How I Discovered St. Charles
My son plays club soccer and has played in the St. Louis league (SLYSA) for years. Due to this we have made several trips to the St. Charles area. I drive a Tesla and the Streets of St. Charles (the newer shops and restaurant area) has a parking garage with superchargers. While the car charged, we discovered Mission Taco: https://www.missiontacojoint.com/location/streets-of-st-charles.
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Mission Taco
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Mission Taco has delicious, unique tacos and fantastic margaritas: https://www.missiontacojoint.com/menu. I’ve tried the duck, hot chicken, BLT, fish, shrimp and Yuketan pork tacos. The hot chicken and shrimp have been my favorite so far. Reviews online rave about the street corn. I thought it was just alright. Queso and chips and salsa were just okay too. But the tacos are where it’s at.
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Second Trip to St. Charles
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I absolutely love the mural on the wall and knew my artsy daughter would love it too. My second time visiting St. Charles we saw The Lumineers at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater. After enjoying Mission Taco, we were able to go to some of the shops on The Streets of St. Charles. Before we left they were setting up live music and people were bringing their chairs out into the streets to listen. These type of events and the many festivals the town offers is one reason I think St. Charles is a fantastic weekend trip destination.
Historic St. Charles
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The third time I came to St. Charles was our first overnight trip for a soccer tournament. We had a fabulous stay at The Country Inn & Suites by Radisson. This hotel is on the edge of the historic, downtown area and while it’s a new hotel it was made to look old. If the weather is nice, it wouldn’t be a bad walk to where all the shops and restaurants are and it’s located on the Katy Trail. It’s also convenient to the Schlafly Brewery if that’s high on your place to visit. (Hopefully this brewery will be on the agenda for a future trip.)
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Hendricks BBQ and Moonshine Blues Club
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Next door to the The Country Inn & Suites by Radisson is Hendricks BBQ and the Moonshine Blues Bar. The old water works building was used for the restaurant. We had eaten on our drive there so we shared the cornbread (delicious, especially the flavored butters) and fried green tomatoes (not great, very thick batter and I prefer a thin, cornmeal batter).
Braddens
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The next day we ate lunch at Braddens. Absolutely loved the stained glass windows and the atmosphere of the restaurant but didn’t make the best food choices: lobster bisque and house salad were both just okay. But Holy Cow yall we got the coconut cream pie to go. I don’t even like coconut cream pie and it was sooooooo good!!!
Grandma’s Cookies
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We had limited time before our next game but checked out some of the shops. U Defined Boutique was my fave: super cute clothes at a very reasonable price. We also checked out Grandma’s Cookies. We sampled all of them. My favorites were the peanut butter chocolate chip followed by the least popular of their cookies, coconut. The special was a carrot cake cookie with cream cheese icing and it was delish!!!
Dave and Busters
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That night we joined our team at Dave and Busters in Maryland Heights and surprisingly had my best meal of the trip which was the chimichurri bowl. Afterwards, while our son rested up for the next day of games, my husband took me to the Bella Vino Wine Bar.
Bella Vino Wine Bar
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Again, LOVED that Bella Vino Wine Bar was in a gorgeous, old house. I had a flight from around the world. A red wine from Spain, rose from France and white from New Zealand. I loved them all but the white was my fave. We shut the place down at 10:45 and the streets were absolutely dead when we came out. It was then that I decided forget Bridgestone and Nashville. All future concerts trips would include a stay at St Charles. See my next blog post for more on that.
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