Santa Monica’s Sunday-Morning Party

The Sunday Santa Monica farmers market is quite different from the city’s three other markets: It’s largely a social and recreational event, where families stroll and lounge on the lawn, listening to music and waiting in line for crepes. The produce component is strong, however, with a roster of good growers.

It’s not easy to find really flavorful tomatoes at this time of year, but Sunday Gale Shacklett was selling fabulously sweet Cherisita cherry tomatoes grown in greenhouses in Ridgecrest, in the upper Mojave Desert, along with regular-size Blitz tomatoes, a Dutch hybrid. Production is slow, she said, so she’ll come only every other week for the next month until a new crop matures.

It’s even rarer to find farmers market fish vendors who actually catch what they sell. Cecilia Milman had cans of top-quality tuna and salmon from fish hand-caught and handled with care by her husband, Mike, on his boat, the Triggerfish. The personal touch shows in the superior taste of all their offerings, including chunk, smoked and packed with olive oil.

In January Erich Kreidler, a German-born engineer, and two partners bought most of the highly regarded Herbel Farm of De Luz; Jerry and John Herbel now spend most of their time in Palm Springs. At Sunday’s market, Kreidler sold tasty organic Moro blood oranges and excellent Fuerte avocados.

Luis Guevara of Santa Maria offered nice sweet snow peas and sugar snap peas, along with broccoli, cauliflower and green-leaf lettuce. Nakamura Farm of Oxnard had baby spinach, arugula, leeks and large, sweet gold beets.

Bill Jenks of Riverside displayed diverse herb plants, from African Blue basil to chamomile; this Sunday he’ll have 40 varieties of tomato plants. His wife, Barbara, showed off impossibly cute hand-fed Holland Lops rabbits, five to seven weeks old. At $50 each, they’re for pets, not eating; Bill said that they won’t even sell them on Easter weekend, to avoid impulsive purchasers.

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Santa Monica (Main Street) farmers market, 2640 Main St. at Ocean Park Boulevard, Sundays 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.