New Market: South Village Market

The short version:
Fresh sweet corn made its first appearance this week at the brand new South Village Greenmarket on Downing Street and Sixth Avenue. A lush array of onions, especially the red cipollinis were stars in the savory peach salad with cilantro, lime, honey, sweet corn and arugula.


The long version:

Though the brand new South Village Greenmarket is fairly small in its beginning stages, with about seven producers in its second week of existence, the quality and variety of produce is impressive. The gracious farmers at Madura farms had a great-looking array of onions, for one thing. Dan Madura talked me through the beautiful varieties, explaining their progeny, including one Italian onion variety that was grown from seed given to his father by an Italian soldier during WWII.

Also available at the South Village Market in abundance: sweet corn of several varieties, yellow peaches, white peaches, a great spectrum of greens including kale, collards, a particularly nutty and spicy arugula, cousa squash (covered in last week's Union Square Demo), summer squash, basil, cilantro, dill, and a host of honey and maple syrup products from New England Farms, from Granville, New York.

Rather than being nestled in a park or sprawling over an open parking lot like most Greenmarket venues, the South Village Greenmarket is set up as a string of tents on the wide sidewalk of Downing Street in the southern section of the West Village. It gives the market a pleasant impromptu feel, and many shoppers were passersby that came on the market unexpectedly.

This made the demo a pleasure, too, because many of the samplers were not planning a Greenmarket visit, but just happened on demonstration tent and took peach samples on their way to other errands.

My thanks to Jonathan Geballe and Jessica Douglas for inviting me to come demonstrate the great possibilities from the purveyors of the South Village Market.

The South Village Market is open from 8:00 to 4:00 on Sundays, on the stretch of Downing Street between 6th Avenue and Houston. It's about four blocks south of the West 4th subways station.