Food of Many Lands Makes Farmers Bazaar Colorful Place to Shop

In the busy aisles, where the common Italian squash rubs skin with the rare bitter melon and alluring malanga roots tease the prosaic Romaine lettuce, North County yuppies also mingle with the Third World.

But exotic produce for the dinner tables of America’s newest immigrants and natural foods for the upwardly mobile are not the only attractions at the Farmers Bazaar, downtown San Diego’s produce emporium.

Inside, the dazzling array of fruit colors--bright reds, every shade of green, vivid yellow and bright orange--gleam like jewels, row upon row, mound upon mound. Like their vegetable counterparts, these waxed and polished beauties, shining brightly inside the cavernous hall, are affordable and palatable riches.

Carefully crafted exhibits of fruits and vegetables-- always piled neatly and never just thrown together--lure weekly throngs of shoppers who are looking for bargains, quality and foreign foods that are not found in conventional supermarket bins.

Situated in San Diego’s produce district on L Street, between 7th and 8th avenues, the Farmers Bazaar adds soul and form to an otherwise gray and lifeless part of the city. Six days a week, Tuesday through Sunday, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., a diverse group of people from every ethnic and economic group imaginable parades to the market to shop.

Culinary Secret

This culinary island could very well be San Diego’s most delicious and best-kept secret for the past 11 years.

On a recent weekday afternoon, an elderly woman who was shopping for produce commented on the ethnic diversity of the crowd shopping in the market.

“There are all kinds of people in here, from every corner of the world. They didn’t leave their traditional dishes behind when they moved to America,” said the woman, who wanted to be identified only as Nina.

Ramon and Norma Ortiz say they shop at the Farmers Bazaar because the produce stalls, juice bar and little restaurants remind them of the village markets in their native Guatemala. Joan Bryce, an Encinitas resident and “middle level executive,” says that she shops here “because the low prices help me make the payments” on her Cadillac Cimarron.

Inside, the aroma from the five ethnic restaurants, fragrance of fruits, vegetables and spices and the unmistakeable smell of fresh fish mix into a pleasant potpourri for the senses. Ordinary vegetables like potatoes and onions are as available as the bitter melons, taro and yucca roots, bok choy and daikon that satisfy ethnic appetites.

“Everything that you put out is sold,” said Jessie Moreno, who runs one of the vegetable stalls. “There are so many different people who shop here that we have no trouble selling the vegetables. I sell some vegetables that even I don’t know what they are.”

Moreno said that each of the two major produce merchants sells between 25 and 40 boxes daily of any given fruit or vegetable. From about 5 a.m. until past closing time, the loading dock is a beehive of activity as produce trucks from as far away as Stockton, El Centro and even Arizona unload their wares.

Mundane staples like carrots and corn can be bought at any supermarket in town. But the Farmers Bazaar sells those and more. Take, for example, the exotic bitter melon.

Bitter melon does not look like a melon at all. In fact, it is a vegetable, not a fruit. It is lime-colored with a bumpy skin and looks like an Italian squash plagued by a bad case of acne. Bitter melon is a main source of Vitamin C in Southeast Asia, and Vietnamese families boil or cut it into thin slices that are scrambled into an omelet.

Mainstays of Far East

Like bitter melon, bok choy and daikon are mainstays in other Asian cultures. Bok choy is a type of Chinese cabbage. Daikon is a large, white Japanese radish and both are common in Far East cuisines. Taro root is cooked and pounded into a paste called poi, which is eaten with the fingers in Hawaii.

The Asian staples, though, are overshadowed because the 15 stall owners, one of whom operates a barber shop, realize that a large percentage of their customers are Latino and they go to great lengths to satisfy Latino shoppers.

Loudspeakers hanging from massive redwood trusses that hold up the century-old building are usually blaring music from a Mexican radio station. During June, the merchants pitch in to pay for strolling Mariachis to entertain customers on Sundays from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

But the courting doesn’t stop there. The produce bins are filled with specific fruits and vegetables that satisfy Latino palates, whether they come from Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean. Nopales (cactus), yucca and malanga roots, four varieties of bananas--plantain, apple, pear and macho--and tamarinds are available for those expatriates hungry for homeland dishes.

No Poke Salad

Closer to home, regional favorites like mustard greens can also be bought at the market. However, don’t expect to find poke salad. Despite the Farmers Bazaar’s eclectic inventory of produce, some Southerners will bemoan the absence of the wild plant that was romanticized by singer Tony Joe White (“looks something like a turnip green”) in a popular song of the early 1970s.

Sharing the aisles amid this Third World cornucopia are garden fresh American yuppies, some of whom come from as far away as North County to buy cheese, nuts and seafood, but they have to satisfy their appetite for pate some place else, because the market does not sell meat.

Overseeing this menagerie of restaurants and produce stalls is George May, who came out of retirement nine years ago to manage the Farmers Bazaar. May, 67, proudly tells a visitor, “We not only have it, but we sell it for at least 25% cheaper than the supermarkets.”

Richard Blumberg, whose nom de fruit is Richard the Fruitman, can vouch for the lower prices. Blumberg, 41, has developed a sort of cult following in the county as a result of his door-to-door fruit business. On a recent weekday morning, a gleeful Blumberg was at the market buying cantaloupes at three for a dollar, which he planned to sell to appreciative housewives for a dollar apiece.

Tom Hom, San Diego businessman, developer and former city councilman, owns the 100-year-old building that was formerly owned by Western Metal Works. At the turn of the century, the cavernous structure housed a livery stable and carriage house. When they were youths, Hom and his brother used to sell Saturday Evening Post and Liberty magazines to Western Metal workers.

“A lot of people don’t know about it (Farmers Bazaar), but after taking a financial loss during the first five years, we’re doing very well now,” said Hom. “Many people told me that nobody would go down there to shop, but we took a chance, knowing that everyone is always looking for bargains in produce.” Food, though, is not the only item sold at the market. The mezzanine, once a hayloft, houses a jewelry store, an amusement area that includes three pool tables, and a clothing store.

Rents for bazaar stalls range from $100 to $2,000 per month, according to May.

Not surprisingly, because of the volume of business that it creates, the market has sprouted a couple of sub-industries. On every business day, trucks, many of them driven by retirees, park alongside the huge dumpster near the loading docks and load up with flattened cardboard boxes, which are recycled.

Others crowd around to salvage good fruit and vegetables that are removed when bins are restocked and thrown away as surplus by the produce merchants.

“With our operation, we throw out an awful lot of good stuff,” May said. “So, we don’t object to people taking the stuff as it’s being loaded in the dumpster.”

May says that it is common knowledge that many of these fruits and vegetables that would otherwise end up in a landfill instead are sold door-to-door and to mom and pop markets.

“We don’t try to keep track of whether they sell it or not. We just ask that they not sell it in our area.”