Yes to Mercat Market

Saint Ann restaurant to get hip Euro sibling Mercat in downtown Dallas

Mercat interior includes hardwood floors and a motley mix of tabletops such aswood and marble.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Mercat kitchen staff works on recipes for late-May opening.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Mercat chandelier is a wild, free-form constellation of gnarled wood.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Mercat is a charming, picturesque space that looks out onto Harwood Street indowntown Dallas.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins
Appointments at Mercat include white subway tile and vintage mirrors on thewalls.
Photo by Teresa Gubbins

A new restaurant called Mercat, opening on the northern edge of downtown near big sibling Saint Ann Restaurant & Bar, is enough to make you want to apply for a job at its benefactor Harwood International.

Named after "mercat," the Catalan word for market, this European-styled spot will open in late May as a casual spot serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's located on the ground floor of the Harwood International building at 2501 N. Harwood St. If you stand on Mercat's marble entry, you can peer over and see the merriment on Saint Ann's patio.

Hope you noticed the key words: croissants made in-house.

Mercat was visioned by Harwood CEO Gabriel Barbier-Mueller as a kind of a perk for employees in the building and for residents of nearby high-rises such as the Azure, says food and beverage manager Stephane Courseau.

"They've tried to create life in the area, to make sure that people who work and live in the building have amenities," Courseau says. "They're not regular restaurateurs in the sense that they think more about the tenants than anything else. That allows us to do an operation like this; it's quite unique."

Mercat will be open all day as a kind of drop-in, Monday through Friday, and dinner on Saturday. It will be closed on Sundays.

"We're going to open at 7:30 am for coffee, espresso, pastries including croissants made in-house, fresh orange juice, yogurt, granola, breakfast items," he says. "Then at 11, we'll transition to lunch — with lunch there or from a grab-and-go station for workers in the building."

Hope you noticed the key words there: croissants made in-house.

For something devised as a company canteen, the space is beautifully designed. The exterior is gun-metal gray, with long windows and a brass handle on the front door. Inside has a full bar, white subway tile, hardwood floor, wood and marble tabletops, a stunning gnarled wood chandelier, and estate pieces such as a pastel cabinet and vintage mirrors. It feels cosmopolitan and smart.

"It's a very charming place. It has a good feel," Courseau says. "You find places like this in New York or San Francisco, but it's something that doesn't exist in Dallas yet."

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Sourdough News

Trades Delicatessen in Oak Cliff Dallas books baker for bread & bagels

Trades

Trades Delicatessen

Dallas' Oak Cliff is home to one thing that everyone wants: a deli. Called Trades Delicatessen, it's from longtime neighborhood entrepreneurs Jason Roberts and Amy Cowan (Oddfellows, Revelers Hall) and is serving breakfast and lunch daily with a menu of sandwiches and baked goods — including in-house baked breads and bagels.

The restaurant is at 312 W. 7th St. — a space previously occupied by Chan Thai and Pho 88, a joint restaurant that moved to Davis Street.

Roberts and Cowan had a vision for a combination brewery (called Jaquval), bakery, and sandwich shop. They opened Jaquval in December 2023, and then Trades in February 2024.

"We had been brewing our beer for a while and roasting our coffee, so we decided to do our own bread as well," Roberts says. "We wanted to have bagels in the neighborhood and new style sandwiches where we baked our bread and smoked our meats."

The two spots are connected by an open door. Sandwiches from Trades are sold at Jaquval. Both spaces share the bakery, roaster, and brewery in back.

The deli menu includes hot and cold sandwiches, modeled after places like Russ & Daughters and Katz Deli. There's a pastrami sandwich, French dip, and an Italian cold cut. There's a meatball sandwich, a pulled pork torta, and a mushroom melt with Swiss and provolone cheese.

There are also breakfast sandwiches on bagel, seeded roll, or sourdough toast.

All of their sandwiches are served on bread made in house. To lead their bakery, they brought in Devin Reynolds, who previously worked under David Madrid, founder of Wheat & Sour bakery and former baker at the now-closed Meridian.

At Trades, Reynolds is overseeing a program with all kinds of bread: hoagie rolls, hotdog and burger buns, rye, whole grain, sourdough, and bolillos, as well as pastries served at the deli, Jaquval, and Oddfellows.

You can get a baguette for $4, a Danish for $4.50, a pistachio croissant for $5, or a 6-pack of burger buns for $5.75.

They are also doing bagels with choice of in-house smoked lox, traditional lox, or pastrami lox. During the week, they make and sell about 150 bagels daily, and that number doubles on weekends, with varieties such as plain, blueberry, poppyseed, and everything. For extra authenticity, they installed a water filtration system with the same PH balance as water in New York.

Their beverage program includes coffee and espresso drinks, house-made root beer, and a made-to-order limeade/lemonade.

The space resembles a classic European bakery, with brass signage and a big window with visibility to the back bakery. There’s seating space for about 15, but the opening to the Jaquval space allows for fluid traffic and additional tables next door.

During COVID, they started a European-inspired bodega in Oddfellows and that moved to the current Trades Delicatessen space, where customers can find wine, nuts, candy, sardines, and olive oil. The deli also has sliced meats to-go, Luscher’s sausages —which is also used for the kolaches — house-made jams, coffee, wine, and sodas.

desserts openings