The Market at Hartford 21

Sadly, it’s CLOSED. Maybe it will reopen but probably not. Sad.

This is a great concept. High end grocery items combined with local vendors and full service ready to eat. Outside seating gives you a different and positive impression of Hartford. It’s pricey if your comparing to Subway but my fresh prepared turkey sandwich was only $ 7. Drink and chips brought it to $ 10. Considering what a Big Mac costs today, I don’t find $ 10 lunches to be outrageous anymore.

**UPDATE**
After only having been open for six months, The Market at Hartford 21 has closed temporarily to «re-​think its business model.» Unfortunate, because it was becoming a downtown favorite and people had taken to it. Here’s to hoping it’s not a permanent closure and they sort their issues out. I’m bumping my review down to 3 stars since it was such a short-​lived experience and there haven’t been any useful updates on their social media forums other than to promote some other place of theirs, that’s NOT The Market at Hartford 21 :-(
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When I first heard the buzz that downtown Hartford would host an «upscale» restaurant, I was a bit skeptical and immediately thought it’d be unwelcoming and elitist in its approach. Since opening, I’ve been nothing but impressed and go as often as possible, so this review is long overdue.
The employees are extremely personable, chatty, and helpful! The prepared foods are convenient for folks looking to grab breakfast, lunch, or something to bring home for dinner and run the gamut… deli sandwiches, giant dill pickles, pasta, homemade pizza, California sushi rolls … you name it. As with most markets, there’s also a butcher.
My favorite areas are the noodle and salad bars. Salads are a flat-​rate and aren’t weighed. There’s also a bakery area where one can buy coffee, pastries, cupcakes, truffles, and homemade Gelato, which come in a wide array of interesting flavors… once they made Gelato with chocolate covered potato chips that actually turned out to taste pretty good, despite my apprehension. Employees stationed in that area will gladly let you taste any and all of the Gelato before committing to a flavor.
Most appealing are the seating/​café areas and free WiFi, so anyone looking to eat-​in while doing a little work or web browsing should have no problems doing so. During this summer, there has been a featured farmer’s market stationed right in front. The Market at Hartford 21 also offers cooking classes and other events. What more is there to say… there is nothing to really dislike about The Market at Hartford 21, because they’re extremely receptive and make it a point to reach out to people living in the area… and kept residents in the loop via a series of open meetings, prior to opening.
They’ve been really doing a lot to appeal to Hartford folk and serve as a more than welcome addition to the downtown area… Folks, they’ll even validate parking… FREE OF CHARGE. Negative reviews are nothing more than simple, nit-​picky gripes, as if there’s a problem, the owners/​PR people/​manager (s) are overly accommodating. In fact, someone recently complained to them on Twitter that their latte was lacking that particular day and they promptly responded and told him to come in and allow them to treat him to another one.
I hope The Market at Hartford 21 will be a constant staple in the downtown Hartford area!

Pricey. Tasty. Friendly. Most shop at the Market for their prepared foods and upscale groceries more commonly found in upscale retail grocers like Traders or Whole Foods. I just go there for breakfasts, lunches, and to get work done in trends, cozy convenient venue. It is the perfect Sat/​Sun AM «3^rd space.» For these purposes Market cannot be beat. Free wifi, ice-​cold A/​C, and the super-​friendly staff are more than willing to spark up a conversation on their favorite foods /​topics of the day. Regulars will also find nearly anyone who lives downtown come through the doors. M21 is truly downtown’s first non-​alcoholic meeting space, without even trying to be that. Oh and gelato is not half bad either.

I don’t understand the lukewarm reviews. This is a market, not a supermarket. And the quality of this place is better than my local Whole Foods.
Something cool they do here is they sell cereal by the pound. So you can mix and match different cereals. I bet they’ve already discovered some interesting combinations.

