EATS
Think Globally and Shop Locally at the Proctor Farmers’ Market in Tacoma
By Meg Van Huygen
Delicious news, everyone! It’s finally that time of year, when the Proctor Farmers' Market shakes off the dead leaves and emerges from its winter cocoon. Since the end of autumn, the event’s been in its sleepy once-a-month mode, but as of March 30th, the party is back to spring and summer hours, which means the market’s happening every weekend once again! Every Saturday through December 2024, at North 27th and North Proctor—across from Knapp’s and the Blue Mouse Theater—you can go for a lovely stroll, say hello to the producers, enjoy live music and street snacks, and meet friendly dogs.
Why is this so exciting? It’s just a farmer’s market, right? Yes, but it’s an important opportunity to buy local food from local producers, and to chat with their smiling local human faces, thereby building connections and community. Why buy groceries from a faceless corporate supermarket based in Atlanta, when you can buy them from your neighbors instead? We should all be doing this whenever possible. It’s about faces.
To help you celebrate the glory of our Pacific Northwestern springtime bounty, here’s a list of my personal favorite vendors at the Proctor Farmers Market. Obviously, you should shop at all of them—this is just a beginner’s guide. Happy spring, y’all! We made it!
Adam’s Mushrooms
GIg Harbor, WA
In addition from to the sheer array of mushroom-based products that Adam and Astrid Deleo offer—from savory seasonings and powders to “magic teas” and tinctures—the number of different KINDS of mushrooms, both dried and fresh, being represented here is all more dazzling. I counted at least twenty varieties on my last visit, all gorgeously displayed: morels, cordyceps, porcini, chanterelles, lobsters, cauliflowers, yellow foots, black trumpets, hedgehogs, candy caps, and many more! I learned so much just from standing there and taking it all in. Also, my partner also made probably the greatest risotto of my entire life from Adams’s dried wild mushroom mix (and hey, I’m a career food writer). I’m treating Adam’s product inventory as a personal checklist, to chip away at slowly and deliciously with each visit.
Blissful Wunders Truffles
Olympia, WA
Brother Bliss is a character, first of all. You can’t miss the guy, with his tie-dye T-shirt and his big ol’ Karl Marx beard—nor should you, because these truffles of his are worldview-changing. For serious. I’m steadfastly not really a chocolate person, usually preferring fruit or caramel flavors in desserts, and I was handing these things out to all my friends like an evangelist, spreading the word far and wide. It’s no mystery why this shit is so good—Bliss makes his chocolates with organic butter, organic cream, and 65 percent cocoa mass chocolate from Cordillera, an organic and certified fair-trade chocolate producer. Favorite truffles of mine include lapsang souchon (smoked black tea), elderflower mead, and almond butter crunch. Bliss has won a ton of awards for his creative world-class truffles, but you’d never know it from his chatty, down-to-earth style. Ask him about the time he hitchhiked across the country with the Phish crew.
Nils’ Magic Kimchi
Puyallup, WA
Speaking of smiling human faces! Nils McKenney wins Pierce County’s Happiest Smiling Face Ever prize that I just made up right now. What a friendly dude. A grad of Seattle’s outpost of Le Cordon Bleu, Chef Nils is a giant fermentation nerd whose talents are focused on making exquisite kimchi. What’s special about this kimchi, aside from being bomb as hell, is that it’s vegan—where many kimchi-makers add dried shrimp, Nils keeps it animal-free with just napa cabbage, garlic, green onion, red chili powder (gochugaru), and salt. (If you can’t make it to the market in person, you can buy his products at Tacoma Boys!) As well, Nils and his wife Rosie are the founders of the Stone Soup Kitchen Collaborative, a nonprofit that feeds homeless and food-insecure people and families and is informed by their firsthand experience with hunger and homelessness. As such, Nils has a lot to say about food and community and is just a generally fascinating person to talk to. Go say hi.
Balloon Roof Baking Company
Fife, WA
Ever since I first tried Balloon Roof’s magnificent crusty-outside/steamy-inside sourdough at Field Bar on Sixth Avenue, served as it was with housemade ricotta and lime curd, it’s been kinda hard to buy bread anywhere else. At around ten bucks a loaf, this stuff is spendy, I’ll admit. But they do it old-world style, using just whole-grain flour, water, salt, and zero sweeteners or preservatives, and it’s all baked on the day you buy it, never in advance. (The bakery’s name, by the way, is a nod to the old balloon-roofed Century Ballroom dance hall in Fife, which burned down in 1964 and hosted the likes of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Keepin’ it local!) This artisan dough is formed by hand and slow-fermented, and a ton of human love and labor goes into each loaf. A luxury item for sure, but man, I’m addicted.
Jan Parker Cookery
Tacoma, WA
Before I’d ever tried her food, Jan Parker’s reputation had preceded her—thanks to Instagram, I’d known her as a well-hailed fixture of both the street food scene in Tac and various ticketed popup dinners (such as Cookin’ on Three Burners, a jam sesh with chefs Jean-Pierre King and Angel Navarro at the Tacoma Sunday Market last month). The daughter of two chefs both born in the Philippines, Jan’s one of the city’s most innovative young chefs, alongside being cool and hilarious and nice, and after graduating with honors from the Culinary School at the Art Institute of Seattle, she’s back in her hometown of Tacoma to show us what she’s got. I caught her in February at the Lincoln District Lunar New Year Festival and was floored by her longannisa (Filipino sweet pork sausage) meatballs with fish sauce and green onions, and I’m a major fan of her vegan chili garlic noodles and banana ketchup short ribs as well. Her menus change often for these market appearances, because she’s just that creative, but look, whatever Jan’s got cookin’? You want it.