PIKE’S NEW PLACES
SEATTLE — Art Stone was standing at the counter of his small restaurant, Honest Biscuits (www.honestbis cuits.com), when I walked in. His eyes were locked on the view through the windows at the front of his store. I turned and looked too, seeing a vast panorama of sea, coastline, bridges and drizzly skies. “Even when the weather’s miserable, it’s still beautiful,” he said before filling my order for a warm buttermilk biscuit. I grinned at his oh-so-Seattle comment. You wouldn’t catch an L.A. resident being happy with rainy skies. But I had to agree that it was pretty in a gray sort of way.
The vista is a relatively new one for Stone, one of the tenants in MarketFront, a new section of Pike Place Market (pikeplacemarket .org), Seattle’s heart, soul and No. 1 visitor attraction.
The farmers market, founded 110 years ago, expanded earlier this year for the first time in four decades. Among the additions are a handful of large shops such as Stone’s, 47 small stalls for artists and other vendors, a parking lot, studio apartments for low-income residents and a rooftop public plaza.
The plaza quickly became a top draw for tourists, who shoot selfies or family portraits there with the Seattle waterfront and bay as a backdrop.
Old-fashioned fun
Pike Place Market can get crowded, with about 15 million visitors a year. In fact, so many tourists clog the market in summer when Alaska-bound cruise ships are in port that many locals stay away.
The $74-million addition, with its panoramic views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains, offers a pleasant alternative to older sections of the market, where visitors jam narrow corridors full of vendors hawking produce from Washington farms, artisanal and specialty foods, fish and handcrafted products.
As roomy and pleasant as the new section is, the historic regions of the market are more fun, I found during three visits earlier this month, including a foodie tour with Eat Seattle (eatseattletours.com) led by chef Eric Olinsky.
We wound our way through the hallways, tasting Chinook salmon, Greek yogurt, dried sour cherries, donuts and pickle juice. Clarification: The four other people on the tour tasted pickle juice. I passed.
“You should try it,” Olinsky said. “It’s from Britt’s Pickles (brittslive culturefoods.com), handmade in oak barrels. It’s really, really good pickle juice.” But I shook my head, trying hard not to make a face at the thought of drinking pickle juice at 10:30 in the morning, and we moved on, continuing our journey through the twisting passageways. I felt as if I was exploring Rome’s catacombs.
The older section of the market, where we were walking, is a crazy, colorful spectacle of noise, smells, banter and urban theater. Flowers are incredibly cheap, fresh and beautiful, fishmongers toss giant king salmon across the heads of the crowds, and Rachel the Pig holds court as the market’s mascot.
Rachel, a life-size ceramic pig, stands guard outside the main entrance to the market. Her ample belly accepts donations, piggy bankstyle, for the market’s charitable causes, which include a senior center, food bank, preschool and low-income housing.
Rachel and the 500-vendor market got its start because of the high price of onions, which soared from 10 cents to $1 a pound in the booming frontier town of Seattle in the summer of 1906.
Lumberjacks, fishermen and housewives revolted, and the Seattle City Council founded Pike Place Market, a public market that would allow residents to buy directly from farmers, thus cutting out the middlemen who were blamed for spiking prices.
Good place to get lost
The revamped market debuted in the ’70s, and for the most part it looks much the way it did then. Long hallways spread in all directions, making it easy to get lost in the shed-like structures that form the market. Even more confusing are three labyrinthine levels, called Down Under, that are below ground in the Main Arcade.
It was here that I found Pike Place Magic Shop (marketmagic shop.com), where 100-year-old posters cover the walls and ceiling. Juggling pins, tricks and gag gifts are among the magical flotsam and jetsam that jam almost every square inch of the store.
Owner Sheila Lyon was working at the main counter when I walked in, performing illusion tricks for shoppers. “My husband and I opened this shop 45 years ago,” she told me. “Longest running magic shop in the U.S. We’ve been here so long we’re relics.”
I was drawn into a nearby bookstore, where 50,000 books, most used, crowd the shelves and floor. Owner J.B. Johnson, an engaging guy, opened his shop, BLMF Literary Saloon, 21 years ago. “I have a healthy respect for books,” he said. “This is what I love. This is what I do.”
The neighborhood around the market also has its share of interesting businesses and characters. Buskers line the cobblestoned street near the market’s main entrance. On the day I visited, a catfaced musician was playing an accordion and a guy who calls himself Brother Billy advertised his “elevator music,” but his tunes were drowned out as another musician’s sax wailed the “Star Wars” Theme.
I circled around to the MarketFront, where everything is shiny and new, including Old Stove Brewing Co. (oldstove.com), Indi Chocolate (indichocolate.com) and, of course, Art Stone’s Honest Biscuits, advertised as “Honest-ToGoodness Kick-ass Biscuits.”
This time, Stone was too busy to pay attention to his outstanding view. He was filling orders for MacGregors (biscuits with bacon, cheese and caramelized onions, $6), butterholes (classic Southern biscuits with butter, $3.75) and friedchicken-on-a-butterhole-biscuit sandwiches ($9.25).
I ordered biscuits and gravy ($7.50), one of my Southern-belle mom’s specialties, and sat at a table facing the window. I guess I could get used to rainy weather. It goes well with kick-ass biscuits.