Soul Food in St. Louis: Who's Still Open, and What to Order
Revised July 27, 2026
Where is the best soul food in St. Louis?
The heart of St. Louis soul food has shifted north. In Ferguson, Cathy’s Kitchen and King of Soul Cafe lead; in North County, Son-Ja’s Soul Food (Jennings) and Where Ya From (Bel-Nor) are local favorites; and in North City, Mom’s Soul Food Kitchen and DSquared keep the tradition alive. For Cajun-Creole soul with live music, try Gourmet Soul (Grand Center), Evangeline’s (jazz), and Beale on Broadway (blues), and across the river Sherry J’s serves the East St. Louis area. Note: the famous Sweetie Pie’s has closed, though a comeback is planned. Save room for sweet potato pie.
Keep reading ↓Every few months someone posts the same question to the St. Louis subreddit: where do you get good soul food here? The replies are always long, always contradictory, and always contain at least three places that have closed.
There’s a reason for the confusion. This city lost an unusual number of its best-known soul food restaurants in a short stretch — and the guides never caught up. One of the most-linked lists for this search was published in 2017.
So here is a current one. Every restaurant below was checked against its live business listing this week, and the ones that are gone are named so you don’t go looking.
Where is the best soul food in St. Louis?
Gourmet Soul (1620 Delmar Blvd) is the most decorated — its chef won Good Morning America’s Soul Food Showdown — though it keeps limited weekend hours. Diner’s Delight (1504 S Compton Ave) is the South City institution, with well over a thousand reviews. C&K Barbecue (4390 Jennings Station Rd) has been serving snoots and rib tips since 1963. Cathy’s Kitchen (250 S Florissant Rd, Ferguson) is the north county standard. For something different, SweetArt (3701 Lindell Blvd) does soul food entirely plant-based.
The city
Diner’s Delight, 1504 S Compton Ave. If one place is the answer to the Reddit question, it’s probably this one — a South City fixture with more reviews than almost anything else in this category and a rating that has held up under all of them. Fried chicken, catfish, the sides, the desserts.
Gourmet Soul, 1620 Delmar Blvd, Downtown West. Chef Lavinia McCoy won Good Morning America’s Soul Food Showdown, and the menu leans upscale — lamb chops, an Old Bay bowl — rather than traditional. The catch is the schedule: their published hours run Friday through Sunday only, so this is a weekend plan, not a Tuesday one.
Karsyn Soule’ 2.0, 635 Washington Ave. Downtown, newer, and worth knowing about precisely because it’s new enough that it hasn’t reached most lists yet.
Your Place Diner, 5510 Virginia Ave. A family-run South City spot that describes itself simply as a place to eat, drink and gather. High marks from the people who go.
Mom’s Soul Food Kitchen & Catering, 1507 Goodfellow Blvd. Close to twelve hundred reviews, which in this category means it has been feeding the same neighborhood for a long time.
SweetArt, 3701 Lindell Blvd, is the outlier and the one to try if you think you already know what soul food is. It’s entirely plant-based — the collards, the mac, the sweets, all of it, without the meat that traditionally carries the flavor. Doing that well is genuinely difficult, and the reviews suggest they manage it.
North county
North county has the deepest bench in the metro for this food, and it is the part of the map most guides skip.
C&K Barbecue, 4390 Jennings Station Rd, opened in 1963 and has been family-operated ever since. Snoots — crisp-fried pig snouts — are the order here, and they are close to a St. Louis-only dish. Rib tips too. Sixteen hundred reviews and counting.
Cathy’s Kitchen, 250 S Florissant Rd in Ferguson, opened in 2013 and became something more than a restaurant in the years after. Diner food, soul food and seafood. There’s now a carryout counter as well, Cathy’s Kitchen ToGo at 10198 W Florissant Ave in Dellwood, which opened on Juneteenth 2024.
Son-Ja’s Soul Food, 9841 W Florissant Ave. Carryout-focused, and it now serves breakfast — chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, salmon croquettes with buttered rice — which is a rarer thing here than you’d expect.
Ol’ Henry Restaurant, 8600 Airport Rd. Long-standing, and busy enough to have accumulated close to a thousand reviews.
Chef Daddy’s, 9617 St Charles Rock Rd in Breckenridge Hills, rounds out the northwest corner.
What St. Louis lost
This is the part that explains the confusion, and it’s worth reading before you trust any other list.
Sweetie Pie’s is the obvious one. The restaurant that put St. Louis soul food on national television closed its last location in 2022. There is a revival in the works — Sweetie Pie’s 2nd Act, announced for north city with a $1.5 million city grant and a banner already up — but it has not opened and no date has been given.
Ms. Piggies’ Smokehouse on Page closed when the Matthews family retired around Thanksgiving 2024. Brother’s Diner on Whittier, which appears near the top of that widely-linked 2017 guide, is permanently closed. Turn in Midtown closed at the end of May when its chef relocated to Little Rock.
Four well-loved kitchens in roughly two years. That’s the honest shape of this scene right now — not thriving, not dead, but thinner than it was, with the survivors carrying more weight.
It’s also why the remaining ones are worth actually going to rather than bookmarking.
Why this food is here at all
Soul food in St. Louis isn’t a transplant or a trend. It arrived the same way most of north St. Louis did — up the Mississippi.
During and after the Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Black families left the rural South for Northern cities with wartime factory work, part of the movement historians call the Great Migration. St. Louis sat at the top of the river, which made it a natural destination for people leaving Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee. The founders of C&K Barbecue, Forris and Lucille King, made exactly that trip from Mississippi during the war years and opened their restaurant in 1963.
