St. Pete’s Saturday Morning Market

Published by peter | Filed under Communities, Pinellas County Homes

In St. Petersburg, the place to be on the weekends is not at a four-star restaurant or ultra-lounge, but in a parking lot outside of a baseball stadium. Don’t believe me, then head down to St. Petersburg’s Saturday Morning Market and you will be pleasantly surprised by all that can be found at the largest open-air farmers’ market in the southeast United States.

A wide array of delicious food and eye-popping art is on display at the Saturday Morning Market. It’s held, not surprisingly, on Saturday morning in the parking lot outside of Al Lang Stadium in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg. It opens bright and early and usually ends in the mid-afternoon, it all depends on how quickly all of the vendors sell out of their wares.

The Saturday Morning Market is one of those great “quality of life” events that make Saint Petersburg such a wonderful place to live, especially during the seasonal months when you have to pinch yourself when you realize you are walking around in shorts at an outside farmers’ market. You can’t do that in Buffalo in January.

With fresh-from-the-vine fruit and vegetable stands, at least two-dozen artisan restaurant venues and several other food-and-wine related vendors, attending the Saturday Morning Market is a must for any aspiring gourmet. Here’s where you’ll find that seasonal vegetable perfect for cooking up for your next dinner party. Better yet, and this is one of my favorites, there is an entire venue dedicated to fresh gourmet cheeses, typically only found in the most exclusive food stores.

If you want the cooking done for you, there are several delicious choices to choose from as more than a dozen chefs open their own booths here to cook up intriguing dishes not normally found in restaurants but perfectly suited for foodies looking for an epicurean adventure. There’s one booth I always head to that has an assortment of homemade soups better than I have tasted since I moved back from New York City.

If food and drink is not your passion, there are just any number of ways to satisfy your itch no matter what your hobby. There’s beautiful artwork on display (and for sale), exquisite hand-crafted jewelry, a botanical garden’s worth of fresh flowers and plants and who knows what else, as each weekend brings another vendor to the ever-growing event.

What’s really special about the Saturday Morning Market isn’t the market itself, even with its bountiful offerings, it’s the walking around downtown on a beautiful weekend morning. After the event, you just have to head to one of the any number of delicious restaurants that are close by. My friends and I always head to Ceviche afterward, but sometimes, we walk down to the waterfront for boat drinks by the bay.

No matter where we end up, the Saturday Morning Market makes getting up early on the weekend worth it.