A 130-year-old blacksmith shop in Lafayette Square is getting a new life as an urban garden cafe. Picky Cafe opens Monday, August 31, at 1410 S. 18th Street, bringing raised garden beds, a flagstone patio with a lilypad fountain, and a menu built around fresh herbs, produce, and the seasons to a stretch of the neighborhood already known for its historic charm.
The cafe is the work of sisters Erin Budde and Bethany Budde Cohen, according to St. Louis Magazine. Budde says she wanted to open a place small enough to landscape beautifully, garden, and raise vegetables, and the roughly 1,100-square-foot space reflects that ambition, with an idea she'd been developing for 15 years finally taking shape. Budde Cohen, who has owned and operated SqWires across the street at 1415 S. 18th Street for 25 years, said the new cafe has been a long time coming.
Before turning to hospitality, Budde spent three decades in civic and philanthropic leadership, including a stint as executive director of STL250 during St. Louis's 250th anniversary celebration and later as interim president and CEO of United Way of Greater St. Louis, according to the STL Press Club. She also served as senior vice president of community affairs at Wells Fargo Advisors before shifting toward urban gardening and cafe work.
A Blacksmith Shop Turned Garden Retreat
The building at 1410 S. 18th Street dates back to the 1890s, when it operated as a blacksmith shop with wide front and rear doors that let horses and carriages enter from the street and exit out the back, per SqWires Restaurant. Horses once grazed in the rear yard that now serves as Picky Cafe's garden patio. In the years since, the space has housed an artist's studio, an antique store, and a business consultant's office, according to St. Louis Magazine.
Today that rear yard is a 2,000-square-foot flagstone patio with around 30 seats, floral landscaping, a fountain with lilypads, and a gardening area, per the same account. Inside, the cafe seats another 15 guests. Raised beds throughout the property grow ingredients that make their way directly onto the menu, and Budde has said the concept was inspired by fresh vegetables, fresh herbs, and the changing seasons.
SqWires Supplies the Kitchen, Coffeestamp Supplies the Beans
Picky Cafe doesn't have its own full kitchen — SqWires serves as its commissary, supplying grab-and-go sandwiches, entrees, desserts, salads, and dips that get sold in the cafe's on-site market. SqWires itself opened in 2001 after developers proposed converting the former Western Wire Products factory complex into lofts, and Budde Cohen's daughter, AJ, now serves as general manager overseeing a staff of more than 40, according to Sauce Magazine. SqWires holds a 5-star certification from the Green Dining Alliance, an earthday365 program, for composting organic waste, using compostable biopacks, and even repurposing old menus as drink coasters.
The coffee program was developed by Justin Livon in collaboration with Coffeestamp, the St. Louis magazine reports. Coffeestamp was founded in 2018 as a micro-roastery by brothers Patrick and Spencer Clapp, who moved to St. Louis from Honduras in 2012 and source their beans directly from farms near La Tigra National Park, according to Coffeestamp. Picky Cafe serves espressos, cortados, cappuccinos, lattes, americanos, drip coffee, cafe au lait, and pourovers, with whole, skim, almond, and oat milk options, plus seasonally changing smoothies including a current watermelon, mint, and almond milk drink called My, It's Hot!.
What's on the Menu
Breakfast and lunch options include overnight oats with cinnamon, orange, and vanilla, and an egg sandwich with bacon, brie, and spinach, per St. Louis Magazine's report. SqWires entrees available through the cafe include salmon with sides, chicken with creamy orzo, and a baked potato topped with herb-rubbed pork tenderloin. The food menu changes daily.
The cafe bakes fresh bread daily, including house signature white, wheat, and blackstrap rye loaves, the latter made with coffee and fennel seeds. Desserts include carrot cake, flourless chocolate cake, and Rich's signature New York-style cheesecake. The retail area also stocks curated goods, locally sourced sauces, cheeses, salamis, drinks, pastas, and fresh local produce, along with plants and flowers for sale daily.
Opening Amid Neighborhood Change
Picky Cafe opens Monday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week, arriving in Lafayette Square at a moment of visible commercial turnover. The neighborhood recently saw the closure of 33 Wine Shop's last pour after 25 years, driven by rising insurance costs and declining wine sales. Around the same time, another new food concept, The Malt House Butcher, opened nearby inside a renovated 19th-century malt house building that had previously suffered fire damage.
That pattern of new ventures moving into old industrial and commercial buildings isn't new to Lafayette Square. The neighborhood became St. Louis's first local historic district in 1972 after activists fought off a 1947 city plan that called for demolishing much of its Victorian housing stock, according to the Cementland Archive. That preservation fight is part of why 19th-century structures like the old blacksmith shop are still standing to be reinvented today. The neighborhood's centerpiece, the 30-acre Lafayette Park, was set aside from common pasture land in 1836 and dedicated in 1851, making it the oldest public park west of the Mississippi River, per the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee.
