The Eatery, a food hall on the ground floor of downtown’s One Metropolitan Square building, will open next Monday with two familiar fast-casual concepts and a new offering. The 9,628-square-foot space will house Kimcheese, Dino’s Deli, and Arista Gourmet Salads & Flatbreads.
The building’s owner, JLL, invested $2.5 million to renovate a former restaurant space and common area. It now features high-top, lounge, and counter seating, as well as a 1,000-square-foot patio with covered seating. The company is also in talks with two other restaurants, according to the release.
Find the best food in St. Louis
Subscribe to the St. Louis Dining In and Dining Out newsletters to stay up-to-date on the local restaurant and culinary scene.
“We are excited to help create a platform that allowed for multiple new concepts to open in downtown St. Louis,” JLL senior vice president Rick Spector said in a press release. “Now, workers from One Metropolitan Square and the surrounding area will get to experience the great food served by these unique restaurants.”
Kimcheese owner Sean Moon says he’d been looking for such a space after visiting Grand Central Market in Los Angeles. The Eatery will be “more like a food hall than a food court,” he explains. “A food court is cafeteria-like: You eat and leave—that’s about it. A food hall is where people gather, where you want to take your friends or take someone out for lunch but not spend $30 or $40 on a plate—and you have many different options.”
The menu at Kimcheese’s new downtown location will be more condensed than the flagship’s in Chesterfield. It will feature five of the most popular items from the original location, including the Bee Bim Bap (pictured). (Another Kimcheese location, in Creve Coeur, closed last year and was replaced with a second location of Moon’s other restaurant, Seoul Garden.)
Brothers Dino and George Polymeropoulos are not only opening a third Dino’s Deli location—with gyros (featuring their mother’s tzatziki recipe), subs, pizzas, fries, smoothies, and desserts—but also a new concept, Arista, which George describes as “an upscale gourmet salad restaurant.” It will offer a wide array of salads—citrus, Mediterranean, and traditional, with a variety of meats, fruits, and dressings—as well as paninis and soups.
George says he sees the new downtown restaurants as “a great opportunity to service the area and business community.”
The Eatery will be open weekdays from 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
