Detroit's Eastern Market - A Different Slice of Life

Detroit’s Eastern Market – A
Different Slice Of Life

If you are
seeking an enjoyable and interesting afternoon, look no further than Detroit’s
Eastern Market.  Located in the shadows
of the area’s oldest Italian restaurant – Roma Café – Eastern Market is a six
block public market that has been in existence since 1891. Every Saturday
thousands of people visit this vibrant marketplace to seek a great selection of
fruits, vegetables, fresh cut flowers, homemade jams, maple syrups, locally
produced specialty food products and meats. Open air stalls contain a variety
of tempting items and people travel from all over the state to participate in
the conviviality.

On a recent
Saturday, my wife Mary and I first dined at the fabulous Roma Café.  The veal parmesan was excellent and of course
a cappuccino and a cannoli rounded out the meal.  If you dine at an Italian restaurant you must
have a cannoli!

After lunch
we wandered over to Eastern Market.  It
was a beautiful spring day and there were thousands of people on a buying
spree.  This is a place where you can buy
a tray of strawberries for $5 or a rack of ribs for about $2.  One of the signs at the many meat markets
caught my eye.  It read:  “Our
pork is fresh.  It oinks on Thursday –
hangs on Friday – and is sold to you on Saturday”.  Now that’s fresh!

And no trip
to Eastern Market is complete without a stop at Germack Pistachio Company or
Rocky Peanut Company.  Both stores have
an abundance of wonderful nut products and the aroma will draw you into the
stores.  At Rocky Peanut Company you can
purchase candy products from your childhood days such as those great Necco
wavers!

Besides
browsing through the various vendors who are always hawking their wares, it is
a place for people watching.  Young and
old frequent the venue and you will even see women garbed in burqa which only
allows for their eyes to be seen.  What
we found interesting was that their husbands or male companions wore shorts and
tank tops.  It almost prompted me to say
“welcome to America” but I thought that would be inappropriate.  Guess the saying “when in Rome” or “when in
Eastern Market”, no longer applies but it was a warm day and I suspect the
women were a bit uncomfortable.

So there
you have it – if you are seeking a bit of Americana, like people watching, want
to purchase some fresh vegetables and beautiful flowers, and if you want the
freshest pork on the planet, set your GPS to Eastern Market in Detroit.  See you there!