The Market at The Cheshire is, clearly, a charming place to enter, casual and interesting, with food to eat there or to carry out after you're ordered at the counter. Other things to buy, both edible and not, while you wait for your name to be called are arranged in one of the low-ceilinged pair of rooms at the east end of the complex.
It's breakfast and lunch and early dinner, closing at 8, focusing mainly on sandwiches and casual baked goods, cookies, muffins, that sort of thing. Some beverages are in a cooler, some come from behind a counter, and coffee, except the espresso-based drinks, is serve-yourself. Stroll around and inspect the oils and vinegars, ceramics and cleaing products and alcoholic beverages available. I pondered a beautiful teak salad bowl for an upcoming wedding present – are they $135 friends? Or perhaps a St. Louis-based cookbook.
The best thing I ate was a breakfast sandwich of bacon, egg, pepperjack cheese and avocado. It was on a multigrain toast, the whole thing a fabulous combination of crunchy and creamy. Alas, they've turned it into a wrap. Maybe if you ask. But that bacon was The Best Ever, thick and smoky, crunchy here and chewy there, quite distinctive. A steak and egg sandwich sounded promising, but the roasted chuck steak was, essentially pot roast meat, tender enough to have been shredded rather than sliced., with a fried egg white and cheddar cheese on some ciabatta. I'm a big fan of pot roast, but the meat lacked savor and the sandwich was lackluster. Technical execution was good, but it needed pizaaz. Horseradish? Harissa? Even salt and pepper?
Lunch sandwiches come with Billy Goat chips or fresh fruit, and credit must go to the quality of at least the apples, fresh, polished, crisp and unbruised. Tarragona chicken, described as having an olive tapenade and almonds on it, is on a grilled sourdough. The chicken is shredded coarsely rather than sliced. No almonds, whether nubbles or slices, were apparent, nor olives, although the flavor was intermittently present. It was hard to tell whether the soft pieces of red vegetable were cooked tomato or red pepper. (And there was no flavor of tarragon at all. Perhaps the name refers to the city in Catalonia.) A very moist sandwich, and decent enough but not what was expected. A cheese danish serving as dessert was lightly sweet, fresh and with an interesting, almost fluffy filling.
Serious coffee, bottled soft drinks, newspapers to read, especially at the long table on the breakfast side of the market, which is on your left as you enter through the red door. And nice morning light there. But not quite up to the mark, at least not yet.
Parking? There's been plenty of discussion about that since the restaurants at The Cheshire opened. Enter from that little block of Clayton Avenue that goes by the Hi-Pointe Theatre. No valets to be seen.
The Market at The Cheshire
7036 Clayton Ave.
314-932-7840
Breakfast, Lunch and early Dinner
Credit cards: Yes
Wheelchair access: Tight
Smoking: No
Sandwiches: $6-$9