That’s why the food here looks the way it does. The catfish is a river fish from the Delta. The greens and the cornbread are Southern farm cooking. And the snoots are what happens when a cuisine built on using every part of the animal meets a city with a working meatpacking trade — a genuinely local dish that exists because two histories overlapped in one place.
It also explains the geography of this list. The restaurants cluster in north city and north county because that is where those families settled, and the kitchens stayed where the neighborhoods were.
Where you won’t find much
Worth saying plainly so you don’t drive in circles: south county, west county and the Metro East have very little.
A handful of names come up on the Illinois side and in the western suburbs, but we could not confirm enough about them this week to send you there. If you’re in Chesterfield or Belleville and you want this food, the realistic move is a drive into the city or up to north county — and it’s worth the drive rather than settling.
What to order if you didn’t grow up on it
Soul food isn’t a single menu, and ordering badly is an easy way to decide you don’t like something you’d actually love.
The reliable first order almost anywhere is fried chicken with two sides — because the sides are where a kitchen shows what it can do. Collard greens tell you whether they cook with patience. Macaroni and cheese tells you whether they bake it or shortcut it. Cornbread tells you whether it’s a Southern kitchen or a Northern one; sweeter and cakier leans north, denser and less sweet leans south.
If you want the specifically St. Louis thing, order snoots at C&K. They’re pig snouts fried until they shatter, they came out of using every part of the animal, and they stayed on menus here because people genuinely love them. You will not find them in most American cities.
Catfish is the other regional marker — a Mississippi River staple that came upriver with the families who brought this food to St. Louis in the first place.
If you’re feeding a crowd
A large share of what these kitchens actually do never shows up on a restaurant list, because it leaves through the back door.
Several here are catering operations as much as restaurants — it’s in the business name at both Gourmet Soul Restaurant and Catering and Mom’s Soul Food Kitchen & Catering. This is the food people in St. Louis order for repasts, church functions, graduations and holidays, and the kitchens are built for it.
If you’re planning something, call further ahead than you think you need to, particularly around Thanksgiving and the December holidays, when these places book out. And ask about trays rather than reading the dine-in menu — the catering side is frequently a different list at a different price.
A note on hours
More than any other category we cover, soul food restaurants here keep hours that will catch you out. Several are carryout-first. At least one runs Friday to Sunday only. Some close in the late afternoon rather than the evening, because they cook until they sell out and then they’re done.
That is not disorganization — it’s a lot of these places being genuinely small operations. But it does mean a phone call before you drive is worth more here than almost anywhere else, particularly on Sundays and Mondays.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the best soul food in St. Louis?
Diner’s Delight (1504 S Compton Ave) is the South City institution with the strongest review record. Gourmet Soul (1620 Delmar Blvd) is the most decorated — its chef won Good Morning America’s Soul Food Showdown — but keeps weekend-only hours. In north county, C&K Barbecue and Cathy’s Kitchen in Ferguson are the standards.
Is Sweetie Pie's still open in St. Louis?
No. Sweetie Pie’s closed its last St. Louis location in 2022. A revival called Sweetie Pie’s 2nd Act has been announced for north St. Louis with a $1.5 million city grant and signage on the building, but it is not open and no opening date has been announced.
What soul food restaurants in St. Louis have closed recently?
Sweetie Pie’s closed in 2022, Ms. Piggies’ Smokehouse closed when its owners retired around Thanksgiving 2024, Turn in Midtown closed at the end of May 2026, and Brother’s Diner on Whittier Street is permanently closed. All four still appear on older guides.
What are snoots and where can I get them in St. Louis?
Snoots are pig snouts fried until crisp — a St. Louis specialty that barely exists elsewhere in the country. C&K Barbecue at 4390 Jennings Station Rd, open since 1963, is the best-known place to order them, usually alongside rib tips.
Is there vegan or plant-based soul food in St. Louis?
Yes. SweetArt at 3701 Lindell Blvd serves entirely plant-based soul food and baked goods, and has been operating since 2008. It is the only fully plant-based soul food kitchen we could verify in the metro.
Where can I get soul food in north St. Louis County?
North county has the deepest selection: C&K Barbecue (4390 Jennings Station Rd), Cathy’s Kitchen in Ferguson plus its Dellwood carryout, Son-Ja’s Soul Food (9841 W Florissant Ave), Ol’ Henry (8600 Airport Rd) and Chef Daddy’s in Breckenridge Hills.
Where can I get soul food breakfast in St. Louis?
Son-Ja’s Soul Food at 9841 W Florissant Ave now serves breakfast, including chicken and waffles, shrimp and grits, and salmon croquettes with buttered rice. Soul food breakfast is uncommon in the metro, so call to confirm the days before going.
What should I order at a soul food restaurant for the first time?
Fried chicken with two sides is the reliable first order, because the sides show what a kitchen can do — collard greens reveal patience, macaroni and cheese reveals whether it’s baked or shortcut. Catfish is the regional marker, and snoots are the specifically St. Louis order.
Run a soul food kitchen in the metro? This is a category where the guides are years out of date and four well-known kitchens have closed since 2022 — which means people searching right now are finding dead listings instead of you. Showing up somewhere current is most of the fix. Listing your restaurant takes a few minutes.
Also worth reading: our guide to Black-owned restaurants in St. Louis. Or browse restaurants across 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.