The Docket

The food here is just miserable. They have a lunchtime buffet which mostly consists of food made 6 hours before and placed up front for you to try to find something halfway fresh. At $ 9ish for the buffet, it’s quite a rip off.
It’s convenient for anyone at SLU law, but other than that, I’d probably walk across the street to the hot dog vendor in front of city hall for a better meal and deal.

If they’re serving the Chinese buffet again, don’t eat it! I’ve had better cafeteria food.

I have been on jury duty for this past week and have frequented 3 times.
1^st experience they were out of milk for a latte and served me soy milk. I was sitting at the bar and not able to monitor this choice where they make the coffee. Then they were out of white sauce for the pizza I ordered.
2^nd experience I ordered the beet salad which was to include pecans and when brought to me without pecans I inquired and they told me they were out. No apology no inquiry of anything additional need, server walked away. Upon her return I asked if I could have a discount and she went and got her manager. Manger arrived no apology and have me a 10% discount which equated to a dollar. Manager did not even return my bill to me had the server do it. Terrible service. Minimal eye contact.
Staff were often frazzled (as they were verbalizing it out loud) with customer arrival.

Quintessential comfort food. It’s like a slightly off-​kilter Applebee’s with a smaller menu. Chicken parmesan tasted like well-​executed cafeteria food. Tomato soup was ok. Salad was good. Pasta was fine.
Nothing to make you come running to Unilocal about it.
Nice view out the window.
Service was pretty lackadaisacal. Hey, waiter, it might make sense for you to a) know what the soup of the day is, b) introduce the various menu options, c) check in on us.
But it was pretty cheap. You get what ya pay for.

After being completely ignored at Maurizio’s down the street, I opted for The Docket since I had jury duty. They had the burger I was craving on the menu, reasonably priced. Hostess was friendly and sat me at the bar per my request. While sitting at said bar, I noticed the employee in the open kitchen piling a huge amount of fresh fries on a burger plate. I was psyched! Adrian was a gentle server, soft-​spoken, really chilled. So far, so good. I was impressed when he asked if I wanted a side of mayo, which I always get. The burger was a perfect medium, just as ordered. The fries, on the other hand, were not the fresh, out-​of-​the-​fryer species I had seen only minutes ago. They were warm, at best, and wilted, at best. I muddled through as they were pretty darn tasty even though they were almost cold. As I sat through lunch, I noticed Adrian return a burger plate to the kitchen, then heard another server announce a re-​do. 20 minutes later, a voice out of the kitchen said «You standing there staring at me is not going to make them cook any faster!!!» 30 minutes later I heard the manager asking why it took 30 minutes for a re-​cooked burger. I was wondering that myself. Seems like this place has been open long enough for them to have their act together. I get the feeling they do not. A word about open kitchens: watch what you say and the tone in which you say it. Kitchen staff snipping at the service staff happens but still should not be acceptable anywhere. Especially in front of your guests.

The food is extremely expensive for what you get. They make it very obvious they don’t want «regular» working folks in there, judges and lawyers only need apply. It seems like any item you could find at a decent restaurant they used a food thesaurus to type up the menu so you think you are getting more than you are and then they tack an extra 2 – 5 $ onto the price for that item.
Not worth it.

Terrible service. Someone, not our server, brought out my food and my friend’s but did not bring the third person’s order and when they did 10 minutes later it was wrong so they had to make the original order and took another 10 – 15 minutes to make a grilled cheese.
Also I feel that the menu isn’t accurate. I ordered the of the cold plates section: roasted beets w pecan and goat cheese. I ended up with sliced beets on top of lettuce with 3 smudges of cheese.
I will say that I had the eggplant parmesan on the chef’s table once and it was excellent but three service still was very poor.
I work downtown and this place has been blacklisted.

worst restaurant service I have seen. people walking around with food, clueless as to where it goes. 40 minutes and only one person in party served

