My Inconvenient Truth: A Day Trip to the Central NY Regional Market
Posted by Neil Brody Miller on April 24, 2010
It’s been eight months since I moved outside of Syracuse, and even longer since I last visited the Central NY Regional Market. So although I was looking forward to today’s visit, I have to be honest and admit that I had some mixed feelings. I love the fact that the Regional Market has been operating continuously since 1933, is open on Saturdays throughout the winter, and is supposedly New York State’s largest market. Nice local history, and very convenient, at least when I was living in the city. But I was also a bit uneasy about the stacks of bananas, oranges, and assorted out-of-season fruits and vegetables I knew I would find at the market, which are trucked in and/or flown across the continent from Florida and California and places beyond. That’s not regional in any meaningful sense of the word, especially since much of this produce is identical to and more expensive than the produce sold in area supermarkets.
Still, it was a gorgeous, sunny morning, I hadn’t visited the market in months, and the drive from New Woodstock in my gas-sucking 1995 Subaru wasn’t exactly eco-friendly, either. Besides, I was looking forward to seeing some bright Spring flowers, of which there were plenty, and was hoping to run into Marty Butts, the owner of Small Potatoes Sales & Marketing, or at least to check out some of the producers Marty works with, especially Flour City Pasta, about which I had heard great things.
I clearly wasn’t the only person who thought it would be a nice day to visit the market. In fact, the first thing I encountered was a bottleneck of people trying to get into the first building, as the floor space was literally packed with shoppers moving slowly from vendor to vendor, eyeing stalls stocked full of out-of-state citrus and last season’s aged apples, and the occasional table of Amish baked goods.
Thankfully, things thinned out a bit in Building B, which is where many of the truly local, or at least regional, farmers and producers were congregated, and where I met some wonderful folks and purchased some terrific products.
For starters, I sampled the latest Treleaven wines from Kings Ferry Winery, including their 2008 Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc, and their 2009 Gewurztraminer and Semi-Dry Riesling. Although it was difficult to get a good sense of the wines from the thimble-sized samples, the Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc exhibited varietally correct cherry, and smoky, berry fruit flavors, respectively, although I thought both wines were noticeably light-bodied. I wasn’t wowed by the 2009 Gewurztraminer, either, although this may have been due to the near impossibility of enjoying the aromas, which for Gewurztraminer are essential. But the 2009 Semi-Dry Riesling offered up a nice, round mouthful of lemon-lime and melon fruit backed up by crisp acidity and a stony minerality.
Across the way a vendor by the name of Finger Lakes Family Farms displayed a broad range of products from a number of farmers and producers. I picked up a nice head of hydroponically grown Finger Lakes Fresh Boston lettuce, a brand owned by Challenge Industries of Ithaca, which employs individuals with disabilities, as well as some freshly harvested, locally grown spinach and a very tasty Old Fashion Granola from Adas Pastries of Ovid. The real find, however, was a delicious, soft goat cheese called Olive Bianco produced by Hawthorne Valley Farm, a Hudson Valley dairy every bit as good as Lively Run Goat Dairy, which Finger Lakes Family Farms also had available for sale.
From there, things just kept getting better. Rock Hill Bakehouse of Glens Falls, NY – near Saratoga Springs – offered some of the best artisanal breads I have yet seen in Syracuse. I have nothing against Pastabilities’s stretch bread, or venerable local institutions like the Columbus and Di Lauros bakeries. But we could definitely use a world-class artisanal bakery in Syracuse of the quality of Rock Hill Bakehouse, or Geneva’s Normal Bakery, or Buffalo’s Five Points Bakery.
What else. Let’s see, a very, very good ash-ripened, Valencay-style pyramid goat cheese called Eclipse from R & G Cheese Makers of Cohoes, NY, near Albany; and some delicious, exotic sprouts and baby garlic mustard greens from Dancing Turtle Farms of Ithaca.
The highpoint of the trip, however, was undoubtedly Flour City Pasta, a Rochester-area company that produces truly extraordinary, hand made dry pastas using organic ingredients, locally grown and milled flours (for the Whole-Wheat and Emmer flour pastas), imported Italian brass dies, and traditional Old World techniques. I waited nearly 20 minutes to be served, there were so many customers in line, but I felt like a kid in a candy store. Jon Stadt, the proprietor of Flour City Pasta, is clearly obsessed with pasta making, because he produces some of the most beautiful, artisanal dry pastas I have ever seen. I bought the Sweet Potato Pappardelle, which Jon says is his best-selling pasta, and can’t wait to try it out tomorrow night with browned butter, chopped walnuts, and Pecorino Romano, but I was equally tempted by the Wild Mushroom Fettuccini and the Lemon Pepper Fettucini, which seemed a clear favorite.
If there was any downside to the day, it was the realization of the distances many of these producers traveled to get to the Regional Market, and how difficult it would be to reconcile my purchases with a commitment to buy local. By my estimate, one producer I purchased from traveled 150 miles each way to set up his table, while the average distance traveled by these vendors was roughly 100 miles each way, which is hardly local and barely regional by any fair estimation. And then there was my own 45 minute drive into the city, and the 45 minute drive home. So no one was winning any awards for sustainability. Then again, I didn’t even look at the produce from Florida and California, and everything I purchased came either from a local farmer or a small, family-owned business. But perhaps I’m just rationalizing.
Comments
4 Responses to “My Inconvenient Truth: A Day Trip to the Central NY Regional Market”Leave a comment, and if you'd like your own picture to show up next to your comments, go get a gravatar!
Hi Neil –
Recently discovered your blog via your reprints in the Caz
Republican — am enjoying it! I love attending local markets
but for some reason have never made it to the Regional Market.
I think nothing, however, of driving the hour+ it takes me
to get to the Ithaca Farmers’ market several times a season,
at least. Living in CNY, it may be necessary to redefine or
broaden “regional” and “local,” at least in the short term. Hopefully
this’ll shift as awareness shifts.
Hi Jennifer,
I am wrestling with this issue. Living in a sparsely populated, rural area necessitates a lot of driving, and I don’t think there is any getting around that basic fact. But buying a small cheese from an artisanal cheesemaker who drove 150 miles to get to the Regional Market is something I need to think about. It’s better than buying a similar cheese at Wegmans that was imported from France, especially if the quality is comparable and I’m buying directly from the producer. Still, that’s a lot of mileage. Buying local and supporting local food producers without becoming a zealot seems unavoidably to involve moral conundrums and compromises. I still like an occasional Florida orange in the middle of winter, and look forward to visiting the Ithaca Farmers Market in the next week or two just for the fun of it.
Perhaps there is a way for those of us living out in the boonies to communicate with each other and carpool to these “regional markets,” to minimize the environmental impact. A localized network of sorts for moderate environmentalists and Slow Foodies who want to eat well, buy local, and support local food producers without becoming fanatics, or living exclusively on root vegetables, cabbage, kale, and eggs from November through April.
I think a network of moderate environmentalist, boonies-living,
buy-local-supporting, carpooling folks is a great idea! Any ideas for
how to form one?
On a slightly different note, I don’t know if your interest in
“local” includes local literary efforts, but this Thurs., April
29 at 7pm in the Cazenovia Library the local writers’ group is
doing a reading from their recently published chapbook, to which
the public is invited. You’re a terrific writer — just
thought I’d throw this out to you.
Thanks for the heads up about the Cazenovia Writers Group reading. See you there.