Food Trucks At Our Market: Market Update

One of the best ways to experience a culture is through its food. That’s one of the main reasons why our family avoids chain restaurants, both at home and when travelling abroad. Food is like a window into a culture and every culture has its specialties that are just waiting to tempt and entice you, waiting to delight and surprise you, waiting to be discovered and explored, waiting to be sampled and treasured….

There are often line-ups for food
truck fare, but the wait is worth it!

One of the best ways to discover the specialties of a region, a foreign country or a different culture is to ask around. If you are wandering the streets and see a lineup of local people at a restaurant or a market stall or at a food truck, ask a few people in the lineup what’s being served. Ask them what their favourite item is. And ask them where else they like to eat. This advice can be as good as or better than any published review, up to date guide book tip, recommendation from a concierge or taxi driver (who may get a kick backs for referrals), or online reviews.

And one of the best ways to find great food for a decent price, both at home and abroad, is at a local market. Chances are that the food that’s being prepared is made from fresh, in-season ingredients… and often those ingredients are sourced locally. So you are supporting the local economy, tasting great food and getting tremendous insight into a culture.

The Southwest Edmonton Farmers’ Market is very proud to be offering up tremendous local fare this year. Part of our vision of the market is that it be more than simply a way for people in our community to connect with local food producers and buy fresh produce and handicrafts. Rather, we would like it to be a destination of sorts. A place where community bonds are strengthened. Where the local economy thrives. And where the community spirit comes alive. Food Trucks are an essential part of our community-minded vision. There's nothing like bringing friends, family and neighbours together over a casual meal in a vibrant, fun setting where there is a lot going on.

Food trucks are rather new to the dining scene in North America. Like mobile kitchens on wheels, they serve up great, often gourmet food, quickly and from their roadside, mobile location. And Edmonton's food truck scene is heating up! Though we are still in the recruiting stages, I wanted to give you a sneak peak at what food truck fare you can expect to sample at our market.

Starting May 15th, make Wednesday evenings a dinner out for your family. Come out and enjoy food from...

Try some great gourmet comfort food at the bright orange Bully Truck

Bully Food Truck: Wendy & Dean proudly proclaim that they're heightening awareness around the issue of bullying… and going along with that theme, they offer to take your lunch money and turn it into good quality gourmet comfort foods! Think sumptuous food offerings like Mac & Cheese, Poutine with Sausage Gravy, Turkey Burgers, Fresh Vegetable Salad topped with Smoked Meat and Black Garlic Aeoli, Pulled Pork Grilled Cheese Sandwich... all featuring food providers at our market! Check them out online at Bully Food Truck Inc. or on their Bully Truck Facebook Page. (We're quite excited that they plan to include food from growers and producers at our market in their menu! That will add so much to the sense of community at our market, and help to establish it as a unique destination for our market shoppers.)

Little Village Food Truck: Theo will be serving up delicious Greek food. Check out his website for photos... Little Village Food Truck website

Fat Franks: Long before food trucks were an item on the trendy food scene, there were vendors like Darren at Fat Franks offering up a favourite North American staple: the infamous grilled hot dog! Top your dog with some of the 60 condiments he'll have on hand... items like onions, olives, sauerkraut, 12 different mustards, numerous hot sauces from mild to wild, corn relish, pickles, jalepenos, hot peppers... and try a customer favourite: the Avenue Dog, topped with Canadian cheddar and bacon.

The Pink Kernel: Shirley & Anthony will be offering great items to round out your meal like mini donuts, Hawaiian Ice, freshly squeezed lemonade, novelty ice cream and bottled beverages.

The food truck trend is sweeping across North America and bringing wonderfully fresh and inventive foods to its streets and city markets. These mobile kitchens offer up really creative, extremely delicious, often very gourmet foods, and are an exciting new “must try” experience on the culinary landscape. Come to our market to experience it for yourself… your tastebuds will thank you! Bring your families down on Wednesdays, starting May 15th and (even better perhaps!!) you won’t have to cook that mid-week meal! Stay tuned for more updates as our 2013 market slowly, but surely, comes together...


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Such Inspiration can be found in Farmers' Markets Around The World

With Spring Break around the corner, I thought I'd post something about travelling and market culture...

A pineapple vendor in Bangkok prepares a bag of diced pineapple with a
wooden skewer for eating right there, on the spot.

A juice & tea stand in Thailand displays the fruit, such as very tiny lemons and
 bright pink dragon fruit that can be juiced into delectable drinks on site...
served not in a cup, but in a plastic bag with handles and a straw!

