zen cart as a online catalog?

Hello *,

I'm new here and I'm evaluating some software solutions to build a online catalogue (no cart, no chek-out, no payment, or, in alternative, only the cart and email orders).
I need to

1. make a online browsable catalogue of products (no pdf needed)
2. insert the products names, descriptions, etc... (by means of some php code I will write) directly into the zen cart database
3. be open to the possibility of turning the online catalog into a full ecommerce solution one day

Is Zen Cart a good choice for that?

It's perfect. There's a switch in admin which sets your store up in Showcase Mode (with or without prices), which deactivates all the checkout, payment, shipping etc.

Great.

I also need a simple CMS to bind to Zen Cart, is there anything Zen Cart supports better than others in the sense of integration with it? I don't need much from the CMS, just a simple system to build a few pages around the web catalog/web shop.

There's no CMS I know of that's particularly easy to use with Zencart, but for the purpose you describe, you might just use Zencart EZ pages:

https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=117

EZ-Pages are ridiculously simple to use, and flexible; if you require that the pages have their own meaningful URL or be able to handle PHP, you can create new "define pages" using the information in the About Us mod in Free Addons.

If you're interested, take a look at my nephew's site (in my sig). It's Zen Cart as CMS.

And for that matter, the festival site in my sig is primarily a CMS using ez-pages, with some commerce functions.