Messy and Picky

Last Monday I attended this really awesome event at Reading Terminal Market put on by my employer Fair Food. It was the gathering of dozens of local farmers, dairies, bakeries and value-added producers showing off their wares to hundreds of buyers in the Philly area. It's called Local Grower Local Buyer and this was the 7th wonderful gathering. Bob over at Robert's Market Report got his writeup up promptly. Well, better late than never. Above is Sue Miller of Birch Run Hills Farm which makes some of my favorite cheeses in the land. Her recently reformulated foil-wrapped Birch Run Blue is my current favorite cheese out there. We actually just melted some for an overly decadent sauce for dinner last night. She had samples of her Blue, Alpine and some new fromage blanc samples – one with tarragon, one with honey and salt; the honey and salt was sublime and it's currently unavailable.

Local chocolatier John&Kiras piled up their colorful square boxes filled with little treats for all to peer into.

Market Cafe's canele are among the best single or two-bite items in the entire city. What is a canele? It's this delicious pastry with a just-slightly crispy exterior with a decadent, custardy soft interior. I've had a couple of Market Cafe's canele and they're worth every penny. Check out Gaetano's post on the LGLB event.

Wanna know who also loves the Market Cafe canele? Jose Garces. That's him in the blurry shot above about to shake hands with the garlic man Tom Coulton of Coulton Organics. But more on the Iron Chef in a bit.

Daisy Flour built a mini walled fort showing off their many many varieties of flour. I have some serious baking friends and many of them swear by this stuff. It's expensive, but the lightness of their pastry dough and the high gluten content of their bread flour are the real deal.

Here are the samples at the Birch Run Hills stand. I wanted to eat one sample and just keep going down the line of mini spoons, but I had to keep clicking away.

Mark Skinner is one of my favorite farmers in the area. His 16 varieties of heritage chickens produce the coolest rainbow dozens of eggs you'll ever see. Brown, white, cream, maroonish-pink, speckled, blue-green. They're sooo cool. I always love chatting with him at markets and when he delivers to the farmstand. He was doing double (or was it triple) duty sampling some other stuff including the Apple Tree Goat Farm chevre he's cutting up with that mini cleaver above.

And here's Coulton. He's a character. He's got lots of cool hats, most with feathers in them. Come summer, he'll be bringing dozens of varieties of garlic to market along with his other heirloom varietals of everything under the sun. Here, he's jabbing at the air while holding a Jerusalem artichoke which surround his land – once you plant those, you'll never have to do so again, they're crazy growers.

Keeping in line with local characters with great products, Ryan, the elder brother of the duo behind the best ice cream in the city, Franklin Fountain, was there. They're always coming up with cool new things every year in their Old City shoppe. I hope he went home inspired.

With all this delicious food all around, there had to be something to drink, right? Philadelphia Brewing Company came through with samples of their full lineup of brews.

So let's get back to the newly minted Iron Chef Garces. We knew his head buyer, Adam DeLosso, was gonna be there, but Garces himself showing up was extra cool. Garces is committed to bringing the farm to table in his yet to be named spot, under construction eatery at the Cira Centre. He took a full tour of every single vendor there and stayed well over an hour. Above, he's sampling and taking a look at Shellbark Hollow Farm's chevre (which is delicious!). The sharp chevre is the famous "Obama cheese" people have been requesting all over town since not-yet-President Obama picked up a helping at DiBruno Bros during a campaign stop.

The Geechee Girl Cafe crew fluttered from table to table all night.

Trickling Springs Creamery brought out all kinds of [pasteurized] milk to the event. I've had their buttermilk, whole and chocolate varieties and they're all incredibly rich. Most likely thicker than any kind of pasteurized milk you've had before. Closer to raw milk than store bought ultra-pasteurized milk. If you're scared of raw milk (there's no reason to be scared!), but want a creamier product, search out TSC milk at Whole Foods and Fresh Grocer in Philly. Fair Food might carry some of their stuff down the line.

Here's Ryan trying out some of the colorful, filled chocolate from John&Kira's.

Nicole from Quince and Garces listening attentively.

And yes, there were many PA Dutch vendors there. Here are two of them talking to Coulton. See that feather in his cap? I told you this guy has lots of feather'd caps.

Here's Garces talking to Chris of Common Market Philadelphia, a wholesale consolidator, marketer and distributor of food produced in the Philadelphia region. While Garces has made it clear he wants to pursue local sourcing, the pure volume of his eateries poses logistical problems. People from various local foods organizations are brainstorming to remedy that situation.

Ever wonder how eggs are graded? Coulton brought along an old school egg grader and a big fat goose egg.

And for a parting shot, here's a closeup shot of the brick of Shellbark sharp chevre Pete created. This pesto-tomato-chevre brick is as delicious as it is gorgeous. It's almost a shame to break the brick for serving, but then again, it would be a waste to have it for art's sake so it was eagerly eaten by all those who passed by.

I missed last year's event, but I'd be stupid to miss it next year. I've never heard of an event like this before and I'm not sure an event like this, at this scale, is done in other cities. I'd love to hear about it happening in NYC, DC, Chicago, Boston, LA, SF, Seattle, Portland and elsewhere, but I have no idea. Anybody know? If not, it should be done. If there are people in areas outside of the Philly area who want to do this, get on it. Gather up everyone on a night restaurants aren't too busy in your area, in Philly it's Monday when many eateries are closed, in a nice big space like Philly's RTM (another thing I haven't seen elsewhere is a RTM-esque spot) and have at it. Stand back and marvel as local buyers meet local producers. Good things will happen, I gua-ran-tee it.

A slideshow of the images above and more up on flickr. Click on the slideshow below to see them full screen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 8:53 am and is filed under Events, Reading Terminal Market. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.