Esquire's Best Bars in America is in our tenth year, and we've added to our ever-growing list of the best places to drink in America—places that are singular, harmonious, radiant. Perfect, in other words. As always, we're guided by David Wondrich, Esquire's longtime designated drinker. This year, a focus on cities we've underserved lately—and one we've overlooked almost entirely. Namely, St. Louis, which, as he recounts here, we should've discovered a long time ago.

Sitting at the bar at Harlem Tap Room in St. Louis's Ville neighborhood, home at one time or another to Chuck Berry, Arthur Ashe, Tina Turner, and Sonny Liston, you want to be a regular: the slightly unhinged rec-room decor, the stiff drinks, the loud mellow hip-hop and seventies soul, the friends calling to friends across the bar, the clutch of older guys in quiet conversation in the corner—it's a low-boil party. Even though, as two middle-aged bearded white guys who resemble nobody so much as the Smith Bros. of cough-drop fame, my old friend Doug Frost and I were clearly a novelty there, the bartender was friendly, if openly puzzled at our presence, and one of the patrons was curious enough to come over, introduce herself, and start what proved to be a very pleasant conversation. We were tempted to stay for a few more, but we were on a mission and Harlem Tap was only one of a dozen bars on our list.

St. Louis looms large in the history of American drinking, and not just because Adolphus Busch started pasteurizing his beer there and shipping it around the country in refrigerated train cars when nobody else was doing that. The Planters' House hotel, on Fourth Street, had for a time the most famous bar in the West (the great Jerry Thomas was its head bartender in the mid-1850s) and the nearby Hole in the Wall, with its single-piece mahogany bar and crystal punch cups, was one of the most elegant in the country. The saloons, brothels, and gambling halls of Deep Morgan—a mostly black neighborhood just north of Downtown—were the cradle of ragtime, and places such as Henry Bridgewater's billiard saloon and Bill Curtis's Elite Social Club were as lively as any in the country. It was in Curtis's that on Christmas Night, 1895, William Lyons snatched Lee Shelton's John B. Stetson hat and refused to give it back, whereupon "Stack Lee," as he was known, produced a Smith & Wesson .44, shot Billy Lyons, and took back his hat.

The bar at Harlem Tap Room. Tim Klein

I had started the day, while waiting for Frost to arrive from his home in Kansas City, with a late-morning ramble around Downtown that made it clear how little is left of Jerry Thomas's or Stack Lee's St. Louis. The Planters' House and the Hole in the Wall are long gone. The site of the livery stable that Thomas seems to have run on the side is occupied by one end of the mighty arch. Indeed, the whole of Deep Morgan is gone: redlining, white flight, and a particularly aggressive (and ongoing) brand of urban renewal have left the city's black North Side depressed and sparesly built.

Downtown, meanwhile, is rich in the nondescript beer-and-Jäger barns you find in tourist zones all over. Not a crystal cup to be seen. The Dubliner has Irish beer and whiskey and bits of Irish decor, but no bar in Ireland ever had a ceiling so high or a space so vast, and ribs and pork rinds are hardly Dublin fare. I have another half pint at the even more cavernous Schlafly Tap Room in Downtown West, and another, along with a fine cheese-and-charcuterie plate, at the nearby Urban Chestnut Brewing Company beer garden. The Busch family's 2008 slae of Anheuser-Busch to a Brazilian-Belgian conglomerate was a heavy blow for the city to absorb, but it also opened the door to new, locally owned breweries. Schlafly and Urban Chestnut both make serious and excellent beer, although UC's goes a bit deeper into traditional Germany Styles. Both of these are exceedingly pleasant places, although not oozing with local character.

The Royale. Tim Klein

For that, you've got to hit the neighborhoods—of which the city officially has seventy-nine. After our auspicious start in the Ville, we head to Dressel's Public House, in the leafy and prosperous Central West End, only a mile and a half away from a whole different world. St. Louis might be a music town, but it's also been home to William S. Burroughs and T.S. Eliot. With framed pen-and-ink portraits of literary and musical heroes on the walls and cask ale, fine cocktails, and a kitchen that turns out German-inspired pub food that's several cuts above the norm, Dressel's is as pleasant a literary pub as I've every seen. (Llywelyn's, around the corner, is a pretty fine place to drink beer as well.)

