Best German Restaurants in St. Louis, Missouri

The Schnitzel and the Pauli Girl

There she is on the bottle of St. Pauli Girl Beer: The St. Pauli Girl with her blonde hair, ample cleavage, and traditional German dress is wearing a big smile, her arms open invitingly, and she carries a huge frothy stein of beer in each hand. And though there might be a drop of bottle-sweat dripping down her face, (she's probably been working hard) you know that beer is cold.

Between 1820 and 1860, a million and a half immigrants arrived in America from Germany. Quite a few of the new arrivals eventually traveled west to St. Louis and worked as shopkeepers and skilled tradesmen. They also worked in construction, shoemaking, and manufacturing. St. Louis was first in booze, shoes, and blues. Although German immigrants didn't mix beer with politics, some reformers at this time right before Prohibition, were disconcerted by the atmosphere of the German social establishments. Unlike the Irish bars, the German beer gardens catered to whole families. This caused a little concern to August A. Busch, the second of his family to run what would become the world's biggest brewery.

In 1916 he built Bevo Mill, a high class German restaurant that served great food for the whole family and featured a low-alcohol beer by the same name. Bevo is derived from the Bohemian pivo which means beer. The Bevo Mill is shaped like a Dutch windmill and is a terrific German restaurant. It consistently wins awards for its reasonably priced fare such as sauerbraten, rouladen, and hasenpfeffer. This is just good old-fashioned German food. The main dining hall is huge with plenty of dark wood and a lot of deer antlers on the wall. Be sure to check out the Mill Room though, which was once Busch's private dining room. Watch for the mug-holding gnomes on the ceiling arches, they are from the Paris Exposition of 1889. The entire restaurant was renovated in the 80's to the tune of a million dollars. Even the giant windmill blades on the front of the building are turning again.