Yellow Green Farmers Market to reopen April 17
Antonio Pellecchia has waited over a year to serve fresh burrata, meatballs and homemade focaccia bread at his Italian café, Mari’s Kitchen Rosticceria, at Hollywood’s Yellow Green Farmers Market.
In April, he may get his wish: Closed since pandemic lockdowns in March 2020, the massive tin-roofed shopping village announced it will reopen to the public on Saturday, April 17, with upgrades and fresh COVID-19 rules.
Yellow Green Farmers Market general manager Mark Menagh, who couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, broke the news this weekend in a newsletter emailed to thousands of visitors and vendors. Yellow Green’s social-media pages, however, didn’t mention the market’s return.
“I’m excited because it’s been very difficult for us the past year,” says Pellecchia, who runs the booth with his wife and two sons. “My family lived for the market, and when it was closed it was hard on all of us.”
The 100,000-square-foot
market at 1940 N. 30th Road will now be open 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Masks will now be required for entry, and Menagh has halved the number of returning vendors from 300 (pre-pandemic) to 150.
By far the biggest change: Although weekend warriors can stroll the open-air market with no time limit, they cannot — for now — dine at indoor tables and instead must order takeout or sit outside.
“We were told to start coming back April 3 to clean up and get our booths ready for the opening,” Pellecchia says. “I actually prefer not to put seats at my booth, anyway. Take the food and go to the seats outside.”
For Pellecchia , the wait is long enough. Before the pandemic his Italian market sold 13 scratch-made cheeses including stracciatella di bufala and provolone, along with deli meats (prosciutto) and pickled vegetables made by the market’s namesake: his wife, Mariela. He opened Mari’s Kitchen in 2018 after moving to Kendall from his native Venezuela, where his family operated five Italian eateries.
“We have a nice corner here,” Pellecchia says of his market, which is two booths wide. “We can’t leave the market because it moves so much traffic. We have loyal friends and people count on us.”
Yellow Green’s return should undoubtedly please vendors who’ve been unable to sell jams, cheeses, flowers and artisanal breads since the market closed amid lockdowns one year ago. Some stalls complained while others — unable to survive the delays — pulled out of their rental agreements, including longtime booths Chillbar (open since 2011) and Bang Shack, a chicken-dip stall once spotlighted on “Shark Tank.”
At its height, Yellow Green packed in 300 vendor booths under its tin roof as weekend shoppers shuffled along narrow aisles for breads and CBD oil, while indoor seating gave weary browsers a place to dine in and relax.
Menagh, for his part, has used Yellow Green’s downtime for a construction frenzy. Over the summer and fall, workers assembled four 30-foot-tall Seminole chickee huts — new outdoor
patio seating — along the market’s east side on North 30th Road.
“We’re just finishing the fourth hut now,” Menagh told the Sun Sentinel in November. “We figured if we’re going to be closed, we might as well do a lot of construction.”
The Yellow Green Farmers Market, at 1940 N. 30th Road, in Hollywood, will reopen at 9 a.m. Saturday, April 17. Go to YGFarmersMarket.com.