Marion Street Cheese Market

Click to see what's happening at Marion Street Cheese Market!

When Eric Larson moved his 740-square-foot cheese shop under the el tracks last summer, his four-year-old business blossomed into a 4,200-square-foot food and drink emporium. 
Larson's expansion into the Opera Club building made room at one end of the new, multifaceted space — laid out with shelves of uncommon kitchenware and an upscale grocery, with wine gallery and craft beer fridge — for a 50-seat café.

Dining here is sharing; small plates rule. Though if you arrive with an appetite and must have a dish all your own, you've got such large-plate options as lager-battered shrimp, sugar cane-braised pork, and lump crab cakes with pear and papaya salad. 

Otherwise, you have more than a dozen choices in flights of artisan cheeses and sliced gourmet meats. Sit back and soak in details that well-trained servers engagingly offer.
Listen you must, because the most specialty-studded menu in town packs as much education as it does adventure. Beets here are yellow. Pâté goes beyond liver: Count on duck, pork and chicken. A cured ham from Spain comes from an heirloom breed of black-footed pigs that eat only wild acorns. And, of course, there's that cheese to buzz about: One handmade ravello comes from water buffalos in Vermont.

For all such splashes of exotica, most dishes are made from farm-fresh ingredients in the Midwest. Locavore leanings extend to dessert and beverages. Gelato comes from Mancini's in downtown Oak Park. Coffee, served in press pots, comes from Blue Max in Forest Park. Tea, served loose, comes from Todd & Holland, also in Forest Park.

Just as you'll find elsewhere in this Disney World for foodies, presentations in the café at Marion Street Cheese Market are artfully out of the ordinary. A latte, the perfect finish to many a meal, is a masterpiece when served by Marisa the barista. Her feathery squiggles of chocolate syrup top each no-foam brew with symmettry at its sweetest. An option for hot chocolate, too. No doubt about it: Here, you'll get spoiled.