If you only visited Mary Jane’s Bakery back in early October, before the official grand opening, you definitely want to make a return visit.
While the baked goods are still plentiful and tasty, Mary Jane’s has become quite a formidable lunch stop at its 110 W. Main St. downtown St. Clairsville location with a tasty menu and an array of daily specials that usually sell out before closing time.
It’s definitely worth a revisit.
Mary Jane’s held a soft opening back in early October with limited availability of items. Issues with permitting resulted in the pushback of the official grand opening, and at first, only pre-packaged baked goods were available.
A few weeks later, permitting was sorted, and owner Julie Widen and her staff were able to offer a full lineup of freshly-made soups, sandwiches, baked goods, and other menu options.
Interest and customer counts quickly grew, and it wasn’t long before daily special selling out became, well, a daily occurrence.
Consider this fact. The bourbon chicken over race is one of Mary Jane’s best spelling specials. On January 18, the entire batch of bourbon chicken sold out—in an hour. Yes, it’s that good and my personal taste buds can attest to that fact.
A generous serving of bourbon chicken over rice, a Hawaiian roll, and a drink, all for $8.99. Today’s specials are chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes or the popular meatball hoagie.
Their soups include chili, both chicken and sausage tortellini, garden vegetable, stuffed bell pepper, and French onion. The daily offerings vary, but the quality never wavers.
The Menu
Aside from the daily specials, which are listed on Mary Jane’s Facebook page, there is a general menu board that consists of sandwiches and wraps, salads, soups, and an assortment of baked goods.
And yes, the staff at Mary Jane’s takes in suggestions and listens. Donuts are now available in some capacity daily. Prices are reasonable and everything is made fresh daily. They’ve also offered breakfast specials like sausage gravy and biscuits, scrambled eggs, and a choice of a donut or pastry.
Pastry items include cinnamon rolls, mini Bundt cakes, scones, gourmet brownies, cookies, cake pops, cupcakes, and caramel puff corn.
If you like something on the daily special board, get there quickly as it can and does sell out, as mentioned above. Everything is made from scratch and, because of that, there’s a limited quantity daily of what’s available.
That’s not to say Mary Jane’s isn’t responsive to demand. On many occasions, they’ve made double and triple batches of the bourbon chicken. It lasted longer to be sure, but by day’s end, still gone.
History
Mary Jane’s Bakery may be newish to downtown St. Clairsville, but the name, the owner, and the recipes inspired by her grandmother—you guessed it, the original Mary Jane Barrows—have been around in some capacity, since 2010.
That’s when Widen opened up a shop in Chillicothe, Ohio. Her grandmother and family owned a few pubs and bars in Columbus in the past. She wanted to help keep her grandmother’s legacy alive, so the first bakery was born in 2010.
She did that for a few years before moving on to a different career path, but never lost the love of baking and creating fresh foods.
In 2022 she started setting up a booth at the Ohio Valley Farmer’s Market and working out of her home. But, when For the Love of Pierogies left downtown to head to Wheeling, it created an opening for an official Mary Jane’s Bakery location to return.
One that, judging by the daily special sellouts, St. C. residents are glad to see make a comeback.
