I grew up near the Paseo Arts District, with my middle school, Harding, being only a hop, a skip, and for the most part, a jump away on Shartel.
Living in that somewhat rundown part of town, the greater Paseo area was a real dramatic horrorshow that most parents turned a blind eye to; for example, one day, my class saw a guy on a motorcycle rob somebody only to be struck by a car in the opposite lane.
As you can imagine, the gory scene played out with dumb witnesses and dumber cops.
I bring up these fantastic and traumatic childhood memories because these days, the Paseo – with all apologies to The Plaza, Film Row, Deep Duece, Midtown and more – is the shining star of OKC's 21st gentrification renaissance; a refurbished spot cherished and enjoyed by our city's new well-to-do class of young urban creative professionals and the old recovering hippies who love art.
Although I've written about many of the Paseo's spots over the years, there is one semi-new place I haven’t reviewed: the 30th Street Market, 407 N.W. 30th Street.
Dressing as bougie as possible, I took a famished date there for a sensible lunch to the spot a week ago. The whole atmosphere is very personable, with their staff putting loaves of bread on the shelves and people mingling about. We secured a spot at one of their outdoor dining tables and hopped inside to order.
For the actual restaurant proper, I ordered off the chalkboard menu. We started with a cup of my new fave drink, Matcha, and Gruyere Garlic Scallion Scone ($4.50).
Although my girlfriend thinks it tastes like boiled grass clippings, I think Matcha is a beautiful bouquet of real healthy goodness, and this batch didn't disappoint. It was far more impressive than the typical coffee chain offerings.
But it was the scone that was truly superb.
The fancy cheese and the pungent aroma of garlic cloves are so tasty, and a luxurious pastry worth dying for. I kind of want another one for breakfast. And lunch. And possibly dinner, too.
After the delightful preamble, lunch was served. My girlfriend tried the Pimento Cheese ($10.00) sandwich. With a schmear of the homemade pimento cheese, spread on milk bread with cornichons, it tasted fantastic – just like a pimento cheese sandwich should – but to be fair, the pimento was a little on the scant side and the heady bread unable to take it all in.
Similarly, I ran into a similar issue with my treat – the Market Tuna Salad ($13.00). It was exceedingly tiny, with more croutons than actual tuna fish.
The exceedingly fresh-tasting tuna salad was highly commendable and tasted great, but I was hungry for more. In fact, I made my own Star-Kist tuna sandwich for dinner that night.
(Update: The 30th Street Market reached out to let us know that the salad usually comes with more tuna, but a new cook portioned the order incorrectly, so no need for Star-Kist!)
Although the portion sizes were small, 30th Street Market is big on heart and taste, and fits in well with the new Paseo…but maybe I will order two scoops of the tuna fish and pimento cheese and be done with it.
Ps – I think a bike shop is located inside 30th Street Market, but thanks to my bike-related trauma from Harding Middle School, I think I'll pass on reviewing that.
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