Webster Groves Has Two Downtowns, and This Year Each One Made National News

Ask someone who doesn't live here where to eat in Webster Groves, and they'll say "Old Orchard" like that settles it. Ask someone who actually lives here, and they'll want to know which Webster Groves you mean, because there are two historic business districts here, roughly a mile apart, and they don't share a personality. One is Big Bend Boulevard, casual and food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar. The other is Lockwood and Gore, white tablecloths in a building that's been feeding this town since the 1910s.

What most residents haven't connected is that both districts spent the past year collecting national recognition, independently, in completely different categories. That's not a coincidence worth shrugging off. It's a sign that Webster Groves is producing serious food from two directions at once, and knowing which direction you're headed matters more than knowing the zip code.

The Split Nobody Explains Clearly

Old Orchard sits along Big Bend Boulevard near the intersection with Murdoch Avenue, the district that grew up around a Frisco Railroad commuter stop in the 1880s and got its name from the apple and peach orchards that once lined the bend in the Meramec River. Old Webster centers on Lockwood Avenue, closer to the Metro station and Webster University, and its signature building, the Gorlock Building, dates to 1910 or 1911 and has housed a string of restaurants ever since, most recently C.J. Muggs for more than three decades before it closed in 2023.

If you've eaten a beignet at The Annex on a heated patio or picked up bubble tea at Piink Tea Studio, you were in Old Orchard. If you've had a martini under Madrina's mid-century sconces, you were in Old Webster. They're close enough that people conflate them constantly. They're different enough that conflating them means missing half the story.

Old Orchard's Food Truck Became a James Beard Story

Balkan Treat Box started in 2017 as a food truck built around chef Loryn Nalic's wood-fired oven, and her husband Edo running it alongside her. By 2019 they had a permanent spot in Old Orchard, and the restaurant built a reputation the slow way, on scratch-made bread, Missouri beef, and a kitchen that runs entirely on electric power. In January 2026, the James Beard Foundation named Nalic one of five semifinalists for Best Chef Midwest, the only nominee from Missouri that year.

That's not a local blog's opinion. That's a national foundation putting a Webster Groves kitchen in the same conversation as chefs from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City.

A Mile Away, Old Webster Answered With a Wine List

Madrina opened its doors on November 24, 2023, in the old Gorlock Building at the corner of Lockwood and Gore, the work of two longtime friends, Frank Romano and Stanley Browne, whose partnership traces back nearly three decades to a chance meeting at Kemoll's, the downtown St. Louis institution where a teenage Romano worked as a busser. Romano runs The Parkmoor Drive-In. Browne, a certified sommelier, has run Robust Bistro & Wine Bar since 2007. Together they built Madrina as a mid-century Italian-American room, complete with a horseshoe marble bar and burgundy booths, and staffed it with a wine program serious enough that in 2025 the restaurant earned the Jury Prize from the World of Fine Wine Awards, the only Missouri restaurant honored that year.

Two restaurants, two districts, two completely different national awards, inside the same twelve months. That's the part of the story that doesn't show up when someone just tells you Webster Groves has good food.

The Quieter Thread Connecting Both Districts

Here's what ties them together, and it's not just proximity. In spring 2025, Webster Groves became the St. Louis region's fifth official Green Dining District, joining Maplewood, The Loop, South Grand, and The Grove. The designation requires that a quarter of a city's independently owned restaurants earn certification from the Green Dining Alliance, a program that audits water use, energy conservation, waste reduction, and sourcing. By April 2026, nine Webster Groves restaurants had earned that certification, according to reporting on the milestone, and the city's own list has since grown to include a tenth.

Both award-winning kitchens are on that list. Balkan Treat Box composts, keeps a tight inventory to limit waste, and sources local produce and Missouri beef. Madrina earned a five-star GDA rating for water conservation and food sourcing, partners with local farms for beef, poultry, eggs, and dairy, and turns vegetable trimmings into staff meals rather than the trash. The sustainability story in Webster Groves doesn't belong to one trendy strip. It runs through both districts, from the casual end of Big Bend to the white-tablecloth end of Lockwood.

What's Actually New in Old Orchard This Fall

Old Orchard keeps adding to its own momentum. In November 2025, DD Mau relocated its flagship location into the former Weber's Front Row space at 8169 Big Bend, roughly doubling its footprint to a 150-seat dining room and adding lo mein and handmade steamed dumplings to a menu that already leaned on owner Julie Truong Shih's family recipes.

And if you want a reason to be on Big Bend Boulevard in person this year, the Old Orchard Fall Festival returns October 24 and 25, running both days from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. along Big Bend between Dale and Summit avenues, with Log Cabin Lane opened up as extra festival space. This year's lineup includes:

1. Two music stages with 14 bands total, including Jake's Leg, Voodoo Funky Butt Brass Band, The Brothers Lazaroff, and the Webster Groves High School Jazz Band
2. The Cowboy Critters Petting Zoo, with goats, pigs, donkeys, horses, ducks, and rabbits
3. A Find the Ghost Bingo contest, with completed cards due by 3 p.m. Saturday for a prize drawing
4. Trick-or-treating at participating Old Orchard businesses from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday

Vendors this year include Crispy Sips, Glow Candle Co., Steele Caramels, and Everyone's Republic, on top of the district's permanent shops and restaurants operating as usual through the weekend.

There's a detail worth noticing while you're there. The patio behind Frisco Barroom, at the corner of Big Bend and Log Cabin Lane, is lined with six kinds of espaliered apple trees trained to grow up the walls and arbor. Co-owner Kelley Hall-Barr has said the planting was deliberate, a small nod to the orchards the district was named for a century and a half ago. It's the kind of detail you'd only know if you'd actually sat back there.

Why the Split Is the Point

It would be easy to flatten all of this into one sentence: Webster Groves has great food. That sentence is true and also useless, because it erases the thing that actually explains why this year felt different. Two distinct districts, walkable from each other but built on different histories and different kinds of ambition, each independently produced a restaurant good enough to draw national attention, in the same twelve-month stretch, while both quietly building sustainability records that connect them under one designation neither district gets sole credit for.

If you live near Big Bend, your fall calendar probably already has the festival on it. If you live nearer Lockwood, it's worth the short drive over, and vice versa on a Friday night when you want a reservation instead of a food truck line. Either way, the town has two different kinds of bragging rights, and both are worth knowing by name.

If you're curious what else is shifting in Webster Groves, from home values to which blocks are quietly changing character, Kristen Weld has been tracking this market for more than 17 years across both sides of the river. Let's Connect whenever you're ready to talk about what's next.