Dressel’s Pub, a historic and beloved spot in the St. Louis culinary scene, has opened its doors again to the public after closing during the height of the pandemic. Owner Ben Dressel purchased the business from his family in 2005, and though Dressel’s has gone through several changes, his commitment to providing a consistently excellent experience remains unchanged. “I got involved in the early 2000s not really intending to own it; I was just helping out,” Dressel says. “At some point I bought it and we started doing more and more renovations, expanding the dining room, expanding the kitchen, hiring chefs, doing the whole farm-to-table chef tweezer thing.”

In 2012, Mike Miller and Chris Meyer (of Kounter Kulture and Songbird fame) helped focus Dressel’s gastropub and service models. “We did that with some level of success, except the old pub people hated me for changing things and getting rid of the simpler stuff and having all this fussy food,” Dressel says. “So we were kind of going in the wrong direction foot traffic-wise, but the critics thought it was amazing.”

As these changes were being made, someone else arrived on the scene at Dressel’s who you might not expect: Guy Fieri. Dressel’s was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” “At the time, I thought this was a blessing,” Dressel says. “We were just about to have twins, the pub was struggling a bit and these guys show up with their cameras and all of the sudden there’s a line around the block.”

Read the full article on Feast Magazine.