RFT 📰

2225 Macklind Avenue, 314-773-4455 Runner-Up: Rigazzi’s 4945 Daggett Avenue, 314-772-4900

4270 Manchester Avenue, 314-533-2700 Runner-Up: Hodak’s Restaurant and Bar 2100 Gravois Avenue, 314-776-7292

2709 Sutton Boulevard, Maplewood; 314-932-5851 Runner-Up: Donut Drive-In 6525 Chippewa Street, 314-645-7714

2130 Macklind Avenue, 314-696-2999 Runner-Up: Duke’s 2001 Menard Street, 314-833-6686

2001 Menard Street, 314-833-6686 Runner-Up: John D. McGurk’s 1200 Russell Boulevard, 314-776-8309

Now closed due to a fire 2017 Chouteau Avenue, 314-241-8989 Runner-Up: McGurk’s 1200 Russell Boulevard, 314-776-8309

Multiple locations including 1000 Hampton Avenue, 314-644-5480 Runner-Up: Faraci’s 15430 Manchester Road, Ellisville, Missouri; 636-230-0000

4270 Manchester Avenue, 314-533-2700 Runner-Up: Porter’s Fried Chicken 3628 South Big Bend Boulevard, Webster Groves; 314-781-2097

There is more to this week's Savage Love. To read the entire column, go to savage.love

A north county man who stole more than 2000 items from various Home Depot locations was sentenced to nine years in prison in federal court in St. Louis yesterday. From 2017 to 2021, Xavier Brown, of Vinita Park, routinely shoplifted items from the stores in 20 different states, including Missouri, and returned the items without a receipt. He evaded the store's fraud protection by using more than 1,900 different temporary driver's licenses.

A swanky fundraiser to raise money for children's healthcare was disrupted by a tragic incident on Saturday. At Cardinal Glennon's 10th annual Glennon Gallop, a fundraiser for SSM Health's Danis Pediatric Center in St. Louis, a horse dropped dead in the middle of a polo game. One attendee recalled the event in a tip to the RFT.

Three months after becoming the first St. Louis-area store to unionize, workers at the Ladue Starbucks held a one-day strike on Saturday. Employees tell the RFT they have seen their hours drop as a result of their unionization efforts. The shortened shifts have led to fewer workers on the floor, causing longer wait times for customers and overwhelmed workers.

This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University's Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures. This morning the Post-Dispatch reported that a former teacher facing charges of statutory rape died yesterday while in the custody of the St. Louis County Jail. A corrections officer found Brandon Holbrook, 30, unresponsive in his cell around 4 p.m.

Greedy for gauzy sunlit patios, candy-colored Cadillacs and clinking martinis, I expected Don’t Worry Darling to be a brilliant disaster, a faux-prestige flick worth viewing for its production design alone. I expected to enjoy the film in the same way I enjoy watching (and rewatching) narratively preposterous fragrance ads from the early ’90s (No substance?

A popular ice cream brand is ready to welcome fans into its first St. Louis storefront. Sugarwitch (7726 Virginia Avenue), the ice cream sandwich company owned by married couple Martha Bass and Sophie Mendelson, will open the doors to its brick-and-mortar location this Friday, promising frosty treats, floats, coffee and more varieties of the staples that have helped it build a loyal following over the past year. "The first pop-up we did blew our expectations out of the water," Mendelson says.

A sometimes divisive coloring book operation has opened a retail storefront in St. Louis.  This month, Really Big Coloring Books (9261 Dielman Industrial Drive, coloringbook.com) opened an approximately 2,000-square-foot retail space within its warehouse. Within the new storefront, the St. Louis based-company sells about 200 titles, primarily children's coloring books, as well as coloring utensils, notebooks and sketchpads.

Far more juveniles than adults have been nabbed for car theft in St. Louis this past summer — meaning that the majority of auto theft-related allegations are adjudicated in a system that is much different, and much less open to the public, than the adult court system. According to St. Louis Metropolitan Police Sergeant Charles Wall, 39 adults were arrested in the city for crimes related to auto theft in July, August and the first three weeks of September. Over that same period, 107 juveniles were taken into custody for auto theft crimes.

Jeff Roorda has been let go from the police union he has long represented — with the president of the St. Louis Police Officers Association asking the city to remove him "from all bargaining related emails moving forward." Jay Schroeder, president of the association, made the request to a city secretary, who then relayed it to Director of Operations Nancy Cross and other city officials on September 19, according to an email obtained by the RFT. Reached by the RFT this afternoon, Roorda confirmed the news, saying he'd been put on paid leave on September 14 and that his last day on the union's payroll would be September 30.

Voting in St. Louis just got a bit more convenient. The city’s election board on Monday announced more than 70 polling locations in addition to city-wide vote centers for the November general election. The St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners received some flak after it directed voters to 15 “vote centers” during the primary for aldermanic president earlier this month, instead of the usual 70+ neighborhood polling locations.

Missouri has made its way into another list — and this time, it’s for being one of the most CBD-obsessed states in the country. What does that mean exactly?