New French Market a fresh option for West Loop
European-style food hall to offer quick bites, organic produce, meat and cheese
Greg O’Neill, proprietor of the popular Pastoral cheese and wine shops, has had his eye on the Chicago French Market for a few years now.
Mary Nguyen Aregoni, a former marketing and IT executive trying to break into the food business, just happened to see signs for the retail development while in the Ogilvie Transportation Center in August.
(Janet Rausa Fuller/Sun-Times)
Chicago French Market, 131 N. Clinton, will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.
Ground-level parking is located in the MetraMarket complex, just north of the main entrance at 131 N. Clinton. Parking is free for one hour with a $20 purchase at the market.
For more information, go to metramarket.com.
O’Neill and Aregoni both got what they wanted — space in the long-anticipated indoor market at 131 N. Clinton, which opens to the public tomorrow.
And it’s about time, O’Neill says.
“Having lived in Europe and places like New York and Boston, these kinds of markets are a huge success,” O’Neill said last week, taking a break from setting up in the 15,000-square-foot hall. “And I honestly believe this is going to transform gourmet retail in Chicago. It really shows, in one place, the diverse ethnic offerings of Chicago.”
Shoppers will find baguettes, Nutella-filled crepes and macarons, but they also will find Vietnamese bahn mi and pho (courtesy of Aregoni’s Saigon Sisters stand, run with her sister Theresa and mom Suu), tacos, Korean bulgogi, Belgian fries and Wisconsin cheese curds.
But never mind the cafe tables and wicker-and-metal chairs in front of a mural of the Eiffel Tower, where you’ll be able to sit and nibble. Upscale food court, this is not.
“This is a fresh market, first of all,” says fourth-generation market operator Sebastien Bensidoun, whose family runs markets in France, New York Michigan, Connecticut and suburban Chicago.
Fresh produce (some of it certified organic), meats, fish and fromage are the crux of the market, which will be open six days a week, Bensidoun says.
The energetic 35-year-old, who lives in Paris but has been in Chicago with his father, Rolland, while working on the project, even shies away from using the term “gourmet,” lest people equate that with “expensive.”
“We don’t want to target a certain elite. We want anybody to be able to come here and shop,” he says.
The year-round operation — first proposed in 2001 — brings Chicago in line, finally, with cities boasting permanent markets including New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Cleveland (that’s right, Cleveland).
There are 25 vendors in all, each operating under a three-year lease, with space for an additional handful of vendors, Bensidoun says. The nuns of Fraternite Notre Dame and their, um, heavenly baked goods were a last-minute dropout.
Bensidoun has felt a personal connection to Chicago since he was a child. A great-aunt had married an American and settled here. At 4, Bensidoun visited and fell in love with the city; he and his mom were passing through on their way to the Mayo Clinic for Bensidoun’s heart surgery.
In 1997, the Bensidouns launched their first French market in the States, the open-air Wheaton market.
Though the market thrives today as one of 13 French markets in the Chicago area, back then, “my father told me, ‘I think we came too early,’ ” Bensidoun says. “People still weren’t really cooking. They were going out to eat out.”
The time seems right for the Chicago French Market.
“In the last five, six years, you’re seeing tremendous involvement among people, even young people, to cook and learn about food,” Bensidoun says.