• New Amsterdam Market

  newamsterdammarket.org

  The irony of New Amsterdam being New York’s best new outdoor market is that it really wants to be an indoor one. For the last couple of years, organizers have staged periodic, demand-fostering alfresco events at the old Seaport, all designed to lay the groundwork for a permanent year-round public market devoted to regional, seasonal, sustainably produced food. But to our mind, these open-air, culinarily quirky convocations of farmers, purveyors, and chefs have already become a highly anticipated phenomenon in their own sporadic right, combining the Greenmarket’s commendable focus on small local farms with the artisan-incubating spirit of the Brooklyn Flea, the civic-minded aims of Essex Street Market, and the accumulation of such diverse bounty as wild Maine seaweed, Vermont soy milk, and blue-corn tortillas from Queens. In other words, you won’t only find local farmers and their harvests, but cheesemongers like Anne Saxelby, butchers from Marlow & Daughters—the liaisons between producer and consumer. Another point of differentiation from the farmers’ market is the snacks: Sara Jenkins’s porchetta sandwiches and Luke’s lobster rolls, steaming bowls of organic-bean chili and local oysters on the half shell, plus the best ice cream you can find in Princeton, New Jersey (some would say anywhere). The next market day is planned for June. Go hungry.

From the 2010 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine