Mary's Market [+St. Roger Abbey]

Last month, the Algonquin Crossing shopping center opened. It is one of those "outside" malls where you have all of the mall stores with outside entrances. When the place opened, NONE of the restaurants were open. The restaurants include:

Biaggi's Italiano Bistro
Mary's Market Cafe
Claddagh Irish Pub
Cheeseburger in Paradise
Bonefish Grill
Red Star
Ravenheart Coffee
St. Roger Abbey

I tried Mary's Market. To put it bluntly, the place was a takeoff of the Corner Bakery/Panera concept with an expanded menu. It is a small chain with several stores in the Rockford area.

I had the half salad and half sandwich. The food was pretty good. The market salad consisted of mixed greens topped with a good feta cheese and some pine nuts. The sandwich was pretty good.

The service was less so. I ordered a reuben sandwich and received a turkey sandwich. The bread was supposed to be toasted but it wasn't.

After the meal, I walked over to St. Roger Abbey which bills itself as a French patisserie. There were some interesting pastries but they were pretty expensive. The employees were dressed as nuns. I do not know if this place is a monastery, really but the experience of walking through the place was surreal. The place reminded me of an "Amish" restaurant that I tried in Vermillion, OH where the people were not Amish but dressed like it.

HEY jlawrence01,
I stay away from Randall Rd during the Christmas shopping season. Thats all we need is more chain restaurants . I did hear that Cheeseburgers is alot of fun and the food and drinks are pretty good. I will check it out because it's there, like Hardrock , Rainforest, etc plus I love Jimmy Buffet not a place you would be a reg. Also heard that the nuns are real nuns from a convent in Northbrook, hard to belive but who knows, the church needs more money to pay off the law suits . Bonefish is part of Outback Steakhouse and Red Star is part of Bar Louie and Nick & Tony's. I did hit Around the Clock for Christmas pies , a banana cream and a french silk. the french silk was a chocolate pudding pie with a chocolate whip cream on top with cherries, it was just ok. I think I will stick with the wonderful fruit pies that they make. You asked on another post if I had any new places in McHenry. I might have one for you to check out. I will let you know. Have a Happy New Year!

I *never* stay away from Randall as I can avoid all of the traffic by hitting the street right where I need to be. Besides, I am having too much fun scoring lots of deals at Woodman's.

That Chinese place - King Wok - next to the Starbucks on Randall Rd. is pretty good when compared to a lot of the other Chinese places. Always packed at meal time.

I think my resolution for 2005 will be to eat at home a lot more. I have tried nearly all the local places and generally, I can do better at home than a lot of them. And many of the places in the city are prohibitively expensive when you throw in the cost of getting there, parking, etc.

jlawrence01 wrote:After the meal, I walked over to St. Roger Abbey which bills itself as a French patisserie. There were some interesting pastries but they were pretty expensive. The employees were dressed as nuns.

J,

Nuns! Is that legal? Interest officially piqued.

Hammond

David Hammond wrote:Nuns! Is that legal? Interest officially piqued.

David et al:

I don't know anything about the authenticity of the habits in the place in question here but nuns and monks earning their keep through work in the food industry -- while perhaps not so common in the US -- is something with a long and venerable history. The abbey beers of Belgium (a number of real ones, i.e., made at abbeys, with some other abbey-style beers made by lay-people also existing) are a conspicuous example, but there are also a number of outstanding cheeses made by monks in Belgium and further production -- albeit on a fairly small scale -- of beer, cheese and all sorts of other products by monks and, I would assume, also nuns is found all over Europe.

In the Middle Ages and more specifically in the northwest of Europe during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, the Church was not only the major land-owner but the numerous large-estates were run as very profitable, large-scale agri-businesses... Nowadays, theirs would be the stock to have...

ex cathedra,
Antonius Volcinus
Doctor of Victological Science
Institute of European Victology/Gesellschaft für Europäische Freßwissenschaft
Academia Novi Belgii
website: http://www.namnam.edu.

Herr Doctor,

What would surprise me is habited nuns or monks actually working a retail counter. Laboring behind the scenes in the vineyard or cheese works, sure, but working the register, that's harder to imagine...though not unimaginable. Last summer, at the Farmer's Markets in Oak Park and Forest Park, French nuns from a nearby convent ran a concession stand in OP and a pastry stand in FP (where, incidentally, there were also people who dressed Amish and who I just naturally assumed WERE).

I guess the dissonant image I'm trying to visualize are people who've taken holy orders taking my order within a retail establishment while still attired in their official uniforms. Seems akilter, to me, but again, not at all impossible.

Hammond, BA, MA, BMF

I'll buy dinner for the first person to get a picture of them clustered outside smoking during their break.

DH:

Well, I can see your point, but I've always assumed that if you go to a Belgian abbey to buy ale, it's a monk who sells it to you. So far as I know, it's still the case that the only way to get West Vleteren ale (widely regarded as the best of all) is to drive to the abbey itself in southwesternmost Flanders and from what I've heard it's a monk you have to deal with.

Also, I have a vague recollection of there being nuns at work at the Vatican souvenir shop to the right of St. Peter's.

For better and worse, members of the Church (and most other churches) have for the most part not been terribly disinclined to handle money... It does, as you say, seem discordant in a way, but maybe not to them...

A
XYZ, DDR, BYOB

The last time I was in Erie, PA, I stopped at a small retail shop that was run by a monastery and they had a nun out front selling a few food products that were produced in the convent. Also, The Oblates run the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Collinsville, IL. (outside of St. Louis) which has a darn good restaurant attached. We used to eat there seveal times a year with some of the groups we belonged to.

I don't have any problems with that per se. However, this place did not have the "feel" of one of those places. I think that if the employees are part of an order, that is fine with me. If they are dressing up non-members as nuns, I would find that offensive personally.

The place I referred to in Vermillion was bizarre. In that my in-laws in Northern Ohio have frequent business transactions with Amish farmers, you sense what is authentic. The people running the restaurant (which has since closed) had the clothes but it was pretty obvious that they were not Amish on so many different levels (including smoking in the parking lot and the use of excessive make up).

They do indeed seem to be the real deal:

Chefs talk nuns.

I was flipping through a lively history of the Black Plague this afternoon, and was reminded that in the medieval period of European history, the church ran all kinds of commercial enterprises, including concessions, restaurants and hotels.

I guess the cognitive dissonance that prompted my initial response arose from what seemed to be a description of nuns working as "employees" in a corporate-type setting. But, I guess, why not?

Hammond

I wish to purchase a gastronomic indulgence.

A cold gray day, no particular plans... now you now exactly what it takes to get me and the family onto I-90 to check out pastries and nuns:



Here they are, in their shop within The Simulacrum at Ersatz Pointe, or whatever the mall is called. Even by the standards of burbs that are still full of cornfields, this mall is quite a marvel of instant atmosphere-- Irish pubs and Tuscan villas cheek by jowl with real live French nuns serving up pretty fair imitations of authentic French pastries. We had two savory ones-- a ham and gouda one and one which had "sauseej" in it (turned out to be not merguez or something French but "le hot dog"); and a pain aux raisins (actually raisins sec, my wife pointed out, since "raisins" are grapes) and a pain aux chocolat. Pretty authentic tasting, though the pain aux raisins lacked the custardy center of the ones I always buy and revere on the streets of Paris, and they were all, I suspect, day old or even two days old as the bakery nuns probably didn't work yesterday.*

Anyway, you know what that stuff looks like so here are some of their cookies, they had nice looking galettes du roi and buches de noel and such, too:



Afterwards we checked out the Woodmans down the street. At first I was none too impressed by the produce section, and the bread section was only a little better-- not as interesting as many of the ethnic groceries you find in places like Niles. It seemed to exist mainly to allow people to supersize themselves and their kids on stuff like this:



Or this. Is this not the perfect combination of modern marketing-speak and old-style pretend ethnic heritage? Supersized fat thins! Made the Old Dutch way!



But then we got to the meat and cheese section and, at last, we understood Woodman's appeal. A veritable meat and cheeseatorium, a meat and cheeseopolis, as of course you should expect from a Wisconsin-based chain-- every Wisconsin brand you could hope for, from Usinger's to Klement's to Bucky Badger salsa and chips. I wasn't able to snap every picture I wanted but the store seemed to have an unusually high tendency toward inadvertent humor-- Scott Petersen brand Hot Skinless Wieners has to be the most unfortunate brand name in America at the moment, and no, I swear I did NOT arrange the Sue Grafton novels to shout this in five-inch high letters from the book section:



Everybody's a critic!

* No, I'm not implying they partied too hard. Jan. 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, a big nun holiday according to my 12-years-of-Catholic-school wife.

P.S. I went to look at Scott Petersen's website and I see that they're, at least supposedly, a legendary Chicago brand since 1926 with the taste of the old neigborhood. I've never seen them before, anybody know what the actual heritage and neighborhood behind this brand is?

