SF Eats: Ferry Building Farmers Market
Really, besides Taqueria Cancun, there isn't a restaurant in SF that I must go to when I'm in town. But I do try to make a point of visiting the Ferry Building Farmer's Market on Saturdays. Yes, it's popular with tourists and can get crowded. But it's still where I've had revelatory encounters with fruits and vegetables, and the location on the bay is just beautiful.
This stand with peaches, nectarines, plums, and pluots is one of my favorites. They have a lot of varieties that one just doesn't encounter in a regular store.
Here's the Dirty Girl stand. These tomatoes were so bright red that they were practically glowing!
The odd shaped tomatoes you get when you buy things from the farmers themselves.
The dapple dandy pluots on the right were so firm, juicy, and bursting with flavor, I just had to get more.
And this time, I got to try even more varieties I'd never tried before! The yellow pluots in the middle were so sweet, it was like sugar. And the orange-y ones at the bottom had a beguiling flavor I just couldn't place, like a whiff of cantaloupe or something different like that.
The produce at this farmer's market usually isn't cheap, but when I ask, would I rather have a $3 nectarine that's brilliant, or a $5 ice cream (there really is no $3 ice cream in SF any more!), I'd probably choose the nectarine!
