Crescent City Farmers Market, New Orleans, Louisiana

Saturday, Jan. 15, 2011

Warehouse District Farmers Market

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The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, more than four years ago, is by now part of this fascinating city’s history. The effects linger but New Orleans is back on its feet. The city’s farmers markets are noticeably bigger, and the farmers have an unmistakably wider array of seasonal produce for sale, than on my last visit just about exactly two years ago, on Jan. 26, 2008. I made my first post- Hurricane Katrina visit to New Orleans, and its farmers markets, two years before that, on March 21, 2006, just six months after Katrina.

– Mark Thompson

Warehouse District Farmers Market
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Location:
Warehouse District market
700 Magazine Street
Saturday, 8 a.m. to noon
(504) 861-5898

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slide show


What I Bought

satsumas and strawberries
Satsumas and strawberries

Price: $4 for 3 lb. bag of satsumas
$3/basket and $5/plastic container of strawberries

Temperatures were dipping below freezing at night at the start of my five-day visit to New Orleans, imperiling the region’s citrus and strawberry crops. Growers resorted to pulling row covers over their berries and using giant fans to stir up air in the orchards, largely averting serious damage, as these strawberries from Ponchatoula, north of Lake Pontchartrain, and satsumas from Plaquemines Parish, alongside the Mississippi River south of New Orleans, could attest. I’m leaving town tomorrow, bound for New York on Amtrak’s Crescent train, and stock up on these to eat along the way.


mustard greens
two types of mustard greens
Price: $1/bunch

These aren’t exactly train food, but I figure they’ll easily survive the trip, bundled up in my checked-in bag, in a cold baggage car. Besides, these gigantic, succulent greens, look too good, and are too attractive a bargain to pass up.


turnips with greens
turnips with greens
Price: $1.50/bunch


romanesco broccoli
romanesco broccoli
Price: $5

This gigantic head of romanesco broccoli won’t easily fit in my luggage, and is likely to suffer en route to New York, but it’s the largest more gothic-looking head of this vegetable that I’ve ever seen. And it will make a perfect, characteristic crop from this farmers market around this time of year to photograph in situ around the city.


romanesco broccoli the Lower Irish Channel
romanesco broccoli in the Lower Irish Channel