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Twenty years ago, I worked at the Starbucks in the heart of the Loop, slinging caramel macchiatos, caramel Frappuccinos and the occasional Norah Jones CD with a colorful cast of characters. Back then, you could bar-hop from Brandt’s to Riddle’s to the Delmar Lounge. You could choose one of three Thai restaurants for dinner.

Sometimes, you heard Loop old-timers mutter how the neighborhood used to be seedier, grungier, better.

Now, I’m one of the old-timers. The Loop restaurants I always thought of as “new� — Salt + Smoke, Corner 17 — are as much mainstays as Blueberry Hill, Fitz’s and the remaining two of those three Thai spots.

I won’t say things used to be better or worse. Sure, I miss movies at the Tivoli and the food at Mike Randolph’s brilliant, too-brief duo of Público and Randolfi’s Italian Kitchen. (We’re not going to talk about the trolley, OK?)

But change has also brought a wave of exciting new restaurants — so many in 2025 alone that I could have dedicated most of this summer to visiting them for my weekly reviews.

A communal celebration feels more appropriate. Here are six new Delmar Loop spots I recommend.

Gol Bowl

The Indian restaurant Gol Bowl has swaggered onto the scene this year, opening two locations within a few months. It has also reversed the expected order of operations. The second location, in downtown Maplewood, is the full-fledged restaurant, with table service and plated dishes. The first, in the Loop, you could call Gol Bowl Express.

Here, the condensed menu is displayed on a TV screen above the counter where you order. There is a small dining room, but your meal is served in disposable containers regardless.

The format makes sense for the Loop’s throngs of college students. It also keeps Gol Bowl on trend. The metro area’s seemingly endless boom of new Indian restaurants includes a boomlet of fast-casual spots.

The food transcends its takeout trappings. I haven’t eaten better rogan josh in more formal dining rooms. The brick-red curry simmers with the late-summer heat of Kashmiri chiles, and the tender lamb yields to the side of a plastic fork. If the menu is familiar, it can still surprise. The kitchen even invigorates the soothing richness of butter chicken with some real zip.

Gol Bowl’s chole bhature announces itself with an aggressive garnish: ribbons of raw onion. Chickpeas lurk in the amber curry, soaking up its blistering chile heat and a bracing note of tanginess or even sourness. On the side, ideal for scooping up the curry but also cushioning your palate, are two pieces of puffy deep-fried bread. 

The chole bhature is my favorite dish here and maybe of this entire project. Yes, the Loop in 2025 shines with a corporate gloss — just down the block from Gol Bowl is a newish CVS — but its irrepressible heart remains the unexpected and the uncompromising.

WHERE: 6227 Delmar Boulevard MORE INFO: 314-312-6022; HOURS: Lunch and dinner daily

Milano Kabob

The Iraqi restaurant Milano Kabob opened at the end of 2024 in the cupboard of a storefront on Westgate Avenue previously occupied by longtime Loop favorite Al-Tarboush Deli. Milano Kabob is takeout-focused by default, with only one small table inside and three more along the sidewalk.

Don’t overlook that modest patio, especially if you order Milano Kabob’s falafel. Fresh from the fryer, this is among the best falafel in town, each piece crunchy and moist and perfectly cut with a dip in the side of tart mango-based amba sauce. (Another day’s takeout order lost some of its pizzaz on the drive home.)

Pair the falafel — or another of Milano Kabob’s appetizers, like crisp, cigar-shaped beef sambosas or the exceptionally creamy hummus — with a lemony Iraqi salad of cucumber, tomato, onion and pomegranate seeds; it makes for an ideal light late-summer lunch.

The restaurant’s eponymous kebabs are available as a sandwich (wrapped in pita or slightly chewier Iraqi samoon bread) or as a platter over rice or seasoned fries. The kabob with cubes of lamb delivers more of the meat’s grassy flavor than the skewers of kofta made with minced lamb, but the latter’s springy texture is more tender. The chicken kabob finds that sweet spot of juicy, charry meat and bright, sharpening spices.

WHERE: 602 Westgate Avenue, University City MORE INFO: 314-261-4816; milanokabob.cm HOURS: Lunch and dinner daily

Movoc

Movoc is the clearest proof yet how international students from Washington University have driven the transformation of Loop dining: a sleek white box of a restaurant that bridges self-serve convenience and Chinese cuisine.

Specifically, Movoc features malatang and mala xiang guo, broth-based and “dry� hot pots, which are individually portioned and cooked in the kitchen rather than by you at your table. A frame to hold your finished bowl over a flickering tea light marks each table setting.

You begin by choosing your ingredients from a refrigerated display along a wall. The variety is impressive: raw beef, chicken gizzards, fried frog legs, fried tofu cubes, tripe, dense balls of lobster meat, squid, slabs of duck blood, sprays of enoki mushrooms, various leafy greens and more.

You pay by weight, with a minimum of nine-tenths of a pound. (I inevitably fell a few ounces short and retreated to the splendor of the display case for more.) For dine-in customers, the cost includes unlimited white rice.

