The Gateway to the West doesn’t have stockyards like its western sisters Saint Joseph and Sedalia and Kansas City. Still, one prime Saint Louis cattle drive steers my tastebuds to Lindbergh Boulevard.

Kreis’ Restaurant has been kicking steak house butt longer than I’ve been alive. Seriously, my friends Ruth and Cris think this steak is better than any chain. Oh, the dining room’s atmosphere may be a bit too upper crust for comfort, a rich interior with dark wood paneling and deep red trim, sporting oil paintings of ships and hunts, all in gilded frames, spotlighted for effect. The snooty clientele and assertive butler service fit hand-in-glove, causing an otherwise restrained pinky to stick straight out from a cocktail glass. But really, a restaurant’s décor is just a frame for the painting. Let’s talk marbling. These midwestern steers and heifers practiced a rigorous regimen to develop superior shanks and shoulders, rumps and loins. Their posthumous reward is to hang for a couple of weeks to finish their conditioning, and earn the status symbol that less than three in a hundred bovines achieve: prime.

The rare three-inch thick prime rib with a twice baked potato and fresh creamed spinach left me just enough room for warm apple strudel, a family recipe with Granny Smith apples, cassia cinnamon, baked in flaky pastry served warm topped with a drizzle of brandy crème sauce.

Okay I lied. I couldn’t finish that monstrous meal, and I asked for a doggy bag. As a patron of less regal stature, I was not ashamed to save uneaten portions of my ample prime rib and take a bag of bovine home to my neighbor’s canines, who truly appreciated the gesture. It appeals to the wolf in every dog. And every dog has the instincts of canis lupus at its core, no matter how much breeding has altered your pooch’s outward appearance.

–from Souls Along the Road