For about three years after The Greek Kitchen closed, Joe Kandel worked part time behind the fresh fish counter at Starrs and Lisa Nicholas taught ballet part time at the Dance Center of Kirkwood. Then the couple went looking for a way back into cooking, and after more than a year of searching, they ended up where one chapter of their story had started: a counter inside Schnucks Kirkwood at 10233 Manchester Road.
"We have been looking for a location for over a year, and as it happens, we are back inside Schnucks again," Kandel said in a release quoted by St. Louis Magazine when The Greek Kitchen Shop opened in mid-September.
The location wasn't an accident. Over the past five years, the food hall inside this grocery store has become the place where small, owner-run kitchens in Kirkwood start up or start over. Its lineup has turned over almost entirely since 2021, and both of its current tenants are using the space to do something a standalone restaurant wouldn't have let them do.
A Smaller Kitchen Was the Whole Plan
The 2023 closure explains the return. Nicholas and Kandel ran their full-service Greek Kitchen at 343 S. Kirkwood Road for nearly five years. When it closed in July 2023 as its lease ended, they named rising rent, payroll and food costs, but they said the hardest part was staffing. "Business was great," Nicholas told St. Louis Magazine. "We just couldn't find anyone to help us with it."
The new shop is built around that problem. The couple handle the cooking and run the counter themselves, which the magazine reported keeps payroll and other operating costs manageable. Nicholas described the new version as "smaller, simpler, and decidedly Greek."
The smaller menu shows it. The meat-heavy dishes from the old restaurant are gone: no gyros, shawarma, kebobs or lamb shanks. The longtime favorites are back, including avgolemono soup, spanakopita, pastitsio, moussaka, Greek salad, Greek chicken pasta and baklava. The shop's posted takeout menu also lists dolmathes, a chicken sandwich, hummus, baba ganoush and tzatziki, plus Greek seasoning and a dressing that doubles as a marinade, so you can take them home for your own cooking.
It's mostly takeout and catering. Kandel's summary of the approach is "Heat it, and eat it." Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and the counter's phone is 314-698-2077. That schedule fits a lunch run or a stop for the week's groceries. It doesn't fit a Sunday dinner plan.
Five Years of Counters at 10233 Manchester
The hall opened with the store's remodel in September 2021. Schnucks set it up with counters for local restaurants and shared dine-in seating, and nearly every counter has changed hands since. Here's the history in order:
- 2021: The food hall opens with The Shaved Duck, Seoul Taco and a scaled-down satellite of The Greek Kitchen.
- After The Shaved Duck leaves: Its barbecue counter goes to Oh Hey! Barbecue, a Salt + Smoke offshoot that served Salt + Smoke favorites along with new dishes.
- 2023: The Greek Kitchen satellite becomes Hungry Joe's, which adds burgers and pizza and keeps some Greek dishes. It closes several months after the standalone Greek Kitchen on Kirkwood Road shuts in July 2023.
- October 2023: Oh Hey! Barbecue closes.
- September 2025: Tender Love BBQ takes over the barbecue slot and joins Seoul Taco and One Two Three Sushi as tenants.
- September 2026: The Greek Kitchen Shop opens in its old space. The three kitchens are now Tender Love BBQ, the Greek counter and a third spot set aside for China King.
Seoul Taco hasn't fully left the store. Schnucks' local restaurants page still lists Seoul Taco burritos and Gogi bowls as grab-and-go items in the Kirkwood deli. That's part of a broader Schnucks program that sells partner restaurants' food at select stores, separate from the cook-to-order counters.
The Greek Kitchen has a history of starting over. It first opened in Ellisville in November 2016 in the former Café Kebab space at 15939 Manchester, closed that location in July 2018 over trouble hiring kitchen staff in West County, and reopened in Kirkwood less than a month later in the former Sushi Bistro space on Kirkwood Road. The Schnucks counter is its fourth home and its second time in this same room.
The Barbecue Counter Just Turned One
Tender Love BBQ shows the same idea from the other direction. The Greek Kitchen came to the food hall to shrink. TLBBQ came to grow. Brian and Samada Randels had run the business as full-time caterers since 2023, and they opened in the food hall on September 23, 2025, as their first counter-service restaurant. In St. Louis Magazine's preview, the couple called the space a step toward the full brick-and-mortar restaurant they want.
The menu is short on purpose. It offers pulled pork and brisket on sandwiches in two sizes or by the pound, regular or spicy smoked beef sausage, and dry-rubbed smoked chicken finished with a flash-fry in beef tallow. There's also a smoked half-pound burger with hand-formed patties. Brian prefers spare ribs to baby backs, partly because, he told the magazine, "they're very St. Louis." Now and then the counter offers "Dino Ribs," smoked short ribs big enough for two. The sides are all house-made: baked beans, spaghetti, potato salad and coleslaw. The meat is smoked off-site over real wood, with hickory as one of the woods in the blend.
When TLBBQ opened, the plan was to add delivery once the team settled into Kirkwood. "Once we get comfortable serving Kirkwood, we'll push those buttons," Brian told the magazine. The counter now appears on DoorDash and Uber Eats, and its website takes catering inquiries.
Its opening hours were 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, or until the meat sells out. The Uber Eats listing now shows a Tuesday window that ends at 6:40 p.m. Before a late-afternoon brisket run, call the counter through the Schnucks store line at 314-287-6097.
The Lineup as October Ends
| Counter | Who runs it | Opened in the hall | Worth ordering | Posted hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Greek Kitchen Shop | Lisa Nicholas and Joe Kandel | September 2026 | Avgolemono, pastitsio, baklava | 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tue to Sat |
| Tender Love BBQ | Brian and Samada Randels | September 23, 2025 | Spare ribs, brisket by the pound | Listed at 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tue to Sat, or until sold out |
| China King | Not yet announced | Slated for October 2026 | To be announced | To be announced |
As of the magazine's early-October openings roundup, China King was still listed as coming soon to the third kitchen, with October as the target. If you're planning a mixed takeout order of Greek and barbecue with Chinese on the side, check the counter in person first.
Other Schnucks stores nearby are trying something similar. The same roundup lists Sodie's second location inside Schnucks Webster Groves at 8650 Big Bend, opened September 26. For Webster Groves neighbors, the grocery run and the restaurant run are starting to happen at the same address there too.
What's Pending Across Manchester Road
Right across from the store, the Greentree Center at 10300 Manchester Road may add a different kind of quick stop. KSDK reported that Dutch Bros Coffee filed a zoning application for a double drive-thru on an outlot at the corner of Manchester and Woodlawn Avenue. It would be the chain's first location in St. Louis County. At its January 22, 2026 meeting, the Kirkwood City Council approved the site plan and special-use permit on one condition, according to a meeting summary: a revised landscape plan with more tree variety along the street frontage, worked out with the city forester. No opening date has been announced.
That puts two different models at one intersection. One is a national chain built around speed at the window. The other is a grocery store food hall where a couple who closed their restaurant over staffing can reopen with just the two of them cooking. Downtown Kirkwood's newest spots have clustered along the rail corridor. On this stretch of Manchester Road, the new spots are opening inside a grocery store and on a shopping center lot.
A lot of Kirkwood homeowners live within a short drive of this stretch, and Manchester Road keeps changing what's within reach of a weeknight errand. If you're curious how that kind of convenience shows up in what nearby homes are worth, the Becky O'Neill Power Home Selling Team can walk you through it with real local numbers. Start with a free home valuation, and we'll tell you straight what your Kirkwood home would bring today.