As important as your choice of ingredients is which broth you pick from a menu of five, three spicy, two not spicy (tomato or mushroom). The menu designates the Oil Splash Spicy Soup as a three on a four-chili scale, and the broth leads with an eye-opening blast of mala, the classic duo of chile heat and Sichuan peppercorn numbness.

In both this and the Sour & Spicy soup — one chile out of four and, as promised, puckeringly sour — the mala sensation doesn’t obscure the flavors of individual ingredients. The broths themselves are intriguingly complex. I chased a dusky essence of cumin seed through both bowls.

WHERE: 6329 Delmar Boulevard, University City MORE INFO: 314-932-1838 HOURS: Lunch and dinner daily

Noodle Story

The Chinese restaurant Noodle Story is the most impressive of the Loop’s new dining options overall but also a missed opportunity. It should be called Noodle Stories. Because, you know, it occupies two floors.

No?

Anyway, the handsome brick interior includes a boba-tea bar on the first floor, a kitchen on the second and seating throughout. You order on your phone via QR code, though there are employees in the dining areas to answer any questions.

Predictably, big bowls of pleasantly chewy wheat noodles are the main attraction here. The chile punch of the spicy beef noodles is relatively modest, all the better to clear the way for the heady duo of silky broth and braised beef. Bok choy, softened but not wilted, provides a crisp counterpoint.

I’m not eager for winter’s arrival, but I’ll be back at Noodle Story once the weather turns cold for the aptly named Golden Soup, a wondrously unfussy and bottomlessly rich chicken broth with noodles and chicken.

Noodle Story excels at dishes beyond its namesake, though it still tempts you with soup. An order of steamed pork dumplings quivers with the spoonful of sweet, scalding broth inside the tidy wonton purse. An order of pork pot stickers lacks soup, of course. The treat here is the crisp, lacy dough that connects the six dumplings into one pan-fried whole.

While Gol Bowl captures the old Loop spirit and Movoc best encapsulates its modern form, look to Noodle Story for its most unexpectedly inspiring dish, an appetizer called Chengdu-Style Potato Snack. This is a big plate of crunchy crinkle-cut fries generously seasoned with mala-style heat and buzz — a delicious, lowercase-d democratic example for those of us still clinging to tattered ideals of strength in diversity and the great American melting pot.

°Â±á·¡¸é·¡:Ìý6315 Delmar Boulevard, University City MORE INFO: 314-669-9998Ìý±á°¿±«¸é³§:ÌýLunch and dinner daily

SiKao Life Chinese BBQ

SiKao Life Chinese BBQ debuted this winter on the stub of Melville Avenue by Blueberry Hill that has hosted a variety of restaurants over the years, a sort of fertile ecosystem within the larger Loop. SiKao Life also continues the flourishing of regional Chinese far throughout the metro area over the past 15 years. The extensive menu should appeal to fans of ChiliSpot in University City and especially Cait Zone in University City and Chesterfield.

As at Noodle Story, you access that menu via QR code and order through your phone. I don’t object to this method on principle, even as its pandemic-era peak has passed, but at SiKao Life it adds to the general no-frills vibe. For my chili chicken cubes — think Sichuan-style “popcorn� chicken showered with dried chilis and Sichuan peppercorns — I had to deduce that a side of white rice wasn’t included then go back on my phone and find the $1 a-la-carte order.

Also as at Noodle Story, you can do worse than let the name guide your order. Skewers of grilled meat are the signature dish, tender beef and lamb sprinkled with a seasoning blend of chilis and earthy spices, an entire chicken wing stretched out along one skewer, its golden-brown skin crackling.

I shouldn’t restrict the signature dish to meats. There are also seafood skewers and verdant threads of Chinese chives and even the simple, squishy pleasure of Chinese buns toasted on skewers.

WHERE: 567-A Melville Avenue, University City MORE INFO: 314-818-2681; HOURS: Lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday (closed Monday)

Tous Les Jours

Loop old-timers are grumbling again, but if you are going to welcome a chain restaurant to the neighborhood, it might as well be the first area location of the international French-Asian bakery Tous Les Jours.

Upon entering the restaurant, you take a tray and a pair of tongs to serve yourself. The key is not to be overwhelmed by the sheer number of treats on display. In St. Louis, which already boasts Nathaniel Reid Bakery and La Patisserie Chouquette, you don’t need to bother with Tous Les Jours’ croissants, especially when they are stuffed with cream and fruit.

Look instead for the changes of pace: a long, flaky pastry filled with subtly tart yuzu jelly or a crackly Danish with guava. Tour Les Jours also stands out for its savory pastries — thanks to its hours, the bakery doubles as the rare all-day spot where you can grab a savory snack — like a springy croquette stuffed with fizzy kimchi.

WHERE: 6681 Delmar Boulevard, University City MORE INFO: 314-926-0799; HOURS: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. daily