You poke fun at Malt o' Meal? That staple of working class and otherwise cost conscious midwesterners? Like it's pricier brand name cereal cousins (which are all, IMHO, kibbled people food), Malt o' meal is also "shot from guns." Back in the day, I knew quite a few of those doing the shooting in the Malt o' Meal plant. Of course, to rise to those heights, you had to first survive the popcorn ball (fall) or popcorn bunny (spring) line to prove your worth as more than a seasonal employee.

jlawrence01 wrote:The place reminded me of an "Amish" restaurant that I tried in Vermillion, OH where the people were not Amish but dressed like it.

I went to a large antique auction on the Eastern Shore of Maryland once (many auctions going on simultaneously under cover of a huge shed) where the food concessions were being run by actual Amish, and I had the same cognitive dissonance that David reported about the nuns. I mean, a lot of this work involved interaction with post-industrial-revolution technology--there was some major food-service machinery involved, and I'll bet it wasn't powered by a river turning a mill out back, or by horses. I didn't think Amish were allowed to do that. Shows how much I know.

Resurrecting the old topic.

Mary's market closed due to lack of interest.

St. Roger Abbey is run by a group of "traditional Catholic nuns" that are not recognized by the local diocese as being Catholic. They are trying to build a complex in marengo with a commercial bakery and have run into a lot of opposition from the locals.

A few weeks ago, three of the sisters showed up at my friend's LDS (Mormon) Stake during services seeking help with the zoning board which was a very unusual sight for all parties.

Bonefish and Biaggi's has opened up in Algonquin Commons. The latter served up a wicked lamb gnocci dish last night.

We stopped in St. Roger Abbey Bakery last Saturday (8/26) but didn't buy anything. There is a sign on the door about "no photos". What we did find interesting is the Oil & Vinegar store next door which carries.... well, oil and vinegar, many many kinds. There is a wall of vessels of different flavors which can be drawn into your own container or one that you buy there. Greatest part about this store is that everything is availible for sample.

Oil & Vinegar
Algonquin Commons
847-458-8987

Hi,

I always regretted not visiting the St. Roger Bakery.

Reading Monica Eng's column from Thursday, I learned the nuns not only moved, they seem to have expanded their offerings:

St. Rogert Abbey Gourmet and Bakery Shop
1720 S. Randall Road
Algonquin, IL
Tel: 847/458-0984
www.strogerabbey.org

I liked Monica's closing comments:

The food was not cheap but one taste tells you why. It would make a wonderful picnic and please anyone who is tired of food made with low quality ingredients. But be prepared; these nuns are not especially friendly. Still, of the same reason they may lack the typically American perky and flexible service attitudes, they also make seriously good food - because they are French nuns.

I am not going to make the same mistake as before. This place has risen high on my must-do list.

Regards,

FYI - St Rogers Abbey took over the coffee/snack concession inside the Elmhurst Public Library in case anyone wants to try some pastries and not make the ride all the way out to Algonquin.

I love their stuff! In the past, they have sold at the Mt. Prospect farmers market-- which meets on Sundays. Working on the sabbath! I hope they'll be there again this summer. (Wow, does it feel good to write "this summer," not "next summer." )

Mike G wrote:I'll buy dinner for the first person to get a picture of them clustered ...

Wouldn't that be ... "cloistered"?

Hi,

Visited St. Roger's Bakery in Algonquin with jygach on Saturday for lunch. On this occasion this was a one-nun operation who really could have needed some help. She was a wonderfully warm spirit who could only manage one order at a time and once finished, then proceed to the next customer. As we waited, we had time to study a mural of a French farm scene:



We ordered a ham and cheese crepe each, then shared a sausage pastry, a ham and cheese pastry and a bowl of vegetable soup. We had contemplated ordering a sandwich, but changed our minds when it was another variant of ham and cheese. The pureed vegetable soup greatly reminded me of soups my Oma made from leftover vegetables. I'm not quite sure jyoti was as impressed, though for me I was 10-years-old once more.

The ham and cheese crepe was the highlight of our lunch. Easily could have skipped the everything else to drown in more ham and cheese crepe. These were very generously filled, which prompted us to think this was a bit Americanized. We suspected in France these would not have been as generously portioned.

Ham & Cheese crepe and Sausage pastry


Ham & Cheese pastry and crepe


Both meat pastries could have benefitted from a reheating a bit longer. The sausage pastry was effectively a hot dog with cheese, which jyoti said was an English influence. I wasn't very enthusiastic about it, though reheated today my Mom enjoyed it quite a bit. We forgot to order the individual size quiche, which I will venture to guess was ham and cheese, too.

