New heart of ‘The City’

On a Saturday summer morning, when the building is surrounded on three sides by local farmers selling their goods under the shade of umbrellas, the scene at San Francisco’s Ferry Building Marketplace unfurls in its full splendor. Sometimes the wind kicks up and it looks as if it’s going to lift the umbrellas like sails and send fresh-picked roses, plums, melons and lemons skittering out into the bay.

The scent of tuberoses and lilies, then peaches and strawberries, cinnamon and smoke wafts over the market. By the time I round the side of the building, I’m already loaded down with the last of the Blenheim apricots, a bouquet of sweet peas and crimson stalks of rhubarb shading to green. I don’t even have a kitchen where I’m staying, but does that stop me?

Some people head for the museum the minute they check into their hotel room, others opt for the luxe shopping street or the flea market. For me, it’s the central market. Whether it’s La Boqueria in Barcelona, San Lorenzo in Florence, the Rialto in Venice, or Nishiki-Koji, the 400-year-old market strung along a pedestrian lane in Kyoto, I can’t stay away.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I paid a visit to the San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace and the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market recently. After years of planning, the first tenants moved into the restored terminal at the foot of Market Street downtown in March 2003. Last summer, only a handful of shops had opened in the elegant high-ceilinged building, so it was hard to picture what it would feel like in full swing.

Now, with shops spilling into the grand aisles, a riot of color and good smells and curiosities filling the cavernous space, it’s hard to remember the sad, neglected space the 1898 Ferry Building once was.

With the marketplace inside and the farmers market outside (Tuesdays, Thursday and Saturdays, with plants and flowers Sundays), the Ferry Plaza has given a new heart to San Francisco. Situated between the bay and the skyscrapers, it rivals even the open-air Cours Saleya market in old Nice for setting.

And like Nice’s market, it’s full of tourists wielding zillions of cameras. Ferry Plaza is as picturesque as they come. But so far, nobody’s sold out. The tenuous balance between the working marketplace and tourism holds. I didn’t see a single postcard shop or anybody selling T-shirts and hats. Nor did I see a great number of people laden with shopping bags the way they are at the Hollywood Farmers Market, for example.

Some purists will tell you, sniffing, that they never go to the Ferry Building. And if you do go, you have to go very early, the only time serious food people go. (In other words, before the hordes descend.)

Inside the building, it feels like a European covered market, with butchers, fishmongers, pastry shops and produce vendors, even a coffee roaster, a caviar purveyor and a wild mushroom stall. This is one-stop shopping of the most glorious kind. You can even take an aperitif at Market Bar.

But what makes the market so alive are the restaurants and places to eat, which include charming pick-up-a-quick-bite spots as well as one of San Francisco’s (and the country’s) top restaurants.

I can’t believe all the things that are for sale at the farmers market outside. One stand sells grass-fed beef. You can find the same game birds that Hoffman Farms sells to top restaurants around the city. There are rustic loaves and the terrific baguettes d’epis (the ones shaped like sheaves of wheat) from Della Fattoria in Sonoma as well as goat cheese, olive oil, olives and freshly caught wild salmon.

Through the crowd, I spy Downtown Bakery and Creamery from Healdsburg in Sonoma County. They’ve got a mess of baked goods for sale, but I already know what I want: the morning sticky buns freckled with cinnamon, an astonishingly reasonable $1.50 each. Oh, and one of the apricot and cherry galettes.

So don’t tell me how expensive the San Francisco farmers market is. It is, and it isn’t, but there’s something affordable and good for every budget.

In fact, there are so many good things to eat, both inside and outside, that the plaza has become a nosher’s paradise.

Hayes Street Grill is selling soft-shell crab sandwiches. Someone else has pulled pork, which smells absolutely wonderful. How much can you eat in one day? Frog Hollow Farm from Brentwood is selling not only its extravagantly scented peaches, but also luscious pastries made with the Farm’s fruit, including heart-shaped Linzer cookies and little pies.

Each and every space invokes the local food scene and shares a common characteristic: quality.

