Photograph by Katherine Bish

The best chef in the world, to me, is the one who, when you are hungry, is close by and willing. So everybody, meet Clara Moore, general manager and chef at Local Harvest Café. I met Moore the way everybody meets everybody who lives, works or plays on the South Side—which is to say, who can remember how I first met her, but I’ve known her and her work for years. (That said, she was unaware that I was writing this review.) Used to be, she was running the kitchen at Mangia Italiano and getting great foodie buzz with her introduction of seasonal menu items and a farm-fresh weekend brunch. Now she’s brought that commitment to locavorous sourcing to Local Harvest, where she and owner Patrick Horine insist that at least half of their bread, dairy, meat and produce come from within a 150-mile radius of St. Louis.

“Close to home” is a running theme at Local Harvest; the café opened last July across the street from the now two-year-old Local Harvest Grocery. And Moore, a
St. Louis native and the daughter of a culinary professional, has adopted her mother’s vegan chili recipe to top the house’s vegetarian slinger, a tasty weekend brunch item. Best of all, a visit to the Local Harvest Café feels like home—or at least like a trip back to the cozy, crunchy coffeehouse you frequented off-campus during college.

Breakfast, brunch and lunch items tend to be menu staples here, while dinner depends on what’s in season and in stock. (Oftentimes, farmers from the local markets will pit-stop at Local Harvest at the end of the day to sell off whatever they’ve got left.) But brunch is the standout meal of the week. A spinach-Gruyère quiche boasted a picture-perfect, cookie-like crust and tons of fresh spinach packed inside. Stuffed French toast (the bread is soaked overnight, as if making a bread pudding) displayed architectural panache, featuring candied nuts, big slices of banana and soft, warmed cream cheese anchoring the components together. And an awesome choice for the gluttonous hipster in all of us, the vegetarian biscuits and gravy come studded with local root veggies that turn the gravy pink.

My dinners there, meanwhile, proved erratic in their execution. The spinach paneer that composed part of a “green plate” bore the strange consistency of baby food, with blocks of tofu too much on the gummy side. House-made meatballs (with a roasted red-pepper aioli) were too stiff, the aioli off-putting. (Who dips meatballs in a mayo dressing?) However, I gobbled up my side of white pickled beets, lip-smackingly acidic and delish, and I quite liked the eclectic inclusion of dried cranberries on my Italian-style tuna salad sandwich (available at lunch and dinner, like all the sandwiches and salads).

Breakfast hews to a fast-food model, with Companion bagels sandwiching such yummy provisions as the Meister’s scrambled eggs, herbed goat cheese and field greens (my favorite). There are also parfaits, various permutations of yogurt, fruit, nuts, honey, granola and sometimes peanut butter or jelly, which are monstrously sized and almost cartoonishly wholesome-looking.

At one of my breakfasts at Local Harvest, I asked for some tomato slices to be added to my bagel sandwich but was told there were no tomatoes on the premises, as no decent ones had been found that week. It turned out my sandwich was just dandy without them. Not only have I come to appreciate Local Harvest’s abiding philosophy all the more, I also can’t wait for summer.

3137 Morgan Ford
314-772-8815
localharvestgrocery.com
Breakfast/lunch Sun & Mon, breakfast/lunch/dinner Tue–Sat