Two of the restaurants that anchored Clayton's dinner-and-drinks circuit closed in May. A coffeehouse that will pour espresso by day and pizza by night is on its way into a storefront that has been dark since 2021. The free summer concerts most residents grew up associating with Shaw Park now run on a Sunday cadence at Oak Knoll. If you live here, the map of a Clayton evening has quietly redrawn itself since Memorial Day, and the change is more directional than it first appears.
The corner that emptied out
Two closings inside three weeks removed a familiar pairing from the walkable core. Bistro La Floraison at 7637 Wydown, the acclaimed French bistro café, and Il Palato at 222 S. Bemiston, Mike Del Pietro's finer dining Italian restaurant, both closed in May 2026. That is one address on Wydown and one on Bemiston, roughly four blocks apart, both operating at the higher end of the price spectrum, both gone within days of each other.
Del Pietro did not disappear from the metro. He opened Cibo Italia at 7489 Delmar, where some of Il Palato's dishes migrated. The point for a Clayton resident is that the walk-out-the-door option moved out of walking distance.
What is filling the vacuum
The replacements are not like-for-like. Read them side by side and a pattern shows up.
| Location | Before | Now | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| 231 S. Bemiston, ground floor of Bemiston Tower | Metro Java Coffee House | Toast & Thyme | Weekday counter-service café |
| 7645 Wydown Blvd. | Starbucks, dark since 2021 | Gigi's Cafe (in permitting) | Daytime coffeehouse, evening pizza and Italian bar |
| 222 S. Bemiston | Il Palato | Vacant | — |
| 7637 Wydown | Bistro La Floraison | Vacant | — |
Toast & Thyme is already open. Dan Powers, former chef-owner of Boogaloo, is returning to the restaurant world with Toast & Thyme at 231 S. Bemiston, a weekday café opening on the ground floor of The Bemiston Tower. The counter-service concept aims to serve chef-driven food without fuss, catering to office workers and anyone looking for a reliable breakfast or lunch that's done well and quickly. The Cubaniche, a sandwich Boogaloo devotees remember, is back on the menu.
The Wydown side is the more interesting move. Clayton's Plan Commission and Architectural Review Board approved a conditional-use permit for Gigi's Cafe, a new spot from Matt McGuire, owner of acclaimed Clayton restaurants Louie and Wright's Tavern. Gigi's will be located at 7645 Wydown Blvd., where a Starbucks went out of business in 2021. The spot is directly across the street from McGuire's steakhouse, Wright's Tavern. McGuire said he plans for Gigi's to be a coffeehouse during the daytime and in the evenings serve pizza and have an Italian-style bar. Gigi's will be 2,200 square feet and have about 45 seats inside, plus patio seating.
Notice what both new tenants have in common. Neither is a white-tablecloth dinner house. Both split their day between a fast morning-and-lunch service and something looser after five. The Wydown-Bemiston corner is not losing its dining identity, but the format is shifting from destination-dinner to all-day-café with an evening switch. For a resident, that means fewer reservations on the calendar and more casual drop-in seats within a five-minute walk.
The Sunday layer that most people miss
Ask a Clayton resident about summer programming and Shaw Park usually comes up first. This year, the more consistent draw is Oak Knoll.
The city runs a free concert series called Musical Nights on Sundays from 5 to 7 p.m. Musical Nights offer free, family-friendly summer concerts starting June 21 and running from June 21 through September 27. That is roughly fifteen weeks of programming, on a night when most Clayton kitchens are otherwise closed and most families are looking for a reason to be outside.
A short calendar to keep in the back pocket:
- July 26, 5 to 7 p.m. Oak Knoll Park. Scott Laytham & Liz Henderson Duo.
- August 16. The 12th Annual Inkwell Law Clayton Kids Triathlon on Sunday, August 16, introducing kids ages 7 to 14 to swimming, biking, and running.
- August 23, 5 to 7 p.m. Oak Knoll Park. Live music from Luke Queen Band.
- September 2, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Shaw Park. The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival brings its TourCo production to Clayton, a free community event offering professional outdoor Shakespeare.
- Sundays through September 27. Musical Nights continues weekly with additional acts including Rogers & Nienhaus.
The Musical Nights schedule matters because it is a resident event more than a regional one. Oak Knoll's size keeps the crowd local, which is why longtime homeowners on Bellevue and Topton tend to walk over with a blanket rather than drive. If you have moved into Old Town or DeMun in the last two years and have not yet been, this is the summer to.
Two blocks worth walking, still
The closings shifted the top of the price ladder, but the rest of the block is intact and worth naming. On DeMun, a kid-friendly neighborhood joint distinguishes itself by using premium beef from Pierce Creek Cattle Co., and when the weather's nice, the cantilevered windows open to create a true sidewalk cafe at 740 DeMun. On Forsyth, Barcelona lives again in a smaller space equipped with a true tapas bar, with the original mosaic tile tabletops, flamenco music on Wednesday nights, and menu items served exactly as regulars remember them at 7810 Forsyth.
If you are triangulating a Saturday, that gives you three fixed points inside a fifteen-minute walk of one another: the DeMun sidewalk corner at 740, Barcelona's tapas bar on Forsyth, and Wright's Tavern on Wydown while Gigi's finishes construction across the street.
A plausible Clayton Sunday
Start with an early lunch at Toast & Thyme, one that runs on the counter model Powers built the place around. Take a slow walk south down Bemiston toward the vacant Il Palato storefront, note the "for lease" sign, and keep going into the residential blocks off Wydown until the sidewalks turn to shade. Loop back through DeMun, past 740, and drop the car at home. At 5 p.m. head to Oak Knoll with a picnic and stay until the Musical Nights set winds down at 7. The whole loop lives inside a two-square-mile footprint, which is the underrated fact of living in Clayton in July.
The corner will look different again by fall. Gigi's should be open. One of the two dark Wydown-Bemiston storefronts will likely have a tenant. Whether the block returns to the fine-dining format it lost or continues drifting toward all-day cafés is the question worth watching if you own here, because it changes what a five-minute walk from your front door actually buys.
When your walk-to map matters to a sale
Buyers who tour Clayton in the fall will ask about the block. They always do. What is open, what is closed, which corner is coming back. Sellers who can answer those questions accurately, and price against what the block actually offers on the day of the showing rather than the version from two years ago, hold the negotiation. That is the kind of local reading William Springer Homes brings to every listing conversation in Clayton. If you are weighing a move this year, schedule a consultation with Will and start with a walk of the block your home sits nearest to.
