Best Chicken Parm in St. Louis, MO

Chicken parm in St. Louis, MO: our top picks

St. Louis’s Italian neighborhood is The Hill, a grid of brick houses south of Manchester Avenue and west of Kingshighway. It was settled in the late 1800s by immigrants, mostly from Lombardy with a Sicilian contingent, who came to work the area’s clay mines and brickyards. St. Ambrose, the parish founded in 1903 for those Lombard families, still anchors it from a brick church modeled on Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, and some fire hydrants wear the green, white and red of the Italian flag.

Dinner here traditionally starts with toasted ravioli, and who invented it is an argument that has outlived everyone involved. Mama’s on the Hill, once Oldani’s, says a cook dropped ravioli into the fryer in the 1940s; Charlie Gitto’s on Shaw Avenue, which was Angelo’s before Charlie Gitto Jr. took it over in 1981, tells its own version of the same accident. Then there’s Provel, the soft local blend of cheddar, Swiss and provolone that tops St. Louis-style pizza and turns up on salads and chicken, so it’s worth asking which cheese is on your parm.

The Hill’s parm options run from old-school to newer. Zia’s has held the corner of Wilson and Edwards since 1985, and Gian-Tony’s on Daggett dates to 1989, when Tony Catarinicchia and his brother opened it. On Macklind, Anthonino’s Taverna, run since 2003 by brothers Anthony and Rosario Scarato, puts Greek dishes beside the Italian ones, a nod to their Italian father and Greek mother.

Off The Hill, Watson Road in south city has two more. Pietro’s started there in 1960 as a small family bar and dining room and is still family-owned, and Trattoria Marcella, opened in 1995 in Lindenwood Park by brothers Jamie and Steve Komorek, has been a south-city standby since.

1. STL Toasted (St. Louis) — Parm Score 89. Chicken parm comes up in 3 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. It is on the menu, too. 4.9 on Google across 194 reviews.
2. Zia's on The Hill (St. Louis) — Parm Score 79. Chicken parm comes up in 2 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. 4.6 on Google across 4,346 reviews.
3. Gian Tony's on The Hill (St. Louis) — Parm Score 74. Chicken parm comes up in 1 of the recent Google reviews we sampled, and the tone is positive. 4.6 on Google across 896 reviews.

We ranked 16 restaurants within 10 miles of St. Louis, MO. 9 of them have the parm confirmed, by reviewers or on their own menu, and Parm Scores run from 53 to 89. Confirmed places rank first; the rest are well-reviewed Italian spots where the parm is not yet confirmed, and pizzerias and steakhouses need a mention to appear at all. How Parm Score works.

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