I am in Hartford a lot and I desperately want this place to succeed. I have tried it about 5 or 6 times with co-​workers for lunch. Hartford needs a great place like this. Here are some good points: Sandwiches are very good. Nice having a basic grocery store with some basic needs close by. Staff is nice and friendly. They carry some organic things which is great. Produce isn’t bad. Recently, they had a farmer’s market kind of thing going on. It was really nice and so great for Hartford. I am in the city about twice a week, so I am not sure if that is regular or not. Hope it is.
Here are the problems: 1. Meats are way over priced and not very good looking. They must not have the volume and they are not trying to compete. Let’s face it, you will drive for good deals on meat. Hall’s or Whole Foods or many other options in W. Hartford are worth the trip.
2. Prepared foods are really poor quality and poor in appearance. This should be a place where they excel at this yet they are very bad at this. They need to go to Simon’s in Chester, CT for inspiration on keeping a menu tighter and executing better on prepared foods. Please work on this. We want you to succeed.
3. Your cashier lines take for ever. It must be your training or your scanning software. It is torture. Need to have a process guy or gal help you speed this up and teach the staff not to get chatty while there are ten people in line on their short lunch break. On one occasion, I just gave up. I had waiting in line for ten minutes around 1:30 in the afternoon. It might also be the produce slowing them down a lot. This is a killer.
It is a pleasant market overall but it seems to be struggling. I hope they pull it together.

We stopped here on a Saturday afternoon just to check it out. It was dead. We ordered a sandwich and checked out the rest of the place. I was not impressed. We wanted to get something from the prepared foods section, but steered away after seeing a fly buzzing around in the display. We noticed a rotten tomato in the display near the vegetables.
The sandwich we ordered, the asylum, was pretty good. Overall, I had way higher expectations for this place. The dessert section looked pretty weak. Everything else is stuff you can buy in the grocery store. Kind of disappointing.

This is one of my favorite places in Connecticut. Market 21 is essentially an upscale grocery store with a number of ready-​to-​eat meal options.
I have tried the sandwich counter, pizza counter, and noodle bar, and all were excellent. The ingredients are fresh, the food made to order, and the staff is extremely friendly. My favorite of the lunch options is the chicken salad, which has grapes and walnuts. It makes for a hearty sandwich.
The prices are mid-​range — a sandwich will run $ 5 – 6, pizza was about $ 2.50 a slice, and the noodle bar is $ 8 for a large container.
Overall, I’m a big fan, and this has become my new lunchtime addiction.

Visited the market Wednesday with my mother and will definitely be back! I hadn’t had coffee yet so I tried out a maple latte. It was delicious and the barista was extremely friendly. I picked out some chocolates for my husband and got the most adorable mini doughnuts for the kid. Tons to choose from. Oreo, cherry, blueberry, vanilla frosted. They were delicious. I walked by a giant cereal bar which I just found to be awesome. Sometimes you want a little grape nuts, or lucky charms but don’t want to pay $ 8 for two boxes of cereal. Now, you don’t have to. The produce section was small but full of quality fruits and vegetables. I loved the samples of local hummus, and we even picked up a package to go. I do wish they carried the phenomenal pita chips from the same company. The pizza looked great but I opted for the noodle bar. I got to pick out of all kinds toppings and sauces. The noodles were great. I love the concept, so unique! I almost missed the fresh pasta bar! All kinds of fresh pasta, fettucini, ziti, spaghetti, spinach pasta and all kinds of sauces to boot. One of my favorite things was that they carry San marzano products. They are usually hard to find but the tomatoes make an amazing pizza sauce. The market also carries unusual products that you would have to search high and low for. The seafood looked good and fresh. The meat department, ehhh, the beef could have looked better but with all this place has going for it I only dropped it a star.
This place is a foodie heaven. I’ll definitely be back and you should make a trip too!

So excited this place is in downtown! The are also doing art shows on Sundays too now. They have unique items: quail eggs, duck eggs, multiple livers, foie gras Hudson Valley, salumi, cheeses, omg it is so fun in here! truffle butter and cute little cream in glass jars from an Enfield dairy farm! PIzza oven, deli counter and even produce! Don’t know if they validate parking anywhere as I walked over from my office…

