The Fountain on Locust, St. Louis

The Fountain On Locust has earned accolades such as St. Louis Magazine's award for Best Restaurant On a Budget in 2012 and an honorable mention as one of Sauce Magazine's favorite restaurants to impress out-of-towners. Described as "luscious" by Sauce Magazine reviewers, the café's ice-cream creations skew toward adults. They may be topped with hand-crafted sauces or blended into champagne floats and eclectic ice-cream martinis. On the menu, these sweets converge with a panoply of vintage cocktails and playful café dishes that include hot roast-beef melts and a turkey BLT "so good you might cry."

The retro cuisine meshes perfectly with the vintage-inspired decor, highlighted by walls of hand-painted midnight-blue murals. Black and white tile floors spread out from a wooden bar lit with art deco-style hanging lamps, much like the kind F. Scott Fitzgerald described in his unpublished novella about Gatsby's electrician. And yet the restaurant's eclectic design isn't limited to the dining space—The Fountain won Cintas' America's Best Restroom Award in 2010.