Urban Chestnut Takeaway. Pizza, beer, and a modern dining palace. Pretzel bites with butter steal the show. 6.3 / 10 wood-fired pizza doesn't break The Flood Line. Fries are a 6.1 / 10.
Super welcoming with wide open doors. A huge banquet hall dining area with large, beautiful fermenters in the background. Large open terrace in the back when it's warm enough. Smaller pub-style bar in the front. Janky little arcade and billiards cost a couple of doors each to play, but keep kids busy for a bit.
Order at the front and they text you when ready. Took ~35 minutes to get pizza on a Friday night at 5:30 pm, better than the expected 45 minutes.
Urban Chestnut Experience Summary
We last went to Urban Chestnut on Dec 21, 2022, on the way to Garden Glow at the Botanical Gardens. I know that because they text you when your food is ready, and when I picked up my food last night, the old text was in my history.
That also seems like the appropriate cadence for us to visit Urban Chestnut about once a year plus. It's a fantastic place to go as a large group of friends with kids because it's palatially big, but the food isn't necessarily the best.
Even though I have friends who like the wood-fired pizza ($22) a lot, it came in for me at a 6.3 /10 pizza score. That doesn't cross the 7.0 Flood Line for quality home-cooked pizza. My kids liked it a lot less, and my wife liked it a bit more.
While we went for the pizza, the pretzel sticks ($9) stole the show. The fries were a forgettable 6.1 /10 on the fry score ($8).
It was $71.34 all in for the family of four, which seemed a bit much for the amount of food. We only had two pieces of pizza left over.
The vibes and atmosphere are top-notch and trendy. It's super loud in the grand dining area. Lined with fermentors behind the bar, there are a dozen banquet tables, and they were banqueting.
It's a really beautiful dining area.
If you follow the room to the back east side, you'll find the outside terrace where we ate. It's considerably more quiet out there, but it needs to be warm enough outside to take advantage of it.
Service doesn't really exist as you order at the front and they text you when your order is ready.
The Food At Urban Chestnut
I'm going to start at the top and work my way backward for the food.
The pretzel sticks ($9) won across the board for the family. Crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, the smokey pretzel flavor shown thrown with the almost cream cheese-like butter, adding a salty, creamy accent. On the downside, like everything on the menu, they're expensive. At $9 for two sticks of pretzels, it's a treat food more than a regular snack.
We came for the pizza as I'm starting up my search for the best pizza in St. Louis. Unfortunately, the pizza came in at 6.3 / 10 on the pizza score, below the 7.0 Flood Line for pizza you can make at home.
Let's break it down.
Price & Size. For $22, you get a 17" pizza (The menu said 18", continuing the Pastrami Conspiracy in STL) that weighs 28 oz. That's on the expensive side. Compare that to the 18" pizza that weighs 34.4 oz at Pie Guy for $20.
Crust.
The crust had a great, tangy taste to it, but it was incredibly chewy around the edge and incredibly soggy in the middle. That's what you take away from the pizza - sogginess.Sauce. An 8+/10 sauce, I would invite it to my birthday party. It has a bit of kick to it reminiscent of a marinara pizza at Union Loafers, which turned off my kids, but I loved. Unfortunately, the pie was mostly sauce, and it left the center of the pizza, you guessed it, soggy.
Cheese. The fresh mozzarella tasted fine, but there wasn't enough of it, and it wasn't melty. The spots between bites were large enough that most bites were pure sauce, even when taken purposefully.
My kids really didn't like the pizza. Again, their barometer for good pizza is Domino's, so we aren't talking sophisticated palettes, but the spice and lack of cheese made it a no-go for them. My four-year-old only ate the crust, which he dipped in the pretzel butter. My older eight-year-old was one and done.
He couldn't get the pizza in his mouth without the cheese falling off because it was so droopy.
My wife had it at 6.4 / 10 with the same high-level critique as I did.
The fries ($8) were better than McDonald's but a forgettable 6.1 / 10. They were thick and soft on the inside but lacked a crunch on the outside. The nuttiness of the skins on the ends was a highlight for me but didn't make up for the lack of excitement overall. Portion size was fine for the price.
My wife also ordered a grain bowl, our version of salad for the night. It was a 5 / 10, wouldn't order it again. Some of the pickled vegetables tasted pretty good when you first bit them, but they got overly dressing-y and repetitive by the end.
What's obviously missing from this is beer. That's definitely part of the fun of coming here with adults, and all the banqueters at the banquet tables had big pitchers of beer. I had it last time we came, and it's good, but I'm not anywhere near an expert on beer to comment past that.
Urban Chestnut Atmosphere And Miscellaneous
Going from west to east, Urban Chestnut starts a row of food on Manchester in Tower Grove that ends at Pie Guy on the east side.
Urban Chestnut welcomes you in from the very beginning with wide-open sliding glass doors and sets the stage for the main dining room. You first walk through a small arcade with a half dozen pinball machines that half work and $2.50 Billiards, past a small pub area, before heading up the stairs to the main event.
The palatial dining room.
It has a dozen large, black banquet tables, an ordering desk at the front where you pick up your food, a large, long bar, 100ft high ceilings, and beer fermentors lining the room.
Did I mention it's huge?
Besides how big it is, you'll also notice how loud it is. People pack the place by 5:30 pm. With a slight smell of stale beer, you can make your way to the far east side of the room to find an open door to the terrace. Filled with ten or so tables, the terrace is more our family's style, where the kids can run around and not contribute to the overall loudness.
As I mentioned, you order at the front desk, and they text you when the food is ready. They said it would be 45 minutes for the pizza, but it came out closer to thirty minutes later. I gave them a 20% tip, but thinking back on it, that should probably have been more like 10% because they literally don't do any serving.
The pub area in the front is quieter and has several TVs going with sports. A couple of groups were having lively conversations in there.
The underlying theme across all parts of the restaurant was "trendy." The floors are black, concrete slab, and the height of the ceilings make it incredibly warm and welcoming. It's a fun place to go with friends for a night out.
Parking At Urban Chestnut
We found parking on Manchester, about a three-minute walk away. It was more crowded when we left at 6:30 than when we got there at 5:30, so you might have to walk further later in the night.
Urban Chestnut Receipt
Pizza Size And Price Comparisons