Greenmarket Profile with Rockefeller Plaza Greenmarket
A midtown lunch often evokes images of a business lunch meeting or grabbing a gyro from your corner street cart, but is usuallyWith so many business suits, laptop cases, grey sidewalks and tall, grey buildings in Midtown, most people would be hard pressed to believe that a plentiful greenmarket, on par with Union Square, lies in the center of it.
Midtown is known for its quick and easy food carts, not its fresh produce. To disprove that myth, walk over to Rockefeller Plaza between 50th and 51st Street (East of 5th Avenue,) to check out the Rockefeller Greenmarket. Having begun its season on July 23rd, it is open from 8AM-6PM, Wednesday to Friday, until August 29th.
With around eight stalls on any given day there are ample options to create a fresher, more organic midtown lunch. On Wednesdays, Greenmarket stalwarts Red Jacket Orchard and Migliorelli Farms bookend a selection that includes two bakeries (Bread Alone, Meredith Bread,) a cheese maker (Valley Sheppard Creamery,) and jams from Beth’s Farm Kitchen in Hudson Valley. Meanwhile, vegetables, pickles and sandwiches for lunch are available from Katchkie Farms…
Also present is Elizabeth Ryan, a 30-year veteran of the city’s greenmarkets, whose Breezy Hill Orchard and Cider Mill are part of 18 markets throughout the course of a week. According to Elizabeth, Rockefeller Greenmarket is unlike those up in Inwood and across the bridge in Sunnyside where people are shopping to cook for families. Instead, hungry workers eager for lunch crowd the market as they sample cheese, nosh on mini pies or buy a pound of yellow plum tomatoes. With so much demand, we wonder why this greenmarket doesn’t last longer, a sentiment shared by most customers.
Still, the popularity of this greenmarket will lead to many successful years to come, especially now that the world of eating is taking on a new form. As Elizabeth Ryan points out, “Twenty years ago, we were down at the World Trade Center and guys were leaving work in suits with computer bags—no one wanted to take fresh strawberries or peaches on the train. Now they do.”
With a month left in Midtown, Rockefeller Greenmarket is a welcome addition we’ll be hungrily awaiting for next year.
Until we eat again,
Restaurant Girl
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