In Downtown Clayton, the Reopened Storefronts Are Doing Two Jobs at Once

8115 and 8109 Maryland are two doors apart. This month, the first is selling sundaes and running a commercial bakery for three shops, and the second has city approval to be a clothing store, an interior-design office, and a wine bar. Neither address looks like it did a year ago, and both show what is happening across downtown Clayton this fall.

The storefronts changing hands around Maryland Avenue, North Central Avenue, Meramec, and Carondelet Plaza aren't new buildings. They're rooms people already know: the old Posh Nosh, the old Honeymoon Chocolates shop, the space tied to Miso on Meramec, and the former Tony's. In almost every case, the new tenant is putting more than one business into the room.

The Addresses, Old and New

A Soda Fountain That Is Also a Bakery

Sylvie Dee's opened its Clayton shop at 8115 Maryland on October 3. St. Louis Magazine reported that it's the company's largest location so far, a little over two years after the first shop opened in Webster Groves and about a year after the City Foundry STL location. The menu will be familiar to anyone who has been to the other two shops: ice cream, sundaes the shop calls "Saturdaes," ice cream nachos, floats, affogatos, candy, and coffee from Vapore Coffee.

What's new is behind the counter. The Clayton shop holds an in-house pastry program that will supply baked goods to all Sylvie Dee's locations. So the storefront is a retail counter and a production kitchen at once. The coffee menu here is intentionally smaller. St. Louis Magazine reported that this was out of respect for Zensia, the Colombian coffee shop next door.

The Posh Nosh moved because it needed more room. It relocated from 8115 Maryland to 7359 Forsyth in University City and reopened as The Posh Nosh Deli & Grill. St. Louis Magazine reported that the new location doubled its room for seating, prep, and catering and allowed full ADA compliance. Getting that at the Maryland address would have meant giving up dining and prep space.

Next Door, Three Businesses Under One Permit

At its June 9, 2026 meeting, Clayton's City Council voted 5–0 to approve a conditional-use permit for 8109 Maryland. The applicant is Retta Tussey, owner of Retta Jane. The council minutes describe one storefront that combines clothing retail, an interior-design office, and a wine bar called The Reading Room, which will serve drinks and light food.

St. Louis Magazine's October openings tracker still lists The Reading Room as coming this fall, with no specific date. Once it opens, 8109 and 8115 Maryland will hold four different uses between them, two doors apart: dessert, a commissary kitchen, a shop, and an evening wine bar.

On Central, a Long Wait Ends

The address on this list that sat empty longest is 16 N. Central. Honeymoon Chocolates closed its storefront there at the end of October 2023, and the space was both a retail shop and a chocolate-making site. St. Louis Magazine reported that the company moved production and storage to a commissary in Chesterfield and kept its retail and wholesale business running.

Tora Asian House opened in that space on October 2, after three years of vacancy. The buildout covers 2,400 square feet. It has a long, narrow dining room with about 50 seats beside an open kitchen, finished in dark green, gold, and natural wood. Chef-owner Calvin Hu draws on his Taiwanese heritage, 18 years of running a Chinese-American restaurant, and recent culinary training in Lanzhou. The kitchen makes four kinds of noodles, some by hand and some by machine, alongside rice bowls, soups, salads, and bubble tea. General manager Biddy Sanivong described the standard to St. Louis Magazine: "If there's anything that does not pass his standards, we cannot sell it."

The new open kitchen means 16 N. Central is once again a place where food is made in front of customers, as it was when chocolate was produced there.

Down the block at 42 N. Central, Tre Cuori Gelateria & Acai is listed for February. Sauce Magazine reported that owner Tassia Vicentin Rezende and her family started the business in 2022. It pairs Italian gelato with Brazilian acai and adds coffee, sweets, and Brazilian savory items. The Clayton plans include a larger open kitchen, a 24-flavor display case, and a children's play area.

Below Meramec, a Room Built Around Sound

The space on this list with the biggest change of use is underground. Mr. Meyer's Live & Vinyl Lounge is listed for January in the former Miso on Meramec space. St. Louis Magazine's tracker gives the address as 7931 Forsyth, and Sauce gives it as 16 N. Meramec. Its spring announcement targeted summer 2026, so January is a later date.

Sauce's account describes a 3,000-square-foot lounge with 99 seats, built for listening to records on a high-fidelity system, with speakers placed to create separate sound zones. It's also a live-music venue and a restaurant. A house band of 20 local musicians, with members taking turns leading, plays ticketed sets at 6 and 8 p.m. DJs spin vinyl at 10 p.m. with no cover. Happy hour runs 4 to 6 p.m., and the lounge will be closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Brian McCormac created the concept and named it for Jack Meyer, a friend of his and a well-known figure in the local music community. Nate Hereford of Chicken Scratch is executive chef, and Matt Longueville, who owns STL Barkeep, The Vandy, and Off Elm, runs the bar program.

Carondelet Plaza, the Last Large Room

The biggest vacancy in the core will take the longest to fill. Tony's moved from downtown St. Louis to 105 Carondelet Plaza in March 2021 and served its last night there on February 15, 2025. St. Louis Magazine's report on the closing traced the restaurant's history from a spaghetti house on North Broadway to Market Street to Clayton.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Delmonico's Hospitality Group, owner of New York's Delmonico's, plans to open a steakhouse called Citadel Prime in that space inside the Centene Plaza tower. The city's pending applications page shows the Citadel Prime application as approved, after review meetings in early and mid-October. St. Louis Magazine's tracker puts the opening in 2027.

Citadel Prime is the one tenant on this list that will use its room the way the previous tenant did, as a single full-service restaurant in a large dining space. Every other tenant on this list is putting more than one use into its room.

The Calendar From Here

1. Now open: Tora Asian House at 16 N. Central and Sylvie Dee's at 8115 Maryland.
2. This fall, no date yet: The Reading Room at 8109 Maryland.
3. January: Mr. Meyer's Live & Vinyl Lounge, below Meramec.
4. February: Tre Cuori Gelateria & Acai at 42 N. Central.
5. 2027: Citadel Prime at 105 Carondelet Plaza.

For what opened on the Bemiston side earlier this year, see our late-summer Clayton update. For a broader look at the city, visit our Clayton neighborhood page.

Four of these six addresses are still scheduled to open, starting this fall and running into 2027. If you're wondering how that timeline fits with a sale or purchase of your own, Jill Azar & Jacque Mileusnic can walk through it with you, starting with a free home valuation.