The renovated Samuels Glass building at Pearl will include a farm-to-market grocery store known as Pullman Market and four restaurants, including a pizza parlor, a mezcal bar serving Sonoran cuisine and a no-phones-allowed dessert bar.
The Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group of Austin, known for operating the Ladino and Henbit restaurants at Pearl, announced Thursday that the 40,000 square-foot market would open in spring of next year, offering Pearl residents a level of grocery service they only can get now by making a 10-minute drive. By comparison, H-E-B’s South Flores Market on the border of downtown and Southtown is about 12,400 square feet.
The market will feature an “artisan butcher and fishmonger program,” Texas-based produce, a “robust” selection of wine and beer and to-go items such as burgers, tacos, sandwiches, ice cream and coffee, according to a news release from Emmer & Rye. Its website also mentions a sourdough bakery and a chef supply shop.
The four restaurants will include Fife & Farro, a “family-friendly” eatery with homemade pizza and pasta; Mezquité, a mezcal bar and restaurant focused on cuisine from the Mexican state of Sonora; Isidore, an “elevated dining experience” with an ever-changing menu; and Nicosi, an 18-seat “intimate dessert bar” by the Austin pastry chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph with a no-phone policy. Bristol-Joseph is one of the partners leading Emmer & Rye.
“Pullman Market is a place to celebrate all things food,” Kevin Fink, another partner in Emmer & Rye, said in a statement. “You can discover high-quality ingredients for dinner or grab something premade to make mealtime easy. Pullman is about creating easier relationships with local food and producers, a relationship that is often reserved for high-end restaurants or weekend farmers markets.”
Mesha Millsap, CEO of Pearl, said in a statement that the success of the Pearl Farmers Market “shows that our neighborhood supports local farmers, chefs and food enthusiasts. With Pullman Market, we are excited to provide a space where residents and guests can connect to these experiences daily, in addition to our weekend Farmers Market.”
Emmer & Rye and Pearl recently made a submission to the city’s Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) asking for approval of business signs that will hang outside the property, the former Samuels Glass Co. plant, built in 1948 under a design by the famed architect Bartlett Cocke. Samuels Glass Co., founded by Lawrence Samuels in 1914, operated from the building for 65 years before moving to the Northeast Side in 2017. Silver Ventures, the Pearl’s developer, bought the building in 2015.
Pullman Market was designed by the Texas architecture firms Clayton Korte and Burton Baldridge, according to the release.
Job listings have been posted recently for marketing manager and general manager positions at the market.
“We will be working closely with regional farmers to bring the best of Texas meat, seafood and seasonal produce to our consumers,” one of the listings says. “This exciting new project will carve out an important new niche in the grocery industry that will change how consumers can access our region’s amazing farmers.”
The Pullman Market would be one of the few grocery stores close to downtown.
The South Flores Market — which H-E-B opened in 2015 beside its Arsenal headquarters, near the crossing of South Flores Street and César E. Chávez Boulevard — is the only supermarket within convenient walking distance of downtown, offering a wide variety of dairy, produce and other grocery staples, as well as household goods such as toilet paper and trash bags and prepared foods such as pizza, sushi and pastries.
That same year, the neighborhood grocery Larder opened at Hotel Emma. It serves a smaller selection of produce and other groceries, along with coffee, pastries and sandwiches and salads. The Royal Blue Grocery on East Houston Street downtown and Blue Star Provisions at the Blue Star Arts Complex in Southtown have similar formats.
As of now, the most convenient supermarkets for the hundreds of residents at Pearl are the H-E-B on Olmos Drive and the Central Market on Broadway — both about a 10-minute drive away.
