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The split-level dining room at Whitebox Eatery.
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The pastry case on day one.
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"Live edge" black walnut tables and extremely comfortable, Philippe Starck-designed chairs.
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The ordering counter, and a bamboo-finished wall dotted with white box storage boxes
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Smoked Salmon BLT - with house-smoked salmon spread, bacon, butter lettuce, tomato, and caper dill aioli, on a ciabbata-style bun from Companion.
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The inaugural breakfast menu
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and the lunch menu
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Whitebox's logo -- an abstract image of a cube.
So many restaurants open the very same way.
There’s always more polishing, adjusting, rearranging, and refining that could be done. More menu tweaking, more staff training…so many excuses to delay the opening of a restaurant. But in the end, as Brendan Marsden, owner of Whitebox Eatery (176 Carondelet Plz, 314-862-2802) rationalized yesterday, “ya gotta open sometime,” so ready or not, here it comes...
Whitebox Eatery opened for business at 7 a.m. today.
For those unfamiliar with building construction parlance, a “white box” is raw space, finished only to the drywall stage. a blank slate. Marsden, with some help from SPACE Architecture + Design, used that simplicity as the basis for the design. Walls are finished in a washable fabric, patterned with little white boxes. Several styles of airy light fixtures hang above a split-level dining area scattered with modern (and very comfortable) white chairs.
Many of the tables were fabricated by David Stine Woodworking (the same company responsible for the “live edge” tables that have become focal points at Niche). Stine used only walnut from downed trees, wood he’s been aging for several years.
Customers order at the counter—the now familiar quick-serve concept—and a staffer attends to your table once you take a seat. The floors are spectacular--made of multi-colored bamboo (“the hardest, most durable flooring I could find,” says Marsden). Should the guest be so taken with the space in general that the floor gets overlooked (and that’s possible), the material is repeated on the wall behind the order counter.
Whitebox is open for breakfast and lunch only. There is a pastry chef on board (Jamie Hardesty, who assists Marsden’s brother, Vincent Brian, with his Vincent Van Doughnut food truck) and a savory chef, too (Jon Hoffmann, former exec chef at Oceano Bistro). Not surprisingly, the inaugural menu--consisting of breakfast sandwiches, housemade baked goods, a dozen amped-up lunch sandwiches and half as many salads—resembles a chef-inspired Bread Co., which was precisely Marsden’s intent. The Facebook page refers to it as "a chef’s approach to every day dining." One added attraction is the monthly "Outside the Box" offering, a special sandwich created by one of the city's noted chefs. The inaugural OTB sandwich is the $9.75 Italian Banh Mi (with country pate, mortadella, Calabrian chilies, giardinera, and mayo, on a ciabbata bun), courtesy of Ben Poremba of Elaia, Olio, the recently-opened The Dining District (inside United Provisions market), and the soon-to-open Old Standard.
Although we've yet to delve into the menu, we can say that Whitebox is an appealing, uncluttered, space—as pretty a white box as you’ll ever see. Think Tiffany--minus the robin’s egg blue.
Whitebox Eatery
176 Carondelet Plz
Clayton
314-862-2802
Breakfast and lunch daily, delivery soon
Mon-Fri: 7 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Sat-Sun: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.
whiteboxeatery.com (under construction)
