BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups reopens on October 29

St. Louis is about to get one of its old favorites back. BB's Jazz, Blues & Soups, the legendary club at 700 South Broadway in downtown, is reopening its doors on October 29, 2026, after two years dark. It sits right in the South Broadway music triangle, a few steps from the Broadway Oyster Bar, the Honky Tonk, and the Garage at Music Quarter, so the reopening rounds out a block that's already a destination for a night out.

The building itself has a story. It's a two-story brick structure that Bob Burkhardt and Mark O'Shaughnessy opened back in 1976, and the name came from the big soup pots they filled with ingredients from the Soulard Market. In the early days, you could get unlimited soup and rustic bread for $1.50. The club has gone through several cycles of closing and coming back since then, including a return in 1996 after a 15-year gap, and it once took the top spot as the #1 Jazz and Blues Nightclub in the annual "Best of St. Louis" survey. The new owners, Steve Sullivan and Mark Goldenberg, bought the nearby Broadway Oyster Bar in 2019 and have put nearly $300,000 into the place, with a new HVAC system, roof, and kitchen. John May, who started as a waiter and worked his way up to partner-manager before retiring in late 2023, is staying on as an advisor and continues as president of the St. Louis Blues Society. Jonathan Pier, former executive chef at the Broadway Oyster Bar, takes over the kitchen.

The food is being treated as a real draw, not an afterthought. The new menu blends Southern cooking with St. Louis flavors, with root beer-braised beef, Red Hot Riplets spice on the fries, and barbecue glazes and sauces made with Excel soft drinks from Illinois. Service starts at 4 p.m. on opening day, and the regular kitchen hours run from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thursdays, 11 a.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays. If you're going for the music first, the kitchen is open late enough to eat before or after a set.

The opening weekend is stacked. Marquise Knox, a St. Louis bluesman who's played the room since he was 13, headlines a Halloween performance, and the Matt 'The Rattlesnake' Lesch Band and a showcase of 'St. Louis Blues Royalty' artists round out the bill. The big moment comes on Sunday, November 1, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., when the club hosts the annual St. Louis Blues Society competition, with the winner advancing to the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. Knox is also building out the long-term programming, with a bi-weekly Thursday showcase for young blues musicians and a Sunday gospel brunch. And if you want a souvenir, there's merchandise on sale: denim T-shirts for $40, Henleys for $25, standard T-shirts for $18, and monogrammed caps for $20. With 300 seats and a new kitchen, it's a big reopening for a room that's been part of the city's music life for decades.