Restaurants in East Saint Louis

Portabella crafts a seasonally rotating menu that takes advantage of the fruits and vegetables of local farmers’ labor. Kick off dinner with an order of the eatery's namesake 'shroom served with grilled asparagus and drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette ($7.95), or cast it in crispy form with fresh mozzarella and marinara for the crispy mozzarella order ($5.95). Like the Italian Grandmother robots at Epcot theme park, Portabella packs visitors mouths with salads ($5.95–$6.95), pizzas ($10.95 each), and pastas. The cheese tortellini keeps it true and traditional with oven-roasted tomatoes and tomato-asiago cream sauce ($13.95). Meat lovers, meanwhile, can pounce on the crispy asiago-crusted chicken milanese served with pasta and marinara ($15.95) or the provimi veal liver sautéed with caramelized onions, pancetta, and balsamic vinegar ($17.95). Seafarers can dive for sunken treasures such as the grilled tilapia, served with butternut-squash purée, mushrooms, and warm bacon vinaigrette ($17.95), or the crispy scallops, enhanced with sautéed spinach, roasted cauliflower, and white-truffle beurre blanc ($22.95). Portabella's lunch offerings include selections from salads ($3.95–$12.95) to sandwiches ($9.95–$13.95) and flatbreads ($10).

West End Grill and Pub boasts a laid-back neighborhood atmosphere and an extensive selection of upscale pub grub to entice eaters during dinner. Raise the curtain on the night's curtain raises with the grill's signature appetizer—Prince Edward Island mussels steamed in a green-curry sauce—or frolic through a garden of arugula, blue cheese, pistachios, and caramelized pear tossed in red-wine vinegar and oil with the Rocket caramelized pear salad. Recuperate after running an arduous marathon or tying a particularly heavy shoelace by feasting your heartiest buds of taste on the 16-ounce bone-in pork porterhouse—topped with apple compote and served with braised kale and sweet-potato gnocchi—or the Sonoma steak, which comes crowned with blue-cheese crumbles and flash-fried leeks atop a bed of horseradish mashed potatoes and zucchini. For dessert, sweet squares of peanut-butter-banana ravioli sit beneath coffee ice cream, and rich slabs of chocolate cake recline beneath pillowy servings of raspberry-chocolate-chip ice cream.

Kota’s menu of cruise-ship-sized portions (half and whole orders available for dinner) starts your Caribbean mouthcation with an order of Kota barbecue-duck and wild-mushroom quesadillas ($9) and some island chicken wings with Jamaican jerk spices ($8) before taking a shortcut to the Pacific with a coconut-curry duck linguini tossed with portobello mushrooms, baby spinach, peppers, and shredded duck (half plate $11, full $15). Although Lycanthropic Americans relish espresso-rubbed beef filet medallions (half plate $15, full $20) smothered in blue-cheese cream and served with fresh asparagus, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and crispy onion straws; herbivores can also savor the smoky, flavorful effects of wood-fire grilling with the cheese-drizzled hickory-fired vegetable orzo (half plate $11, full $15). For something a little closer to home, cubicle-farm escapees can score a Louisiana-style lunch with the N’awlins po’ boy ($9.50), which piles your choice of oyster, shrimp, or catfish into a toasted baguette with remoulade. Neither meal is complete without a dessert of Kota’s specialty milkshakes, so get in your daily recommended dosage of pastel colors with the Miami Vice (strawberry and piña colada with coconut and pineapple, $6) or blow out your stomach’s TV with an Elvis in the House (chocolate-banana shake with Reese's peanut-butter cup pieces, $6).

The 200 bottled beers and 55 beers on tap at Cicero’s pour into pint, tulip, and chalice glasses in a range of earthy colors. Old Rasputin fills glasses, a fine head set off against the nearly black beer brimming with coffee notes. The beer menu changes weekly, and the more serious brew hounds can attend Cicero’s beer school to taste, discuss, and learn all about several beers at each class.

Live performances fill the eatery with the sounds of twanging guitars nearly every night. The menu brims with pastas and burgers like a romance scene written by a hungry novelist, and cooks top pizzas with cream cheese, buffalo sauce, three types of sausage, and other ingredients. A game room features a 101” HDTV.

In 1999, Jimbo Sinovic opened the first Big Daddy's in the historic Soulard district, less than a half mile from the iconic Anheuser-Busch Brewery. The eatery's drink specials and tasty pub staples, served for lunch, dinner, and late-night owl watching, established the bar as a neighborhood favorite, and inspired its owner to declare it "The Best Bar in the Whole Wide World." Jimbo has since expanded Big Daddy's to four locations in the St. Louis metro area, including two in Illinois.

No matter the time of day or night, the kitchen staff at Gingham’s Restaurant churns out any meal—be it breakfast for dinner or lunch at 2 a.m. —that their customers crave. Famous buttermilk pancakes speckled with everything from blueberries to bits of bacon hush grumbling stomachs, as the friendly wait staff shuffles around bottomless pots of Ronnoco coffee and homemade dinner rolls. Chefs scramble farm-fresh eggs into nine different omelets, masterfully fry chicken, and drown homestyle meatloaf in rich gravy. The eatery doesn’t forget about dessert, satiating the child that nests in everyone’s molars with ice-cream sundaes and cherry crisps.