Everywhere we have travelled, we have encountered farmers’ markets. Some are little more than trucks pulled to the side of a road, or crates stacked in a dark alleyway. They serve very simple fare. Others have festival-like atmospheres and are the sites of lots of activity and organized family fun. Some literally take over roadways with a sense of vibrant, untamed chaos. And some have permanent stalls with neat corridors, concrete floors with roofs overhead and elaborate displays. 

Every market has its own flavor, its own mix of vendors and patrons, and its own sense of character and identity.

Seattle's Pike Place Market has a rooftop garden over its sign,
planted up with tulips and a wide variety of permanent
 vendors, like these fish mongers, inside.

Street vendors set up in the most innocuous places in Bangkok, sandwiched between parked cars or down crooked, dark and dingy back alleys. Though there are permanent stalls on the sidewalks, there are opportunistic, mobile ones too that take advantage of any available space, and of any of the changing, popular spots.

Yup! In the top left hand corner of this photo there are fish
flying over the market shoppers' heads.

In Thailand, at night, the markets come alive, taking over the streets, forcing 4 lane roadways to become congested, but vibrant, places of street market commerce, allowing only 3 wheeled tuk-tuks and motorcycles to pass through. Walking through the streets at night, after the heat of the day has dissipated and the daily torrential rains have washed everything clean, is a unique experience. It is after about 9pm that the city truly comes alive.

In the dark recesses of this basement market in Singapore,
you can see bundles of yard-long Asian green beans,
bundled up and on display at this stall

In this picture are plastic crates loaded to their brims with sugar cane,
wonderfully scented limes, intensely fragrant lemongrass
bundles, gigantic Habiscus flowers, green figs and red beets.

Sometimes it’s just not enough to see artfully displayed fish and seafood on pristine beds of crushed ice… the fish mongers at Seattle’s Pike Place Market have to hurl fish over your head, playing a slippery game of catch in the hallways of the market. That definitely adds a strange element of entertainment value to the experience!

Portland is known for its many terrific microbreweries. Rogue is one of them
and they are regular vendors at Portland's "Saturday Market" (which,
coincidently, runs Saturdays and Sundays down by the river). With their
very artistic labels, they make a wonderful display at their market stall.
And yes, you can purchase beer there and drink it on site.

In Singapore, basement markets in Chinatown are strictly utilitarian places to shop for fresh meat, poultry and produce, and yet, lit by harsh fluorescent light, they are beautiful in their own bare way. I love the way that foreign markets introduce you to strange and wonderful edible things like these chewy hibiscus flowers with a somewhat raisiny flavour (the burgundy things in the bin below), beans more than three feet long (folded and twisted and bound in elastics), and deep purple sugarcane stalks (the banded stalks below).

Brightly coloured spring tulips, crammed into buckets, form a
beautiful display at the Pike Place Market in Seattle.

An Egyptian vendor creates an amazingly balanced wall of fruits and
veggies at his stall in Cairo.

No matter where you go, there is such artistry in the way items are displayed…

• in the arrangements of the fruits and vegetables in colourful triangular towers
• in the scrunching together of buckets, filled to the brim with fresh cut spring flowers 
• in the artful display of spices, poured into pyramids resting precariously in bowls
• in the tantalizing racks of glittering wind catchers, their polished metal surfaces catching your eye as you saunter by
• in the sheer volume of a barrel of crushed dried hot chilies in a farmers’ market in Chile
• and in a row of microbrewery beer bottles, with creatively designed labels and catchy, fun names lined up on a counter. 

Whimsical wind chimes made of twisted, cut and reshaped cutlery
dangle from the frame of a vendor's tent in Portland.

Traveling to farmers markets wherever you go around the world always provides unique insights into the culture through which you are travelling, adventuring and vacationing.  

Gigantic baskets of fresh and crushed, dried hot chile peppers are waiting for
market shoppers in Santiago, Chile.

By going to local markets, you get to see things from the ground level... what a culture values, the things that are important for sustaining it, what it regards as beautiful or as delicious (no matter how extreme or strange it may seem to you), and what it sees as humorous and fun.

When vacationing, be it within Alberta, across North America or abroad, I encourage you to seek out the local farmers’ market and see what’s there. It is sure to be an enriching, tasty, lively, eye-opening experience!

What have you seen that you loved, that piqued your curiosity, or that surprised you in markets that you have experienced on your travels? 
Please share your experiences here. I'd love to travel some more, vicariously, through your comments....

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Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee