Cajun and Creole Restaurants in St. Louis: All 13, Verified
Revised July 27, 2026
Where can I get Cajun or Creole food in St. Louis?
Thirteen Cajun/Creole restaurants are open in the metro, each verified against its own website. City: Broadway Oyster Bar (736 S. Broadway, est. 1978), Sister Cities Cajun (3550 S. Broadway — the most complete Louisiana menu), Soulard’s Cajun Corner (Soulard Market), 4 Hens Creole Kitchen (City Foundry), Evangeline’s (CWE), Fresh Catch (Morgan Ford). North county: Cajun Kitchen of St. Louis (Florissant) — the only one. West county / St. Charles: Gulf Shores (Creve Coeur + St. Peters — TWO locations, not three), Shay’s Creole Smokehouse (St. Charles). Metro East: Gumbo 2 Geaux (Alton, Acadian recipes from Lafayette) and Gators Louisiana Kitchen (Collinsville). Beignets: Beignet All Day (Webster Groves), the only dedicated one. ⚠️ SOUTH COUNTY HAS ZERO. Closed: The Gumbo Shop, Creole with a Splash of Soul, Gulf Shores Edwardsville. Crawfish season = Feb–June.
Keep reading ↓Search for Cajun food near Belleville and you may land on a place called Bayou Grill. It’s in Belleville, Michigan. It’s also closed.
That’s the state of this particular search. Between restaurants that shut in the last three years and lists that never noticed, finding actual Louisiana food in St. Louis is harder than it should be — and the metro has less of it than you’d think.
Thirteen restaurants are open. We checked each one against its own website. Here they are, along with the difference between Cajun and Creole, which nearly every guide explains wrong.
Where can I get Cajun or Creole food in St. Louis?
In the city, Broadway Oyster Bar (736 S. Broadway) has been the anchor since 1978, and Sister Cities Cajun (3550 S. Broadway) is the strongest full menu — gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée, po’boys. Soulard’s Cajun Corner is inside Soulard Market, and 4 Hens Creole Kitchen is at City Foundry. Outside the city: Cajun Kitchen of St. Louis in Florissant, Gulf Shores in Creve Coeur and St. Peters, and in Illinois, Gumbo 2 Geaux in Alton and Gators Louisiana Kitchen in Collinsville.
Cajun and Creole are not the same thing
Most articles hand you a one-liner: Creole is city food, Cajun is country food. That’s not wrong, but the Louisiana Office of Tourism — the state’s own agency — calls that framing “vastly simplified.” Here’s the version worth knowing.
Cajun traces to French Acadians expelled from Canada by the British beginning in 1755. The National Park Service records that nearly four thousand had reached Louisiana by the early 1800s, settling the rural prairies and bayous of the southwest. The cooking came out of resourcefulness — wild game, crawfish, pork preserved as boudin, tasso and andouille, built on the “holy trinity” of onion, celery and bell pepper.
Creole formed in New Orleans, where French, Spanish, West African, Caribbean, Native American, German and Italian influences met in one city with access to imported goods and the spice trade. The result is more layered — a remoulade can run to nearly a dozen ingredients.
The part that usually gets left out: the cooks who actually created Creole cuisine in those New Orleans households were enslaved Africans and people of Caribbean descent. European dishes went into those kitchens and something else came out. Any explanation that credits only the French and Spanish is telling you half of it.
Two practical tests. Tomatoes: Creole cooking generally uses them, Cajun generally doesn’t — though some Cajun dishes like sauce piquante do. Roux: Creole roux tends to be butter and flour, Cajun roux oil and flour, cooked darker. The clearest example is jambalaya: Creole “red” jambalaya has tomatoes, Cajun jambalaya doesn’t.
Treat these as heuristics, not laws. Two traditions that have borrowed from each other for two hundred years don’t separate cleanly, and the state’s own tourism office says so.
The city
Broadway Oyster Bar, 736 S. Broadway. Established 1978, in a building that’s among the oldest in continuous daily use in St. Louis — it has been a family home, a boarding house, a Chinese laundry, a record store and a bordello. The menu runs to po’boys, Louisiana crawfish and shrimp, Gulf and Blue Point oysters, catfish and mussels, and there’s live music most nights. It describes its own cooking as Cajun and Creole both.
Sister Cities Cajun, 3550 S. Broadway in Marine Villa, opened at this location in June 2017 and is co-owned by Pamela Melton and Travis Parfait. The name nods to the French heritage St. Louis and New Orleans share. It has the most complete Louisiana menu in the metro: seafood gumbo, chicken and andouille jambalaya with a no-pork option, crawfish étouffée, a crispy chicken po’boy, a BBQ cochon po’boy, shrimp and grits, and shrimp remoulade. It calls itself “country Cajun,” though that remoulade is a Creole dish — which is the borrowing described above, on one menu.
