Springfield MO’s Greatest Tables
5 restaurants listedGet the complete Springfield MO dining guide.
We email you when a table worth booking opens in Springfield Mo — new openings and editor picks, free.
$ under $40 · $$ $40–$80 · $$$ $80–$150 · $$$$ $150+ per person
Best for First Date in Springfield MO
Best for Business Dinner in Springfield MO
The Top 5 Springfield MO Restaurants
Flame Steakhouse and Wine Bar
Flame Steakhouse and Wine Bar sits on West Walnut Street in downtown Springfield, two blocks west of Park Central Square, and has been the city's defining fine-dining address since opening in the early 2000s. The room is built around a long marble-topped wine bar at the front with thirty glass pours rotating monthly, an elegant white-tablecloth dining room beyond it under low-pendant lighting, and a private wine cellar room at the back that seats up to fourteen for corporate dinners. The kitchen runs a dry-aging programme on premises, producing the city's most ambitious steak menu, and the wine list — about 250 references with a particular depth in Napa cabernet, Bordeaux, and Italian Super Tuscan — has held the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for over a decade.
The Order Food & Drink
The Order Food & Drink occupies the lobby level of Hotel Vandivort, the 50-room boutique hotel that opened in a converted Masonic Temple on East Walnut Street in 2015 and effectively triggered the modern wave of downtown Springfield's restaurant scene. The dining room is a high-ceilinged Art Deco space with original 1906 mosaic tile, heavy walnut bar, and tufted leather banquettes along the windows facing Walnut Street. A separate cocktail lounge — the Vantage Rooftop — sits on the building's fifth floor with views over the Park Central Square skyline, and operates as a sibling programme to the ground-floor restaurant.
Gilardi's Ristorante
Gilardi's Ristorante sits in a Craftsman-era house on East Walnut Street, eight blocks east of Park Central Square in the historic Walnut Street district, and has been Springfield's principal romantic-occasion address since the mid-1990s. The dining room runs across two ground-floor parlours plus a covered side patio, all kept candlelit at dinner with white linens, exposed-wood floors, and the original 1906 fireplace as the room's anchor. A second-floor private dining room handles parties of up to sixteen for engagements, anniversaries, and small wedding receptions, and a garden-side outdoor terrace operates from April through October. The kitchen maintains a working herb garden in the side yard that supplies basil, rosemary, sage, and oregano fresh-cut for service.
The Metropolitan Grill
The Metropolitan Grill sits on East Battlefield Street in South Springfield, the suburban commercial corridor between the medical district and the South Glenstone office cluster, and has held the South-side fine-dining brief for over twenty years. The room is built around a central open kitchen with a copper-hooded grill, a long polished concrete bar along the back wall, and a pair of glass-walled private dining rooms (the Wine Room and the Garden Room) that handle corporate tables of eight to sixteen with curtain-drawn privacy. The cooking is New American with a clear lean toward grill-finished proteins and Pacific seafood, and the wine list — about 140 references — is one of the city's best executed by-the-glass programmes.
Avanzare Italian Dining
Avanzare Italian Dining sits on South Fremont Avenue in a free-standing villa-style building just south of the Battlefield Mall, twenty minutes from downtown Springfield, and has held the South-side white-tablecloth-Italian brief since the early 2000s. The dining room is divided across three intimate zones — a main parlour with a working fireplace, a window-side conservatory under low pendant lighting, and a private back room for parties of up to twenty — all dressed in linen, lit at candlelight intensity, and styled with a Tuscan-villa colour palette of warm yellows and terracotta. The bar at the front holds about eight stools and operates as a working pre-dinner aperitivo programme.