DAYTON EATS: Grist Provisions announces dinner menu, hours

The dine-in and grab-and-go spot in the space that was formerly home to Third Perk Coffeehouse & Wine Bar has become a favorite of mine featuring salads, sandwiches and desserts as well as Grist’s homemade pastas, sauces and breads that are available for carryout to make mouth watering meals that bring the best Italian flavors to kitchens at home.

Just last month I wrote, “housed in a quaint corner at Fifth and Ludlow streets, this little piece of heaven is not only a restaurant, but a spot to grab specialty homemade pastas and sauces to bring home for dinner.”

And now it’s a place to grab dinner.

On Sept. 6 they posted on Facebook: “Ask and you shall receive! We’re launching our dinner menu this weekend. Check out our new hours and dinner offerings. We’re still offering the same relaxed counter service so we won’t be taking reservations.”

Tuesday through Saturday Grist will be open 10 a.m.-9 p.m. with lunch served 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and dinner served from 5-9 p.m.

The kitchen will be closed from 3-5 p.m. but they will continue to offer all retail grab-and-go items. Lunch will be served Sundays from 10 a.m-3 p.m. and they will be closed Mondays.

The menu looks like the stuff that a destination dinner restaurant is made of.

In my two decades writing, rarely have I chosen to spotlight a new menu I haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying, but the food at Grist — both dine in, carry-out and grab-and-go provisions have been so unfailingly delectable and gratifying, that I have no doubt this will be the place to visit before word spreads and you can’t find a seat.

Starters are:

Pastas highlight the best that Grist has to offer including a bolognese made with tagliatelle pasta, a butter poached shrimp, capers aleppo pepper and nori crumb with a bucatini pasta and a braised short rib scarpinocc. For vegetarians there is a black garlic corkscrew fusilli pasta with sugo di funghi, a mushroom sauce, as well as a sweet corn agnolotti del plin, a type of ravioli that gets its name from the regional dialect for “pinch” from Piedmont, Italy.

There are also housemade meatballs, a vegetable lasagna with Parmesan, caramelized onions, zucchini and pesto as well as a lamb merguez and manchego tart.

I’m salivating at the thought.

Desserts are a milk chocolate s’mores indoors with smoked caramel ice cream, a creme fraiche and honey panna cotta with compressed rhubarb, toasted almond, tarragon and warm madeleines and a carmelized lemon and pine-nut tart.

Grist is well known for regularly changing its menu which is a wonderful thing, so it will be exciting to watch how this latest evolution in their business develops.

As I wrote last month about the food that team Van Voorhis has been producing for the past several years from their various kitchens, “You never know what you’re going to find, but you always know it’s going to be good.”

I have truly never had anything I did not like from Grist over the years.

I may not have tried their new dinner options yet, but one thing is for sure — I will soon and there is no doubt in my mind that I will enjoy it.

Dayton Eats looks at the regional food stories and restaurant news that make mouths water. Share info about your menu updates, special dinners and events, new chefs, interesting new dishes and culinary adventures. Do you know of new exciting format changes, specials, happy hours, restaurant updates or any other tasty news you think is worth a closer look at? E-mail Alexis Larsen at alexis.e.larsen@hotmail.com with the information and we will work to include it in future coverage.

How to go

What: Grist

Where: 46 W. 5th St., Dayton

More information: 937-802-4544 or http://eatgrist.com