Coquine Market: ask for the country loaf

Coquine Market is attached to Coquine, the restaurant, and it keeps market hours — and we are OBSESSED with using it like a bakery anyway! People still walk in looking for a dedicated bakery case and a rack of miche. We do not. We walk in like we are using a neighborhood market that also bakes: coffee first, then the bread board, then whatever else the room is actually selling that day. The shop sits on SE Belmont at the base of Mount Tabor, in a charming historic building next to the dining room, and the second you step inside you can feel the French-countryside energy. Warm wooden floors, an airy little market volume, and — this is the detail we always clock — a produce island right in the center of the room, piled with farm vegetables that look almost too pretty to bag, onions the size of bocce balls, fruit, herbs, the whole farmer’s-market-after-a-perfect-Saturday vibe. Shelves around the walls hold tinned fish, olive oil, chocolate, wine, pantry jars, and those little Coquine-made extras. By day it is Coquine Market. By night the same room becomes Katy Jane’s Oyster Bar. Chef Katy Millard’s kitchen is the reason the market exists, and the loaf is one object in a room that also wants to send you home with dinner!

We can also see the pastry sitting where a bakery case would be if this were only a bakery — morning bakes, coffee from Coava, a sandwich board that wakes up later in the day — and it makes the visit feel like you stumbled into the best-stocked friend’s kitchen at the bottom of the park.

What we always order

The country loaf, if they have it. ASK FOR THE COUNTRY LOAF first, because that is our first question at the counter! House bread here has always been a moving target — bakers have rotated rye, cinnamon raisin, and other loaves through the market — so we do not recite a permanent menu. We ask what was baked, and we take the country loaf when it is on the board. The crust is blistered and a little wild, the crumb opens up in that creamy, holey way that makes you want butter immediately, and it looks like it came out of a serious oven even though you are standing next to a stack of tinned sardines. If it is not out, we take whatever house bread is actually there, or we leave with pastry and groceries and try again later.

Pastries are baked in-house each morning. Sandwiches are a daytime menu — the market has them after the morning bake — so if you want lunch, time the visit for that window. If you want the loaf, go earlier, when bread is still a pile and not a memory. The Coquine cookie is the other thing people name: a serious chocolate-chip situation with smoked almonds, salted caramel, and brown butter, craggy and glossy and a little dangerous on the plate. We will take one if they are out. We will not let a cookie replace the loaf question. You can do BOTH. Then we shop. Milk, butter, a tin, wine, fruit for the same night you eat the bread — walking out with a loaf and dinner is the move we keep repeating.

Before you go

Market hours, not bakery hours. The official pattern is daytime every day, with sandwiches later in that window. Confirm before you go, especially if you are coming from across the river for one loaf! There is no evening bread service. If you arrive thinking this is a dinner bakery, you will find an oyster bar instead, which is a great night — just not the loaf night. Stock moves. The loaf sells out. If you need a guaranteed weekend loaf, Tabor Bread is the nearer dedicated bakery on the same hill. We use Coquine when we already want the market, or when we are already on Belmont.

Parking on this stretch is neighborhood parking. The park is right there. We have taken sandwiches up the hill. We have not taken a warm country loaf on a hike. Ask what is baked today, because house bakers have changed. We come for the loaf if they have it. We stay because the rest of this room is why the market exists — and because that produce island is almost as pretty as the bread.

More on the place page: Coquine Market