I found the perfect over-the-shoulder shopping bag at the Gardener, a rainbow of hand-woven Guatemalan stripe. I coveted the antique majolica oyster plates at Culinaire and bought two small, slender olive trees at McEvoy Ranch shop. The Marketplace is also home to the remarkable Cowgirl Creamery’s Artisan Cheese Shop, which not only sells award-winning cheeses made at the Point Reyes locale, but has a phenomenal selection of imported and domestic cheeses.

All the tables were taken or I would have tasted a flight of wines at Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, co-owned by Peter Granoff and Debbie Zachareas, the wine director of Bacar restaurant. Taylor’s Refresher, the roadside burger stand in St. Helena which dates from 1949, is here too. It’s the perfect restaurant for kids -- BLT, shakes, fish tacos and great fries.

And you can get some excellent Napa Valley wines to go with Taylor’s famous seared ahi tuna burger with wasabi mayonnaise.

There’s a lovely minimalist Japanese delicatessen called Delica rf1 with platters of stunning-looking salads and other take-out dishes that I didn’t have the chance to try. Even Imperial Tea Court, a tea room that offers more than 200 varieties of Chinese loose-leaf teas, Yixing tea pots and other tea paraphernalia, has a small Chinese lunch menu.

Wall-size rotisserie

But once we caught sight of the wall-size rotisserie with lamb, pork, ducks and chickens turning over the flames at Mistral Rotisserie Provencale, we had to try it. Copious amounts of roasted pork, pork ribs, lamb and chicken, plus green bean salad, roasted new potatoes and ratatouille cost just $50 for four.

When I heard that Tomales Bay’s Hog Island Oyster Company had an oyster bar inside, I made a beeline for it. I used to love to stop by their oyster beds on Tomales Bay where there were a couple of picnic tables by the water and you could order sweetwater and belon oysters by the dozen. It was strictly bring-your-own oyster knives, Chablis and wineglasses.

Hog Island’s Ferry Building oyster bar is a beauty, with spare good looks inside, the bay and a few picnic tables right outside its windows. Oysters are just over $20 a dozen, which is a pretty good deal. I love the small sweetwaters and the even smaller kumamotos, freshly shucked and served chilled, with good bread. They taste as if they were literally pulled from the sea moments before. You can also get a milky, old-fashioned oyster chowder, oysters Rockefeller or Casino, and a grilled cheese sandwich.

The highlight of the Marketplace, though, is the Slanted Door, Charles Phan’s contemporary Vietnamese restaurant with a stunning view of the bay and the spangled lights of the Bay Bridge.

The food is incredibly delicious. It’s also consistent, and comes out fast. The look of the new restaurant is stark and edgy, and the crowd is overwhelmingly young and stylish. The noise level, though is uncomfortably high. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t go back for the wonderful imperial rolls or the Willis Ranch pork ribs in honey-hoisin sauce or the wood-oven roasted Willipa Bay clams with chiles and lemongrass.

We ate and ate -- cellophane noodles with fresh Dungeness crab and, of course, Phan’s signature “shaking beef” made with filet mignon and organic onions.

The wine list offers some terrific choices, and even the desserts are uncommonly interesting, notably mung bean dumplings in spicy ginger soup and an Asian-inflected panna cotta.

It’s somehow ironic that I saw posted in the window at the lovely little (and serious) book shop, Book Passage, a notice that former President Clinton, the ultimate fast-food junkie, would be signing books there the next day.

I hope they gave him lunch.

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Best of the market

All addresses are San Francisco Ferry Building Marketplace at One Ferry Building, San Francisco; www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com

Hog Island Oyster Company, (415) 391-7117. Open for lunch and dinner; closing time varies. Oysters, $22 to $23 per dozen; salads, etc., $6 to $11.

Mistral Rotisserie Provencale, (415) 399-9751. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Spit-roasted poultry and meats, $5.99 to $16.99 per pound.

Slanted Door, (415) 861-8032. Lunch and dinner daily. Dinner entrees (to share), $14.50 to $26.50. www.slanteddoor.com.

Taylor’s Refresher, (866) 328-3663. Open daily from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Burgers and sandwiches. No reservations.