Well, if you’re summoned for jury duty in the city, its location is great: it’s directly across the street from the civil courts building. The atmosphere is cool, a great mix of metals, wood and tile, and the stacked firewood for the pizza oven is a nice touch.
But.
I arrived before the lunch rush and ordered the burger special of the day: a burger with havarti, mushrooms and blackberry ketchup on ciabatta. Fellow jury pool members who’d come in after me got their food, ate and left. Forty five minutes later, my burger arrived: havarti and ciabatta, sure, but no mushrooms or fancy ketchup. (There was plain ketchup provided… maybe it sat near blackberries once?) The burger was bland and oily. The fries were limp and squished into their serving cup. (Why were my fries in a cup? My plate was enormous!)
My server was sweet and I felt badly for her; she was doing what she could to get people their food, but the kitchen was miserably slow.
I can’t say I won’t go back if I have to return for jury fun tomorrow… the heat index is around 100 degrees and I’m pregnant, so I don’t really want to walk any further. But this is the kind of place I’ll settle for under those circumstances, not that I’d seek out.

The Chef’s table is what makes this place worthwhile. Otherwise, the service is consistently terrible – think waiting forever and each person receiving his food at a drastically different time. If I were only rating the chef’s table, I would give 4 stars. If you’re going to bite the bullet and order off the menu, I highly recommend the curried chicken salad sandwich. It won’t take ten years to arrive, and it’s actually very delicious. Everything else is so-​so. If you’re going to order a grilled sandwich, expect to wait 45 minutes.

Chef’s Table is a fun and always delicious lunch option. Good price for a small all-​you-​care-​to-​eat meal. Their pizza is awesome. And ask for Twania, cause she’s the best waitress there!

My co-​worker and I went here when it first opened. Everything was great, especially the sweet potato fries and the maple aoele. Now they have discontinued both. This is the reason I typically only eat a new restaurants. The quality shifts as management begin to cut costs. However, the lunch buffet is a good value.

Yay… good ol’ jury duty time!!!
While on lunch break, I pulled up Unilocal on my phone to see what there was to eat around the Civil Courts building.
Next door on Tucker is The Docket… I think it’s in the same building as the law school for SLUI could be wrong about that. There are blue awnings so it’s not hard to miss.
My server was Adrean and though he didn’t really seem like a typical server, he answered all my questions and was prompt with my food and very nice… just soft spoken.
I ordered a chicken club panini, and it came out pretty quick. They manager (?) stopped by a couple times to see how everything was as well as several others. :)
There is a wood stove where you can walk up and order paninis and pizza at their «Grab and Go» They also serve coffee drinks there.
For about 10 dollars,.there is a «Chef’s Choice» area which is pretty cool. Not sure what that was all about exactly and Adrean said something about «all you can eat» ?
Plenty of small tables for one or two people and the place is very large and airy.
I don’t know about going out of my way to come here… but if you’re already Downtown, I’d say stop in here… skip Hardees and Subway… ugh.

Me and my girlfriend came here and thought it was great. Very reasonably priced, the atmosphere was nice and chill. Plus it’s always happy hour.

I wrote a long review and it somehow got deleted. To avoid redundancy it case it magically shows up, here are the details you need to know about SLU Law’s brand new eatery. Caveat to my review: I tried The Docket on its second day open to the public, and for a brand new restaurant I think they did really well and have great potential.
–Food: high quality and affordable for a downtown business lunch. Mostly pizzas and sandwiches; strangely, very few salad options. There is a serve-​yourself «chef’s table» options that I utilized and enjoyed very much. My lunchmates’ pizza and panini looked delicious.
–Service: issues. I hope to update my review once they’ve worked out the kinks. The staff has clearly been trained but just doesn’t have much experience, which leads to wait times for food, drinks, and finding your waiter. Our waitress had trouble running our credit cards, and the manager comped our meal — nice touch. The Docket is run by Bön Appetit management, which knows what its doing, so I expect this will only improve.
–Atmosphere: this is the place to be for lawyers lunching downtown. Several judges from the city bench were there while we were eating. The Docket is clearly not designed as a student eatery, but was meant to take advantage of courtroom lunch traffic and perhaps encourage law student/​professional mingling. Certainly a non-​lawyer will also enjoy a panini from The Docket as well. I expect this place will be very busy from noon to 1pm when the courts are on lunch recess.