Santa Barbara Farmers Market on the Move
“Do you want a sample?”
More welcoming words are rarely spoken, especially when a sweet slice of mandarin is plopped into your palm by a fresh-faced farmer girl, like the one who greeted me last Saturday at the Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market.
It was a familiar exchange, albeit one that I’ve missed for the past decade or so, as my Goleta-leaning existence and usual Saturday-morning work shifts have precluded my once-frequent market adventures. (Don’t worry — we still get tons of the fresh farmer goods, just straight to our door from Local Harvest Delivery.)
I stopped by to witness the sprawling market’s last hoorah at the parking lot on the corner of Santa Barbara and Cota streets, where vendors have sold fruits, veggies, meats, seafood, and most else to locals, tourists, pro chefs, home chefs, and everyone in between since 1985. This Saturday, they’ll be stationed at the intersection of State and Carrillo streets, as the City of Santa Barbara — after much public hullabaloo — decided that their longtime home would be better suited for a new police station.
Though my recent baseline is admittedly lacking, the market appeared to be functioning much as normal, without too much outward angst over the move. Farmers and customers were talking about it, lamenting the shift from tradition, but acceptance seems to have seeped in, such as in this dichotomous declaration by one farmer: “It’s terrible! Find us at the new place!”
As I mentioned in a recent Full Belly Files, I lived for many years just a couple blocks up toward the Presidio in the green and yellow house at 828 Santa Barbara Street. That made the market the highlight of my Saturday mornings, and often the edible basis of my Saturday nights. Given my nostalgia for that beloved routine, when I read a story reminding us all that last weekend would be the last at that location, I felt drawn to go check it out. (That none of my family would be around to help me blind taste wines, which is my usual Saturday morning job, made the decision more obvious.)
I parked around the corner from my old house and walked down Santa Barbara Street like I used to do. It was mostly as I remembered, a steady though not overwhelming flow of folks with their bags and baskets on wheels toward the lot, moving past people strumming guitars, selling bags and jewelry, and signing up voters against gun violence.
Much was also the same inside the market, booths overflowing with a stunning array of fruits, vegetables, nuts, proteins, jams, honeys, and so on as musicians strummed away. From what I remember, the variety of offerings appears to have multiplied exponentially, as there seems to be every type of almost everything I could imagine growing in California — and then some. We must be at “Peak Farm” these days.
Having come in with no actual plan — other than to check out the Jimmy Nardello peppers from Her Produce, as recommended the night before by The Lark’s chef Jason Paluska — I was overwhelmed, just like those days of walking into a CD store or video rental shop and going totally blank. I wandered mostly in awe with ears open, trying to catch any comments about the end of this era.
“People say it’s their favorite time of the week,” said one man commiserating with other farmers, though I couldn’t tell if they thought that would change at the new spot. Another was explaining to a young boy how all of the tipus trees would be cut down for the police station, pointing to the blue ribbons that were tied around many of their trunks in a nod to their shady service over the decades.
On my second lap through, I ran into Katie Hershfelt, who’s been working at the intersection of Santa Barbara’s food, farming, sustainability, and events communities for more than a decade. She invited me to that evening’s afterparty for the Green Gala fundraiser hosted by the CEC, where Katie is now the communications and marketing director. (It was my son’s first homecoming night, so I didn’t make it.) Then we talked about the market move a bit, which has its ups and downs.
A major potential up is that the new spot will increase visibility. The longtime parking lot, though large, is somewhat isolated and hard-to-find, unless you know where you’re going. That’s compared to farmers’ markets in most other towns (our other iterations included), where the vendors are put right in the middle of town. Being a corner of State and Carrillo will put the market squarely in the heart of the city — complete with more obvious parking options nearby — which should only help attendance and attention.
But that doesn’t mean everyone’s happy. Summed up by Katie rather succinctly: “People hate change.” We can all expect some grumblings to continue, warranted and otherwise.
By that point, I’d only bought some big fat grapes, and had my eye on picking up some lamb and chicken sausage from Casitas Valley Pastures, and I’d yet to see Her Produce. Katie mandated that I buy some Jimmy Nardello peppers from Deanna King’s Cosecha Farming, which I know mostly because of her husband Chris King’s viticulture work in the region’s top vineyards.
[Click to enlarge]: Sunday morning’s fritatta (left) and farmers market produce going into salsa.
I grabbed a bunch — they’d become stars of a Saturday tomato-avo toast lunch, a Sunday morning frittata, and a Tuesday night red curry, with some cheese-stuffed iteration to come. After getting some tips from Deanna, I also bought my first quinces, which I later poached in wine, rum, sugar, and spice. (They were good enough, but I’ll pass on dealing with those tough fruits for a while.)
[Click to enlarge]: Quince and fig about to be poached (left) and the poached quince (with backyard fig) from Cosecha Farms.
Then I spotted the stalks of baby ginger a few booths down, to which I wondered aloud to a woman hovering over them if the young version was spicier. “It’s so fresh!” she replied, then thanked one of the vendors for the tea recipe he’d suggested the week before. Another woman also chimed in on how amazing the ginger was, so I snagged a few while realizing that this was the recommended Her Produce stand.
They didn’t seem to have any Nardellos like Chef JP had suggested — he probably got most of them delivered to his kitchen that morning. Instead, I grabbed a $5 bushel of Thai chiles still on the branch, and they’ve been firing up my food ever since, both cut fresh and in a fiery ginger-garlic-vinegar base that I made.
[Click to enlarge]: From left: Red tofu curry with Cosecha Farms’ Jimmy Nardello peppers; Jimmy Nardello peppers atop tomato-avo toast, on Pinyon seeded sourdough.
On the way back to the car, I stopped by The Eddy, where noodle wizard Michael Glazer was dropping off batches of his Mission Rose Pasta. (I wrote this feature about him during the pandemic.) We traded comments on each other’s Melin hats, and then I snagged a loaf of Pinyon seeded sourdough, some sort of cucumber soda, and a jar of dan dan sauce by Chinese Laundry Kitchen. “That goes on everything,” said the woman at the register after selling Roberta’s frozen pizzas to a hipster dad from L.A. “Especially on his pasta.”
I’d spent about $100 in my hour or so of mostly aimless wandering, but my bags were full, and my memories of the market and my old ‘hood were refreshed. Maybe you’ll even see me at the new spot on Saturday.
A Farmer Dinner, Anyone?
While visiting with Jeremy Tummel at La Paloma to report a different story this week, he told me that they hosted a goodbye happy hour of sorts for the farmers that Saturday afternoon. About 30 showed up, and Tummel said they gave some emotional speeches. They also told him that restaurants rarely invited them to be speak or even be recognized.
Jeremy and I both agreed that should change, that restaurants should consider hosting “Farmer Dinners” more regularly. They’d function like winemaker dinners, with farmers discussing the stories behind each ingredient. I think people would dig it. I’ll volunteer to moderate the conversations as needed. Who’s in?
From Our Table
Here are some stories you may have missed:
- Lauren Chiou reported from a fundraising dinner in Montecito with legendary chef Alice Waters.
- Roman Trovato got the squeeze on the latest developments at the Juice Ranch.
- Here’s my feature on Jesse and Avery Cloutier’s wine brand Sea Creatures, a tale of homegrown heroism in the face of cancer and change.
- I’d highly recommend heading up to taste the mezze plates prepared by Julie Simon up at Presqu’ile Winery, which is also hosting a tri-tip grilling competition on October 6. Read about both here.
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