Kansas City is a shithole. Drive through midtown everyday you'll realize this.

Dude I dont feel safe with my car in alot of places. My buddy lives in Soulard, hate parking at his place, another lives by Forest Park, hate parking downtown unless I'm at Union Station or certain hotel parking garages. I have had my vehicles screwed with or broken into too many times in STL.

What awesome shit is in the burbs??? Kirkwood and Webster are the only burbs even worth mentioning. Anything outside of 270 sucks, and I live in Ballwin. The ONLY things in St. Louis that I would consider awesome are all in the city.

No love for Clayton?

Clayton is ok, but frankly I don't spend a lot of time there. It always seems like it's just the offspring of all the old money in the city. The same old money families that have done their best to impede any real development.

Personally, I would much rather spend my time on South Grand, Soulard, the CWE, or even the Loop.

We are taking the kids up to St. Louis for New Year's Eve and to see friends. We're going to go out to eat one night without the kids. Unfortunately, it's on a Monday, so our options are limited (lots of restaurants closed on Monday).

Two we're looking at:
Niche
Blood and Sand

Thoughts from St. Louis folks?

Not sure on the eateries for your date night. But, related to the kids, the St. Louis City Museam was freaking awesome and I'd highly recommend it.

Yeah, that's pretty much our top destination. My wife is from St. Louis originally, so we kind of know the things to do there. Our friends are huge foodies as well, so their recommendations will be solid. I was mainly curious if anyone had experience with those two restaurants.

We've been to the chef at Niche's other establishment and liked it very well, so I think we're leaning toward Niche.

So we went to St. Louis from the 30th through the 2nd. I am completely impressed with the St. Louis food culture. They have some pretty amazing things happening, and I could see it becoming a foodie destination in the near future. Their craft brewing scene has also really started to pick up as has the craft cocktail/mixology scene.

A large part of that is due to the excellence of Feast magazine. For anyone interested in food culture, restaurants, being obsessive about craft and such, I found this article fascinating:

http://www.feaststl.com/dine-out/fea...9bb30f31a.html

It's too long to paste.

Anyway, we ate at Niche for their Monday night 3 course sit down without our kids. Then we hit Strange Donuts and Bailey's Range with the kids.

City Museum was absolutely fantastic. We went to the Magic House as well, but I think I'd skip it next time and extend our stay at the City Museum. Now that our friends there have a house big enough for us to stay in, we'll be making frequent trips back, I think.