Platypus

Platypus opened in late 2021 at the west entrance of The Grove, taking over the former U.R.B. space — Urban Chestnut Brewing Co.'s onetime experimental kitchen — at 4501 Manchester Avenue. Co-owners Meredith Barry and Tony Saputo are both veterans of the St. Louis bar scene: Barry ran the beverage programs at the Angad Arts Hotel's Grand Tavern and ART Bar rooftop, while Saputo worked behind the bars at Wheelhouse, Start Bar, and The Midwestern Meat + Drink. The shotgun-style space unfolds in three connected rooms — a main bar, a pinball-and-booth lounge, and a back-room stage — and the drink list is a chalkboard of roughly five cocktails that changes constantly, a format Feast Magazine reported was designed to encourage staff creativity.

Zero-proof drinking is baked into the bar's DNA. Barry, who has made zero-proof cocktails a personal specialty, told St. Louis Public Radio's St. Louis on the Air that an NA drink should be 'not just a mix of pineapple and cranberry and orange juice, but something that's more elevated,' and STL Barkeep beverage director Patrick Gioia told St. Louis Magazine that 'Platypus and Meredith Barry, in particular, have been a huge piece of the zero-proof cocktail scene.' St. Louis Magazine's guide to nonalcoholic cocktails highlighted the Flibbertygibbety — BARE zero-proof tequila with Sobreo star anise, bitter lemon, coffee reduction, and lemon — and the frozen Jelly of The Month Club, blending spiced blackberry tea, Ritual rum alternative, hibiscus, rooibos, elderberry, currant, and lemon, with Confluence kombucha and NA seltzers rounding out the fridge. Because the board turns over constantly, ask what's zero-proof tonight rather than hunting for a specific drink.

The accolades have stacked up. In Liquor.com's Best of 2023 awards, a national panel of roughly five dozen bartenders named Platypus the country's Best Underrated Bar, and in April 2026 KSDK reported that Food & Wine had named it to a list of the 10 best bars in the entire country, alongside spots from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — citing live music, comedy nights, karaoke, monthly queer mixers, and local artwork that feed 'the raucous feel of a neighborhood living room.' Expect exactly that: pinball, DJs, an inclusive crowd, and doors open until 1:30 a.m. every night of the week.