At 1463 S. 18th, the 38-seat bistro that served seafood stews and pissaladière with a puff pastry crust closed in July. The business taking over the space plans to serve eggs and coffee instead. One block of the commercial strip went from dinner to breakfast. The rest of the summer followed the same pattern.

From late July through the end of August, Lafayette Square lost three places built around evenings: a wine bar, a dessert bar and a bistro. The two businesses that moved in or announced plans during the same stretch are built around mornings. Nobody planned it that way, but the effect is clear. A neighborhood that used to have several places for a glass of wine after 7 p.m. now gets more of its daily foot traffic before lunch, and its evenings rest on fewer addresses.

The Summer, Address by Address

The 33 Wine closure hit hardest. The bar had been on Park Avenue since 2001, when Jake Hafner opened it. Hafner later founded Civil Life Brewing Co. As of January 2025, 33 carried 900 labels and 4,000 bottles. Its three-tier wine club had 133 members when the closing was announced, and the bar regularly held wine classes. Owner James Smallwood came to it first as a regular after moving into the WireWorks Lofts in 2003. He told St. Louis Magazine that rising costs and falling revenue added up to "death by a thousand cuts."

His description of what the bar did for the neighborhood explains why the closing matters beyond one business. "This is the only place in the neighborhood where you could walk around, socialize, and talk to people," Smallwood said. He added that people who met there now take European vacations together. His wife and co-owner, Jessica Spitzer, who had worked at 33 full time since 2020, put it more bluntly: "People think a place like this is an institution, that it will always be there. But if you don't support it, it's gone."

Next door at 1915 Park, Baileys' Chocolate Bar closed for a different reason. Dave and Kara Bailey closed it, along with Baileys' Range on Shaw, as the last step in a company reorganization that started the previous fall. They are putting their resources into the two Rooster locations and their catering business. Dave Bailey named increased food costs, rising interest rates, labor issues and financial obligations as the pressures behind the cuts. The two closures affected about 20 employees, and he said he offered as many of them as he could jobs at Rooster.

The two closures had different causes, but the costs the owners named overlap, and the two storefronts sit side by side on the same block.

The New Arrivals Keep Morning Hours

Picky Café & Market opened Monday, August 31, at 1410 S. 18th, in a building that dates to the 1890s. It serves breakfast, lunch, baked goods, coffee and smoothies, and it has a small market with curated goods, local produce, flowers and grab-and-go food. Owner Erin Budde said she wanted a place "small enough that I could landscape beautifully, garden, and raise vegetables," with a short menu of food she would want to eat herself. Much of the menu changes daily, with quiche, soup, sandwich, salad and coffee cake served "of the day." A regular breakfast item is an egg sandwich with bacon, brie and spinach.

The café is about 1,100 square feet, and its setup is unusual. Budde's sister, Bethany Budde Cohen, has run SqWires across the street at 1415 S. 18th for 25 years. SqWires serves as Picky's commissary kitchen, and Picky sells SqWires' prepared foods in its market. That arrangement means an established restaurant's kitchen now feeds a second storefront on the same corner.

Kingside Diner is set to open in the former Rosé by Peno space in early October. It will be the fifth Kingside and the seventh restaurant for Aaron Teitelbaum's The 5 Senses LLC, which also runs Herbie's in Clayton. This location is a hybrid of the company's full-service restaurants and its Kingside Express format. It will have table service and a slightly shorter menu to fit the small kitchen. The plan keeps the existing bar and seats about 45 guests between the dining room and patio. Teitelbaum expects the patio to matter much more than it did under the previous tenant. It will start with breakfast, lunch, takeout and delivery, and the company plans to add evening hours later. As of September 30, Kingside's Lafayette Square page still said "Watch our progress" and listed no opening day. Check before you walk over.

Teitelbaum described the area as "underserved all around" for a cozy breakfast-and-lunch café. Both new operators saw room in the morning, and both moved in during the same weeks the evening places were closing.

Where Lafayette Square's Evenings Happen Now

The neighborhood still has places open after dark, but they are fewer and more spread out, and the hours vary. These are the schedules each business posted on its own site as of early fall 2026. Hours change, so confirm before you go.

• Square One Brewery & Distillery, 1727 Park. The kitchen serves until 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 8 p.m. Sunday. The bar stays open an hour past the kitchen.
• Polite Society, 1923 Park. Dinner starts at 5 p.m. seven nights a week, and there is weekend brunch. It is a few doors from the two empty storefronts.
• SqWires, 1415 S. 18th. Dinner runs 5 to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
• The Bellwether, 1419 Carroll. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday, plus weekend brunch.
• Eleven Eleven Mississippi, 1111 Mississippi. Takes online reservations and serves Saturday brunch.

Some of the evening activity has also moved next door. The Centennial Malt House at 2017 Chouteau, the former Vin de Set building, sits just outside the neighborhood's official boundary. Vin de Set closed permanently after a fire and never reopened. The building now houses Prohibition, a cocktail bar that added an eight-item shareable food menu in 2026 and has live music on Thursdays. The raw bar Extra Wavy shares the building, and its site was taking evening reservations on October 1.

The building's third tenant fits the morning pattern too. Sam Rice's The Malt House Butcher was expected to start at the beginning of September with cut-to-order halves and quarters of beef from Price Family Farms in Troy, Missouri. Rice told Sauce Magazine that delivery takes about three weeks from the order, and that a retail shop is a long-term goal. He would rather "incrementally grow on purpose." For now, it is an order-ahead butcher, not a counter you can drop by.

Two Open Storefronts on the 1900 Block

The September openings-and-closings roundup in St. Louis Magazine listed 1913 Park and 1915 Park only as closings. Neither had a named replacement. As of early fall, we had found no announced tenant or sale for either address.

Dave Bailey described what is possible at 1915 Park. "We have a landlord and a lease there, too, and would like to host private events for the next month or two," he said in late July. "But the same buy, lease, or takeover options available at Range are also available at the Chocolate Bar. Both would make great second-generation restaurant spaces."

A second-generation space comes with a kitchen and a dining room already built, which makes it cheaper and faster to reopen than a raw storefront. That gives the empty doors on the 1900 block of Park a real chance of filling. What kind of business moves in will decide whether the block gets one of its evening places back or adds another daytime operator, like the newcomers at 1410 and 1463 S. 18th.

The Fall Calendar

The neighborhood's own calendar picks up where the business news leaves off.

1. Lafayette Park Fall Festival + Biergarten, Sunday, October 18, noon to 4 p.m. The Lafayette Park Conservancy's festival is free and open to all ages, with an Urban Chestnut beer garden and a food truck.
2. Light Up the Square + Pet Parade, Saturday, December 5. The date is set on the Lafayette Square events page, but details are still to come.
3. Holiday Parlor Tour, December 13, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The neighborhood events page advertises trolley and carriage rides and a holiday market.

Proceeds from the Conservancy's Soirée for the Park on September 18, held at 1703 Simpson Place, were designated for tree care in Lafayette Park.

If you own a building on Park Avenue or S. 18th, or you're thinking about buying one and wondering what a second-generation restaurant space is worth to the next tenant, we're glad to talk it through. Our team has owned, renovated and managed property in this city and has run hospitality businesses here too. Palermo & Co. Real Estate can walk you through the numbers and the condition questions before you commit. Contact Us.