Pearl Farmer’s Market

The official grand opening of the Pearl Farmer’s Market was last weekend. A few weeks ago this was a sleepy little farmer’s market that one could easily traverse. Given a little media exposure, however, that’s now not the case. Now, it’s practically come early, or don’t come at all.

The market opens up at 9 am, but people start lining up closer to 8:30 am. The market itself is at the newly renovated end of the San Antonio River Walk just behind Full Goods. Last week, on grand opening day, the market was so crowded that you couldn’t get through and many people, including myself, ended up leaving in frustration.

Things were a bit better today. As with every week, the organizers have improved things based upon what they learned the week before. This week they took up more of the parking lot (don’t worry – there’s still plenty if you get there early) and more than doubled the space which allowed for the inevitable queues to form. How inevitable? The photo above was taken within 15 minutes of the opening bell. Ropes and barriers actually prevent people from coming into the market until just before 9am, a few minutes before they let everyone in. At prompty 9am a bell is rung. The resulting organized chaos is just amazing. It’s like a foodie’s version of the Wall Street opening bell. Once that bell rings, all bets are off, and people surge forward, descending upon the vendors en masse.

Last week, many of the vendors were simply not prepared for the exponentially larger crowd that the media campaign advertising the grand opening brought in. Sol y Luna, the purveyor of these fine loaves, has been struggling to keep up with demand from the very beginning. It’s not surprising – his bread is both gorgeous and delicious. We arrived a bit late last week due to road construction and, by 10:00am he was already sold out of many things and we had to content ourselves with apple danishes instead of ham and cheese croissants for breakfast. This week, he came prepared. In addition to the flour bags below there was bin after bin after bin of breads, sweet rolls, croissants and danishes stacked beneath the table, behind the table, on a side table and in the back of his truck.

Right now it’s peach season in Texas. There are two vendors dedicated solely to peaches. Both of them were running out last week, and this week they look to have brought twice as many. This display is from the stall run by Caskey Orchards out of San Marcos, Texas, just a short hop, skip and jump up the road. Biting into one of these peaches will send a river of juice running down your fingers and chin, leaving your face sticky but smiling. They taste nothing like the peaches that you get at the grocery store. Compared to those pale cousins, these are peaches on steroids, packing an explosion of flavor that makes the $5 per roughly 1.5pound blemsh-free basket of still sun-warm peaches entirely worth the extra $1 per pound over the grocery store’s selection. The state of Georgia can keep their peaches, I’ll take mine from somewhere a little closer to home, thanks.

My other regular stop at the market is Braune Farms. As you can see they’ve got a wide selection of gorgeous produce. My husband isn’t particularly fond of beets, but by golly so long as Braune’s has them freshly harvested, he’s going to be seeing them for awhile. As the seasons change I’ll have to change what I’m cooking. In the meantime… I’ve got carrots, leeks, beets and fennel that I’m really going to have to put to good use here. I’m thinking a fennel and leek soup with carrots will take care of a good deal of that right-nice, don’t you?