Marathon Life

Thursday, August 04, 2011

Favourite San Diego Things: Hillcrest Farmer's Market

Thai food at the market
I am starting a new series of posts discussing some of my favourite things to do in San Diego to try to get myself more into blogging about stuff OTHER than my condo owning frustrations and repairs. I will also spell EXACTLY like Canadians using "ou" and "re" as much as possible. I just like that way the words look on the page. They are distinctive. Call me a fool or whatever you want. I will not change! I am HONOURED to do this for all the Canadian-wannabes out there!


So this week we will talk about the Hillcrest Farmer's Market, which happens every single Sunday from 9am to 2pm. It's a huge one that takes up the Hillcrest DMV's parking lot and parts of Normal Street in San Diego's Hillcrest neighborhood. It is about 1.75 miles from my condo. I used to live under a km away but I moved to the other side of the University Heights neighbourhood here in San Diego.

This vendor always has a vast selection of humus and tapenade
It's part of my routine to go here every single Sunday that I am in town. I will usually drive 1 miles and park on Cleveland Street and walk over. Sometimes I do walk there, but it takes like 25 min, so for time efficiency I drive the 3 minutes. I always walk around the fruit side first. There are many produce vendors and most of them offer free samples. One in particular offers many samples of oranges, plums, pluots, cherries, raisins and if that's not enough, avacados as well. It's great that you can sample everything before buying it. Pluots are currently in season and are very good. I love the ones that are more tart than sweet.

What else? Well they have great food vendors too. You can get a great selection of humus (see photo above) from this one vendor. They have about 10 different humus flavors including curry, basil. jalapeno, beet and even peanut butter. My favs are beet and curry, peanut butter coming in a close third. There is also a great Thai booth where you can get silver dollar sized coconut mini-pancakes for a very cheap price - 5 for $1. It's great. They also make about 5-6 traditional Thai dishes right on the spot. Another place called Flavors of East Africa has amazing food. It is Kenyan food, but tastes somewhat like Indian, but not as spicy. They have tasty samosas, which are fried or baked triangular shaped savory pastries. You can get them with or without ground beef or chicken inside and also includes spiced onions, peas, carrots, lentils (vegetarian option).

One of the fruit vendors and the many samples
The real deals are in the last 15 minutes of the farmer's market. One particular fruit vendor on the northeast side always has a half off sale starting at 1:45pm. All fruit is half off from $3/lb to $1.50. I usually get the pluots and nectarines during these sales. Their fruit is organic and very sweet.

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posted by Anthony at 11:57 PM

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