Ripeness is all

The Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers’ Market turns 25 this year. Idealistic and over-stimulating (like any twenty-something) it thrives despite its own transparent improbability. One of the first California Certified Farmers’ Markets (there are now over 300) and the first sponsored by a municipality, the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market is the result of quixotic legislation by a governor once called Moonbeam and the otherworldly vision of a city once called the Peoples’ Republic. Did it succumb to its own preciousness? No, Reader, it did not. There are now four markets, pulling in 900,000 people a year. The first doubled in size in one year. The Saturday Market began ten years later, in order to accommodate weekend shoppers and satisfy the post-Alar-apple demand for certified organic produce. The Pico Market, once again in Virginia Park, started across town in 1992. The carnivalesque Main Street Market on Sunday, begun in 1995, has prepared foods, live music and activities for kids.

The Direct Marketing Act of 1978 started it all. It created an open marketing channel—an aqueduct, if you will—between growers and consumers. Instead of getting pennies from a fruit broker for a pound of unripe fruit grown to pack-and-ship standards, farmers could bring small volumes of tree ripened fruit directly to customers for a few dollars a pound. They’re now free to experiment with new or forgotten varieties, so they always have something beguiling for those customers they see every week. But it is more than a visual cornucopia of unusual shapes and unexpected colors. Walk past the stalls and smell the fresh mint, the nectarines, the stalks of yellow ginger and tuberoses. Carla at Mulak Farms may hand you a whole heirloom tomato to pop in your mouth, just to laugh as it spurts through your lips and on to your shirt. Your diffidence gone, you find that the real way to experience the market is through your taste buds, like the chefs do. And there are plenty of them, from over 50 restaurants in L.A. (A couple from Orange County, too, ours!) Market Supervisor Laura Avery, whose voice you hear interviewing the farmers on KCRW’s “Good Food with Evan Kleiman” on Saturday mornings, remembers Nancy Silverton of Campanile and LaBrea Bakery conspicuously selecting her produce in person, rather than using a trucking service, back in 1998. The chefs now have preferred parking and Chef Appreciation Days. The Market will hang their menus in gratitude this month, and hold drawings for dinners donated by the restaurants.

The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market website promises you’ll “meet new and interesting people without even trying.” Quite true. Many will ask you to sign their petitions. The rest will be in strollers. But with a little trying you can buttonhole the farmers themselves, who’ve become experts at the rural-urban interface. Which tomatoes are best for bruschetta? Which melon can I get my toddlers to eat? They might hit five or six markets a week, so they’ve heard it all. You can see them cavorting on the sides of the Big Blue Busses, like shirtless cowboy singers, as part of the Face of California Farming series of photographic portraits commemorating the 25th anniversary. Also, you can catch Barbara Spencer of Windrose Farm and Bill Coleman of Coleman Family Farm at the September 21 panel discussion at the Main Library (7-9 pm, free!) chatting with a local celebrity chef and the renowned obsessive David Karp, the Fruit Detective profiled in the New Yorker in 2002 and one trippy dude. There will be food. See you there.

Chef Rich will guest chef with Pascal Olhats and
Takashi Abe at Tradition by Pascal on September 18,
in the first of three team dinners benefitting
the OC Chapter of The American Institute of Wine & Food.

For details call: 949.263.9400 ext. 1 or 949.715.7243

Eastbluff Shopping Center
2531 Eastbluff
Newport Beach, CA 92660
949.718.9650