We also ordered a cheese plate straight from the refrigerator was simply too cold to enjoy. We bought a baguette to eat with the cheese once it finally warmed a few hours later.



St. Roger's offers full size cakes and single servings of these same cakes.





I purchased for Mother's Day a Pear Bavarois for $27, which serves 8 people. The ladyfingers were one of the few I have encountered that were made by a bakery. The cake had several layers of genoise moistened with a syrup. The layers were glazed with a thin layer of raspberry, then whipping cream with chopped poached pears on top. All their desserts are European style with a low sugar presence.



There was a card on the counter for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which was stamped:

Fraternite Notre Dame
Church of Our Lady of Frechou
Mother of Mercy and Mother of the Church
502 N. Central Avenue (Corner of Race Avenue)
Chicago, IL 60644
773-261-0101

Agency: A459 (The agency number directs donations to the sister's account at Greater Chicago Food Depository to allow them to obtain donated food.)

We learned the sisters have a soup kitchen feeding 200 people a day. They had not been able to raise enough money to support their mission. Consequently they began preparing and selling French bakery products at farmers markets and through their retail location to raise money to fund their soup kitchen. It certainly gave greater weight to one's purchase knowing it was supporting their admirable mission.

Regards,

Eric wrote:FYI - St Rogers Abbey took over the coffee/snack concession inside the Elmhurst Public Library in case anyone wants to try some pastries and not make the ride all the way out to Algonquin.

I'd intended to post this, but it got lost in what turned out to be a very food-heavy week. At this concession, they've got quite a large menu, mostly of coffee drinks

A very gracious and very young nun in full gear runs the espresso bar, which seems a fairly standard operation. We tried an enormous Linzer cookie, and a Galette du roi which, in this case, was a cookie version of the almond-filled short pastry. Both were very good. Interestingly, these Notre Dame nuns are the same order as the ones who ran my high school (although ours were Americans and therefore a bit more lax when it came to costume and, sadly, pastry) Obviously, it's not the full experience, but it's worth a quick stop if you're in Elmhurst anyway.

Hi,

All their cakes and pastries are baked at their Chicago location. To get to Algonquin from my home was nearly a 50 mile trip one-way. I'm sure they have their reasons for why they do what they do, though a Chicago location would be very convenient.

Regards,

This order also brings pasteries to the Geneva French Market every Sunday (9-2). A friend who has a PhD in French and did at lot of research in France, loves to go and talk to them and buy their pasteries which remind her of her years in France.

OK -- I hear these nuns are all over chicagoland but I've never seen them in Chicago. Someone wrote of a nun-sighting in Lakeview over summer at the farmer's market and I've always picked up my cakes and tarts at Kane County Fair.

I'd have to rent a car to buy these twelfth night cakes (flat buttery crust things with almond filling) in Algonquin which seems crazy. I'm downtown Chicago -- anyone know if these nuns are selling their stuff anywhere in Chicago in next week? I only have great things to say about their lemon tarts and twelfth night cakes -- everything else I've had was OK. But these nun cake things -- worth car rental but I'd so rather avoid it.

I'm afraid of churches although I'd like to call Fraternite Notre Dame on 502 Central Ave to find out if they sell in Chicago. I fear they will sense my heathenism and immediately hang up on me.

ETA: or if anyone knows of another bakery that makes the twelfth night cake thing in chi, I'd be happy to give it a try...

The nuns from St. Roger's Abbey run the concession at the Elmhurst Public Library.

It's a lot closer to the city than Algonquin. Maybe a 20 to 30 minute drive depending on the day and time.
Also, the library is a 5 minute walk from the metra station if you wanted to take the train from the Ogilve Center.

They might have some of these at the library or be willing to send one there for you to purchase and pick up.

ETA - I believe you can order online and have one shipped to you also.
http://www.strogerabbey.org/
http://www.elmhurst.lib.il.us/buildingt ... feebar.php

hey thx -- I saw that in an LTH post a few years back and will check it out.

Yeah, I've considered having them sent to me despite the rather high shipping fees -- but I'm wary of how fresh they'll be? From what I recall, it can take up to a week for them to arrive.

Well, that would explain why we had liver and onions at my high school instead of galettes du roi. And, yes, trotsky, I got the distinct impression that the barista-nun sensed my heathenism - but she gave me coffee and pastries without a hint of anti-secularism.

jlawrence01 wrote:the experience of walking through the place was surreal. The place reminded me of an "Amish" restaurant that I tried in Vermillion, OH where the people were not Amish but dressed like it.

Amishish?