Trip to the Market

A trip to Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market just before the dawn of summer is as much a visit to a showcase of a glorious food as it is an entertaining flight of discovery. Most of the produce is domestic, if not local, and the spring bounty bears a selection of such timely items that at no other time of the year will they be available; the fiddlehead ferns are gloriously verdant, the asparagus from the Garden State just over the bridge is the broad stroke marking the arrival of warm weather and good eating.





The berries are trickling into the market along with stunning English Peas; at no other time will these peas be as good as they are right this very moment. Plump and smelling of newly-shorn grass, the English Pea descends on the market for all to relish. In this case the juice is worth the squeeze; a few minutes to free the gentle, mossy-green peas is all that stands between an ordinary meal and an extraordinary episode of epicurean food-gasm.



Stop in Jack McDavid's Down Home Diner for a pallet-energizing breakfast and honest study in good food, done right. The diner opens an hour before the market, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the Corn Hoe Cakes with a tall glass of "moo."