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A great piece of advice for those of you buying produce from an individual at a card table; if they’re selling bananas and you’re not in South of the Equator then those fruits and veggies ain’t farm fresh.
But that doesn’t mean that every vendor is as unscrupulous as that fraud. Such a situation is proved over and over again at Rochester’s Public Market. If its a farmers market you’re looking for then this isn’t it (I would suggest Madison, WI, prepare to have your mind blown and conservative ideals assaulted). No, this is a PUBLIC MARKET meaning they sell fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, coffee, bread, hats, toys, homemade soap and I’m sure if you looked behind all the buildings maybe even some herbs currently legal only in Washington and Colorado. Unlike a lot of cash only markets they also accept food stamps, decide for yourself what that means but my experiences there have been great.
Saturday is by far the busiest day so I’ll start my recount there. I walked in to what looked like to me was an older industrial park, similar to the meat packing district in Chicago. On the North side of the market are brick and mortar shops. I stopped at the first one to grab a cup of coffee, roasted in town and great quality by the way. Them went in search of breakfast. I kept seeing these breakfast sandwiches with runny egg, crispy bacon and perfectly melted cheese all on a fresh brioche roll, and just as I was about to mug someone of theirs I spotted the sign outside of a bakery that said simply “breakfast sandwiches”. Concise, direct, simple… my kind of advertising. This bakery is about pastry, and fresh bread; it seemed to me that the “breakfast sandwiches” were an afterthought. Regardless of being outside of their core business it was great; the exact food I needed to put me in to mood to shop for food.
There are 3 structures, basically just a metal breezeway, outside that most of the vendors set up their shops. Most are seasonal and local, meaning NY state. There are some specialty products you can’t find in stores i.e. specific varieties of mushrooms, honey, and lettuce. The only issue I had was that it was packed, but hey it’s a public market what do you expect?
Moving inside… The South end of the market has vendors requiring refrigeration for their products. There were some bright spots in here and then there were some particularly disturbing scenes. I would advise that if you are going to buy meat from this place choose carefully, very carefully. Look at the product, if you can smell it, move on. Look at the coolers, can you see a fog, yes, keep walking. As for seafood, I won’t go into detail but take my word AVOID AT ALL COSTS. That being said, the fresh pasta (ravioli, gnocchi, tortellini) is fantastic and the dried varieties there are amazing,
All in all I would put it as more of a fun activity that a destination for food but I have planned multiple meals around what I’ve found there too so it all comes to down to being careful and picky.