kindergarten at Spoede Elementary, and we were looking at houses more seriously: we even got a buyer agent who is grew up in/familiar with the area, and has a good supporting team. For us, Luckily everything worked out for our current house in June 2019. We saw the house listed, and my wife liked it, we did not really negotiate the price – we paid the asking price. Another small break for us is we had built a bit more savings in one year for down payment etc, since the summer of 2018. Now I think about it, we made decision pretty quick, I did not even do my neighborhood check: basically come at one morning, and come at one afternoon to make sure the neighbors are nice 🙂
I understand with the Pandemic and the SFHs price went up a lot. But we have zero control over things such as the pandemic, the economy, interest rates, mortgage rates, and so on. We do have control over ourselves, in terms of saving money, and being proactive. I heard a friend bought the house directly from a lady by knocking on the door, I have not confirmed but seems like a variable approach to me, as long as he/she asked it nicely. In another case, I heard friends did the SFH transaction privately. Both were done before pandemic, and the houses are not brand new. In recent years I did see more new houses come to market, after the investor buy/tear down/build much bigger 2 stories home etc. Another trend is the developers’ activities, such as I wrote it here earlier. Overall though, the supply is not catching up with the demand. One reason is sometimes the seller can afford to hold on to it, e.g., this century old house at the entrance of our neighborhood. I did a little research on the St. Louis county real estate website, and found out the owner likely lives in a mansion in Florida. The reason for my research was: I was thinking about investment property, and this one is close to where we live, and I walk by that house every day.
(Update 09-23-2025) Golden Apple Buffet in St. Charles reopens after immigration raids (Fox2News). Earlier KDSK: FBI raids St. Charles County, home, restaurant. From what I heard, though I haven’t visited and have no plan to visit in the near term, this is probably the biggest Chinese buffet place in the area. This is their web page at the restaurant review site Yelp.
(Original) You got to eat. I mean we can eat at the Panda Express for Chinese food once a while, but not everyday. Here is some of the places we go these days and I will put a quick one line or 2 comments. In Alphabetical order.
Cate Zone: I like their 地三鲜 (this is a very traditional northeastern China dish, made of potato etc)
Corner 17: probably the most popular place in St. Louis in terms of Chinese food. The waiting time is too long. My girls will order bubba tea here (and I don’t like their boba tea btw, it has too much/strong edible essence). I did quite a bit takeout during pandemic, and sometimes the kids eat at the parking lot near that place.
Drunken Fish: they have been in the STL area for a while. They have two locations: central west end and the west port. It’s a bit interesting I only visited there today Mother’s Day 2023 (05-14-2023) at the west port location (which is closer to where we live). Their portion is generous and I suggest don’t order too much 🙂
Dumplings and Tea: my wife went there the other day with her boss. She said it’s pretty good. I still need to check it out. At Chesterfield.
Fire Chicken (Seamless, Facebook): fairly new Korean food place. Near where I live.
The Foundry Bakery: I just heard from an Indian friend that their Naisu Milk Bun 奶酥面包 is fantastic.
Joo Joo Korean Restaurant and Karaoke: I like their food a lot, from the seafood pancake to the soups (beef, rib etc.). Visited them twice recently (July 2023). Note there are a few nearby places of interest: Spoonful (don’t bring their drinks into Joo Joo), CM Wing and hotdogs (I heard they are Korean style food from Chicago). I am interested in the latter (the wing and hotdog).
Midtown Sushi and Ramen: my girls are ramen fans. They have the best ramen in St. Louis, I think. Please note the hour (they close between 3 and 5 pm, and also they close on Monday).
Nudo: I am okay with their noodle. But my wife doesn’t 🙁
SenThaiBistro: downtown STL, a friend went there, and the ramen looks good on the WeChat photo.
Sharesweet (GrubHub): this is my wife’s favorite place. Note they only do boba tea and desserts on regular days/time, and they take orders for specials (food) and one can pick up on Saturday (the preferred payment is cash for that).
*Sides of Seoul: my favorite Korea food place now 🙂 Note they only take phone calls. I go there and pickup because I live nearby.
St. Louis bubble tea (Olive road): we all like their pork chop rice and noodles. We have been to this place since Serenity was very little.
STL Soup Dumplings (and its sister store Tiger Soup Dumplings at South County): both are good. New places, and the soup dumplings are tasty. Note don’t burn your tongue with the soup 🙂
ThaiSawadee: at Chesterfield, been there quite a few times over the years. Yummy noodle soup but be careful don’t burn your tongue.
Tai’ke: again my wife doesn’t like them very much probably because some of their food is too greasy or spicy. But I still like them (I eat Panda Express once a while too :-). Kids have their favorites there too. We still need to try their Shabu Shabu in the restaurant.
Urban Kitchen by ShareSweet: we went there the 1st time yesterday on 04-20-2024. My wife and kids liked it. We ordered the chicken hotpot, the pork rib (a touch of spiciness), the pork/Chinese veggie stir-fried noodles, and cucumber. My kids finished off the leftovers during today’s lunch. Will definitely go back 🙂
Wonton King (Google, Yelp, Website): Cantonese food. Been there for a while: probably 20 years. Address: 8116 Olive Blvd, Saint Louis, MO 63130-2023 || I decided to go back recently for 皮蛋瘦肉粥 Century Egg and Pork Congee.
WuDon BBQ: Korean BBQ restaurant at Fee Fee and Olive. Address: 1261 Castillons Arcade Plz, Saint Louis, MO 63141. Here is the introduction on YouTube. Facebook page. Yelp page. We went there today 04-30-2023 (2 adults, 2 kids). We ordered Beef Bulgogi and Chicken Bulgogi, as well as boneless rib beef. They serve small side Korean dishes, such as broccoli, kimchi and fish cake. They also served soup and pancake. The bill is about $90 before tips.
Please note: Corner 17, Wonton King and Cate Zone are also the No 1, 2 and 3 on the best Chinese restaurant per tripAdvisor (this is the complete list).