Soulard’s Cajun Corner, Stand #2 inside Soulard Market at 730 Carroll St. Gumbo, jambalaya, sausage, beans and rice, chicken étouffée and daily soups, in a market that has operated in some form since the early 1800s. Market hours, so plan around them.
4 Hens Creole Kitchen, in the City Foundry food hall at 3730 Foundry Way. The easiest introduction on this list if you’re bringing people who want options — it’s a food hall, so nobody has to agree.
Evangeline’s, 512 N. Euclid Ave. in the Central West End, is best described by what it does rather than what it’s called: live music, jazz brunch, Carnivale, and an annual Crawfish Boil Festival now in its thirteenth year. Its own site doesn’t claim a cuisine label, so we won’t hang one on it — but if you want New Orleans as an evening rather than a plate, this is the room.
Fresh Catch Cajun Kitchen, 4745 Morgan Ford Rd. Open, and that’s the honest extent of it — their site lists an address, a phone number and hours but no menu. Call before you plan around it.
The best story in the metro is in Alton
Gumbo 2 Geaux, 1808 Washington Ave., Alton, Illinois.
Troy and Kyndra moved north after the 2016 Baton Rouge flood. In 2018 they started selling gumbo out of their home kitchen. In October 2022 they opened a brick-and-mortar. The recipes are Acadian family recipes from Lafayette, and they’re specific about being Cajun rather than Creole — which, after the section above, you now know is a real distinction and not marketing.
The menu is the most Louisiana thing on this page: traditional gumbo at $12, seafood gumbo at $18, crawfish étouffée at $16, pork jambalaya at $12, and a fried gator po’boy at $18.50.
Outside the city
North county. Cajun Kitchen of St. Louis, 115 Flower Valley Shopping Center in Florissant, run by a New Orleans-born cook. Gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys, crawfish and boudin — boudin being a genuine Cajun marker most places here don’t bother with. They do preorder seafood boils, crawfish at $16 a pound or a full boil at $41. This is the only verified Cajun or Creole restaurant in all of north county.
West county and St. Charles. Gulf Shores Restaurant & Grill is family-owned by Harry and Erica Parker and describes its food as authentic Cajun and Creole. Two locations: 12528 Olive Blvd. in Creve Coeur and 5256 N. Service Rd. in St. Peters. You will see “three locations” repeated online — the Edwardsville location has closed, and a planned Fairview Heights location never opened, which the company says plainly on its own site.
Also in St. Charles: Shay’s Creole Smokehouse, operating inside The Millstream at 912 S. Main St. Landry family Creole and Cajun recipes with a smokehouse angle — gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée alongside brisket, pastrami and pulled pork. They run on Facebook rather than a website, so check there.
Metro East. Besides Gumbo 2 Geaux in Alton, Gators Louisiana Kitchen at 1048 Collinsville Crossing Blvd. in Collinsville does Nola seafood gumbo, jumbo shrimp gumbo, crawfish étouffée, po’boys, boudin balls, fried crawfish, Cajun fried gator, gator tacos and a crawfish boil.
South county has nothing
Affton, Oakville, Mehlville, Lemay: zero verified Cajun or Creole restaurants. Not one.
Mid-county has no savory option either — only the beignet shop below. Belleville, Illinois has none despite what search results imply. And the Metro East is thinner than it was two years ago.
The short version: Cajun and Creole food in St. Louis is a city-limits story. Everything outside the city is one restaurant per sub-region, and a large stretch of the metro has none at all.
Beignets and crawfish
For beignets there is exactly one dedicated spot: Beignet All Day, 43 S. Old Orchard Ave. in Webster Groves. Sweet and savory beignets plus chicory coffee, which is the actual New Orleans detail — chicory got into the coffee there during Civil War shortages and stayed. Joe started it in May 2022 after a New Orleans trip, opened a storefront in Dutchtown in February 2023, then moved to Old Orchard. Closed Mondays; open to 8pm Friday and Saturday. They also appear at the Tower Grove and Kirkwood farmers markets.
For crawfish, the season runs roughly February through June — live crawfish simply aren’t available year-round, so anywhere advertising them in October is working from frozen. Cajun Boil Co. caters live boils on site or delivered; owner Stephen Robichaux’s father is from Thibodaux, Louisiana, and he uses a family recipe he says hasn’t changed in thirty-five years. Boils run $600 for one sack up to $1,300 for three, with shrimp available year-round. Cajun Kitchen in Florissant does preorder boils, Gators has one on the menu, and Evangeline’s runs its festival.
