By Alexi Zentner
Photograph by Katherine Bish
Before City Grocers opened, downtown residents faced long trips to fulfill their grocery needs. Now they have all the basics—and then some. Sure, City Grocers still doesn’t have giant bottles of detergent or 24-packs of toilet paper, but it does have all the essentials in smaller sizes: paper towels, soap, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, eggs, milk, bread. And it also has the inessentials that make life wonderful: chips and salsa, chocolates, a decent deli counter, good meat and seafood and pretty much everything else you might expect at a grocery store. If you want to make a meal, either for yourself or for a dinner party, you don’t have to leave your downtown habitat to go shopping anymore; if you work downtown, City Grocers is an easy way to bring groceries home.
City Grocers also has a reasonable selection of prepared hot and cold foods, sushi, soups and sandwiches (with cute names like The Loop and the Central West Ender, a grilled chicken breast with arugula, roasted red pepper, pesto aioli and goat cheese). For a lighter snack, grab one of the delicious pastries and a cup of joe from the small coffee bar.
920 Olive, 314-621-0010, 7 a.m.-9 p.m. daily, www.city-grocers.com