From there, it's down to North Hampton, in the (mostly white) Southwest City, and Silverleaf Lounge, a tiny little taproom on a residential side street: a bar, a few stools, a couple of tables, and a jukebox, all gazed down on by photos of regulars present and past and a sign that says, Welcome to Ron & Barb's Place. It doesn't look like anything has changed here since maybe 1978.

In most of the country, craft-cocktail bars tend to be small, dark, and rareified. Not here. Take the Royale, in gentrifying Tower Grove South, as up to date as Silverleaf is old-school: Carefully made modern cocktails, small plates, diverse music—the whole contemporary array. And yet none of that stuff is being held up as something to challenge you: It's there if you want it, but you can also just get a pint and sit outside on the huge patio. Sanctuaria, in the Grove, west of Downtown, has a huge cocktail list, including a section of one hundred classics (regulars have notebooks beside the bar where they can track their progress through the list), skilled bartenders, tapas, and, of course, a huge patio. These are craft-cocktail bars cut on a beer-garden pattern.

Libations at Planter's House. Tim Klein

That only makes sense. St. Louis had an unusually high German population back in the day, and the German roots run deep. Just how deep is clear on the Hill, St. Louis's Italian neighborhood, west-southwest of Downtown. Rather than scenes of Italy or a straw-covered Chianti bottle, the menu at Rigazzi's, the oldest Italian restaurant in the neighborhood, sports a color photo of a thirty-two-ounce "fishbowl" of beer, the house drink. And indeed, disregarding the life-sized statue of Al Capone sitting at one of the tables, the place's DNA is as much German beer hall as it is Italian trattoria. The nearby Milo's Bocce Garden is another Italian-German hybrid, this one on a biergarten framework. A loose-limbed sort of place with rec-room paneling, a huge patio decked out with two full-length covered bocce courts, and of course, toasted ravioli.

The nearby O'Connell's manages to escape the prevailing Germanness, although it does so by being as much Old West saloon as Irish pub, with hurling sticks battling it out on the walls with a moose head and boxing prints.

Finally, we head down to Planter's House in Lafayette Square (just south of Downtown) to close out the evening. The city's most ambitious cocktail bar and one of America's best, Planter's has sophisticated cocktails along with the locally requisite patio, a longish beer list, and a whole lot of good food. And a collection of vintage bourbons. It might have been better to start our exploration there, when our judgment was stronger.

But no evening ends until it's over, and when we're back in hotel-land we can't resist the temptation to pop into Jack Patrick's Bar & Grill, another of those cavernous Downtown spaces with big TVs and standard bar drinks, although this one has a 3:00 a.m. license and draws in bartenders and other night owls for an impromptu late-night party. A round there leaves one feeling like Billy Lyons, Stack Lee's Stetson hat, or some other damn thing, and St. Louis has another seventy-odd neighborhoods we didn't even make it to. Round 1: St. Louis.

The Bars

Harlem Tap Room

4161 Martin Luther King Drive; no phone

You're having: Johnnie Walker Red and ginger ale

The Dubliner

1025 Washington Avenue: 314-421-4300

You're having: a pint of Smithwick's; the pork rinds

Schlafly Tap Room

2100 Locust Street; 314-241-2337

You're having: a pint of the (award-winning) Kölsch

Urban Chestnut Brewing Company

3229 Washington Avenue; 314-222-0143

You're having: a pint of the Zwickel

Dressel's Public House

419 North Euclid Avenue; 314-361-1060

You're having: a pint of the cask ale and a (hot) pretzel

Llywelyn's Pub

4747 McPherson Avenue; 314-361-3003

You're having: a pint of the Civil Life brown ale

Silverleaf Lounge

3442 Hereford Street; no phone

You're having: a shot of Beam and a can of Stag; potato chips

The Royale

3132 South Kingshighway Boulevard; 314-772-3600

You're having: a Lafayette sidecar; the hummus

Sanctuaria

4198 Manchester Avenue; 314-535-9700

You're having: a barrel-aged Martinez

Rigazzi's

4945 Daggett Avenue; 314-772-4900

You're having: a fishbowl of Bud and the toasted ravioli

Milo's Bocce Garden

5201 Wilson Avenue; 314-776-0468

You're having: Crown Royal, rocks

O'Connell's Pub

4652 Shaw Boulevard; 314-773-6600

You're having: a shot Midleton Very Rare Irish whiskey

Planter's House

1000 Mississippi Avenue; 314-696-2603

You're having: a Manhattanite

Jack Patrick's Bar & Grill

1000 Olive Street; 314-436-8879

You're having: There is absolutely no way of telling.

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