OK… what do I say? Let me start with… we just ate a fantastic meal, from the prepared foods we got. Yummo. But i do have some concerns…
Our experience was great in some ways, but needs a little improvement in others… but that is to be expected with any NEW business. I desperately want them to succeed, as this area VERY MUCH needs to have a place like this… let me get to the telling of our visit.
Here is some background:
They opened yesterday, 3÷16÷11. I heard about them on Better CT and was very excited to go, especially when we heard about «ALL» the prepared food. SOOO we changed our St. Patrick’s Day plans (to get our fill of Irish food!) and thought, well, they will ‘HAVE TO’ have some Irish Specialties, as they opened the Day before St. Patricks Day?
SIlly me… we should have called first. Disappointed doesn’t begin to cover it, especially because by the time we were here, all the other places we could have gone were sold out of corned beef etc. They didn’t even have a LOAF of Soda Bread in the bakery! :o (Oh well… We’ll get over it. Especially when we eat the yummy things we did get! Our dinner was fantastic.
But I digress…
This place is touted as more than a grocery store, that they have everything from «toilet paper to truffle oil» and are a ”unique urban upscale market featuring prepared foods and everything in between” (those were direct quotes form their website)…
We tried to buy a little it of everything, without going crazy. However, the bill was $ 73 and change which was shocking for the fairly small amount of food we got. But, we soon discovered the $ 14.10 for the 2 Chicken Paillards were the best money spent. Maybe ever at a place like this. ABSOLUTELY Delicious, reheated in the oven at 400*. Their other prepared meats, such as Osso Bucco and various Pork Chops/​Shanks, etc looked amazing. They also had a buttermilk Fried chicken and I can’t even recall the other things. Not a lot to choose from, but quality stuff nonetheless.
We also got their Twice Baked Potatoes which were very good, especially when u add a little extra cheddar to the top at home, when u reheat them. None of the food was given with reheat instructions, which i think is something they need to work on. Many places I’ve visited, will list everything possible on a sheet or two of paper, and they would provide a copy (or on request) with each purchase. That way people are not left wondering if they are not particularly kitchen ‘capable’ LOL.
IN addition, we tried the fresh packaged gnocchi which was a HUGE disappointment. They were not fluffy pillows of ‘Potatoeness’. The were dense mini golfballs (and believe me, i know how to cook them). Lets just say our dogs loved them. BUT… the amazing Gorgonzola and Basil pesto sauce we got to go on them? OMG it was the BEST! sooo delish, we ended up smearing some of it on the chicken and it was so good!
We got an amazing french baguette (and OMG, fresh made English Muffins?) from the bakery and the BEST Italian butter from the dairy section. ooooh the flavor will knock your socks off!
Their Produce was stunning! Just gorgeous. Got some Blood oranges and saw some unusual yummy things.
Also got one slice of pizza to try and we looked at the butcher shop and CANNOT WAIT to get some meat or fish (altho i couldn’t get an answer if they would filet the whole red snapper for me).
So you are wondering, what was my complaint? Only that a few employees were a bit lost. You would ask whats in something, or ”can we order off the noodle bar” but they couldn’t seem to determine who was handling that area, or how it worked. I don’t know was an answer often heard. BUt… I understand, its all new, but they should TRY to get the answer. Don’t get me wrong, almost everyone was very friendly. They just need more training.
and…ooh, yikes, looking at the receipt, i see we paid (OMG!) $ 6.67 for a PINT (A PINT!!!) of Heavy Cream (it was so cute in the glass bottle!) PLUS the $ 2.00 deposit! oops! So…$ 8.67 for 16oz of cream. WOWSA! I’ll let u know how it tastes. I got it for a recipe but had i realized how much, i never would have. i would’ve got the half n half for coffee instead, if i was gonna be outrageous. at least i would’ve noticed the taste difference i hope it has!
The only other items we got were one cupcake and a couple oranges, an apple and some pineapple. I hope the other items are as tasty as our dinner (sans yucky gnocchi). :oP
DEFINITELY TRY THIS PLACE OUT! We need to support local businesses, and especially a ‘grocery’ store in Downtown Hartford. i imagine the people that live nearby are over the moon that they don’t have to travel for groceries now!
OH…AND they need to get their act together for the handicapped crowd. I got STUCK in the little lift and almost panicked when i couldn’t get out. PUT INSTRUCTIONS IN THE LIFT! No one helped!
i spent over an hour writing this, and in the meantime someone else added too.