As Penny noted in the last post on the Exploratorium, there is no Farmer's Market at the Ferry Building on Fridays and we arrive too late on Saturday to make the big one. There are
Farmers Markets on Tuesday and Thursday from 10 am to 2 pm and every day the
Ferry Building MarketPlace is open ("minimal hours": M-F 10-6; Sat 9-6; Sun 11-5). The MarketPlace is within the Ferry Building and consists of a variety of shops and some restaurants, including the
Acme Bread Company (the one that supplies Chez Panisse) and the
Cowgirl Creamery. The hours posted for the Acme Bread Company are 6:20 am to 7:30 pm.
One of the restaurants is
The Slanted Door, a Vietnamese restaurant whose chef has a cookbook out on
Vietnamese Home Cooking. Somehow I feel that a chef who has written a cookbook can't be all that bad -- it must be a librarian's bias. He also has other restaurants including an
Out the Door kiosk at the Ferry Building and
Heaven's Dog (modern Chinese cuisine and pre-Prohibition era cocktails) that sounded interesting but is closed for renovation.
There is also a Sur la Table and a Rancho Gordo bean shop. A lot of the shops must be holes in the wall, like the one for
Heath Ceramics and
The Gardener, but that is OK since we won't be buying pots to take home. Unless, that is, we are interested in some 5-piece place settings like the
Olima Full Dinnerware Set.
How long do you suppose it will take us to browse through the MarketPlace? Do we want to do it on a Tuesday when there is also a Farmers Market? What do we do with what we buy? Do we go to
Yank Sing at Rincon Plaza for dim sum while we are there? Juan thinks it is overpriced and suggested Lai Hong Lounge in Chinatown instead. But I like the idea of the little carts so you can see what you order first, although their
gallery of deem sum makes it easier.
Aaargh. What's up with the comments? Just posted something and it disappeared....or maybe it went to be approved.
ReplyDeleteSo, to write it all again. I love Heath Ceramics. Really beautiful, really expensive stuff. Oh well. When I win the lottery.
Also, I don't think it will take you that long to go through the Ferry Plaza. I find most of it is very pretty to look at, but rather unpractical or too expensive (eye candy for food-people, basically). On market day, perhaps you'd have a bit more...
Finally, the teacher for my food writing class, who used to be an editor for Cook's Illustrated, spilled the beans on a blind taste-test they did on different brands of beans (I can't remember the type of bean it was), including the fancy ones from Rancho Gordo. You know who one (over and over again)? Goya.
So just stick your hands in the bean barrels, don't actually buy any.
Goya's big red Bola beans are the best but they aren't cheap ($4 plus a pound). Rancho Gordo specializes in the unusual beans and they will probably taste a little different from what Americans are used to. I like the pretty ones...
DeleteOh, I also meant to say I like your header photo! :)
ReplyDeleteYou'd better like the header photo, Camila! And if you get a double stroller will Mom havemto change the header photo.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the shops won't take too long. Although I was there with Mitch and he did not like to shop. I remember small, very crowded, and very expensive. Think there may be too much gloss and not enough grit for us. But we've got to go.