What closed
Five gone in about three years, all still appearing on live pages.
The Gumbo Shop on Manchester Rd., opened in 1999 by a Webster Groves woman and her New Orleans-born husband, is closed. Creole with a Splash of Soul in The Grove — chef-owner Ronda Walker, a former registered nurse, a story that got told a lot — is closed; the space is reportedly becoming something else this summer. Gulf Shores Edwardsville closed and Fairview Heights never opened. And Bayou Grill, which surfaces on searches for Belleville, is in Michigan and is also closed.
One more thing worth separating out. The Cajun-boil chains around the metro — the ones with “crab” or “krab” in the name, serving seafood in a bag with garlic butter — are Viet-Cajun, a genuinely great Houston-born tradition. They are not Cajun or Creole restaurants in the sense this page means, and lumping them together is how these lists get confusing.
Before you go
Two of the places above run on Facebook rather than a website, one publishes no menu at all, and one operates inside a public market with its own hours. Independent restaurants also change hours faster than they update anything.
Everything here was verified against the business’s own source this week. Call anyway if you’re driving across the metro for it — which, given where these are clustered, you probably are.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Cajun and Creole food?
Creole cooking developed in New Orleans from French, Spanish, West African, Caribbean and other influences, and generally uses tomatoes and a butter-based roux. Cajun cooking came from rural Acadian settlers in southwest Louisiana, generally skips tomatoes, and uses a darker oil-based roux. Louisiana’s own tourism office calls the “city versus country” shorthand vastly simplified.
Where can I get gumbo in St. Louis?
Gumbo is confirmed on the menus at Sister Cities Cajun (3550 S. Broadway), Soulard’s Cajun Corner in Soulard Market, Cajun Kitchen of St. Louis in Florissant, Gators Louisiana Kitchen in Collinsville, Shay’s Creole Smokehouse in St. Charles, and Gumbo 2 Geaux in Alton, which serves both a traditional and a seafood version.
Is there Cajun food in south county St. Louis?
No. We could not verify a single Cajun or Creole restaurant in Affton, Oakville, Mehlville or Lemay. The nearest options are in south city — Sister Cities Cajun on South Broadway and Fresh Catch on Morgan Ford Rd.
When is crawfish season in St. Louis?
Roughly February through June, which follows the Louisiana harvest rather than anything local. Cajun Boil Co. caters live boils in that window and offers shrimp year-round; Cajun Kitchen in Florissant takes preorders at $16 a pound or $41 for a full boil. No restaurant here publishes fixed annual boil dates.
Where can I get beignets in St. Louis?
Beignet All Day at 43 S. Old Orchard Ave. in Webster Groves is the only dedicated beignet shop we could verify in the metro. It serves sweet and savory beignets plus chicory coffee, is closed Mondays, and also appears at the Tower Grove and Kirkwood farmers markets.
What is the oldest Cajun restaurant in St. Louis?
Broadway Oyster Bar at 736 S. Broadway, established in 1978. Its building is among the oldest in continuous daily use in the city and has previously been a family home, a boarding house, a Chinese laundry, a record store and a bordello.
How many Gulf Shores locations are there in St. Louis?
Two: 12528 Olive Blvd. in Creve Coeur and 5256 N. Service Rd. in St. Peters. Many listings still say three. The Edwardsville location has closed, and a planned Fairview Heights location never opened, which the company states on its own website.
Are the Cajun seafood boil restaurants in St. Louis actually Cajun?
Not in the Louisiana sense. The seafood-in-a-bag places are Viet-Cajun, a tradition that began among Vietnamese immigrants in Houston and is worth eating on its own terms — but it is a different cuisine from the Cajun and Creole cooking of south Louisiana.
Cooking Louisiana food in south county, mid-county or Belleville? We could not verify a single Cajun or Creole restaurant in any of them — which means people searching those areas find closed listings and a Michigan restaurant. Being the only real result in your area is about as good as local search gets. Listing your restaurant takes a few minutes.
More eating: soul food in St. Louis and Black-owned restaurants. Or browse the metro on St Louis Near Me Directory.
Written by a dedicated team of St. Louis locals who live, work, and play right here in the St. Louis metro. Founder Lane Forman and team are committed to building the region’s most trusted directory by verifying listings and connecting local businesses with loyal customers across Missouri and Illinois.