North Market

When I lived in Cleveland, I usually made a weekly grocery trip to West Side Market.  There was a fruit vendor I frequented to the point of her eventually offering me free pineapples, a bakery whose intensely popular pepperoni rolls inspired my own, and several flower vendors which seemed to be staffed only by young, attractive women, leading me to believe that they flirted with male shoppers enough to make them buy flowers for the women they actually knew out of sheer guilt.  I haven't been there in years.

After Christmas this past year, I stayed in Ohio for a few weeks to help my dad and brother with some home improvement jobs.  We ended up doing lots of work at my brother's place, and none at Dad's, but all three of us were very happy with what we accomplished.  On the day my brother, his wife, and their son took custody of me from The Girl, we made a couple stops on our way to Dad's.  The first was artistically inspired.  The second was North Market.

Many of the vendors had some sort of samples available.  My brother, carrying Nephew on his shoulders, offered a pretzel stick to the furious primate.  Nephew was insistent on trying the dip accompanying the pretzels, but that was a hot sauce vendor, and there's no way that would end well, so my brother turned and walked away, putting the "dips" out of reach, out of sight, and out of mind.  Sadly, nobody was carrying me, so I stuck a pretzel stick in one of the center dip bowls, assuming that meant it was in the middle of some abstract Scoville spectrum.  Now my brother giggles while telling people how I started clapping him on the shoulder, crying "it burns!  it burrrrns!!"  I wouldn't say crying, exactly, but I was very happy to accept a sample of yogurt from the next vendor stall.

after the hot sauce, I was afraid to try the Tunisian Chicken.

North Market is a little smaller than West Side Market, and seems geared more towards prepared foods than raw ingredients, but that's probably a good choice for the area.  If I worked nearby, I'd likely show up often to try exotic and interesting things for lunch.  Their open-weekdays schedule supports this practice; WSM is only open three weekdays and Saturdays.

How do they keep the swan from browning?

My hosts for the day shared a bowl of ice cream; I don't remember the flavors, but I think salted caramel was involved.  That was about the same time I was salving my oral burns with free yogurt, so I admit I wasn't really focusing on what my brother had ordered.

No, there are no available samples of lobster ravioli.  Please stop asking, sir.

I don't think my brother had been to the North Market before that day.  All three of the adults felt bad that we made our visit shortly after a large brunch, leaving no room for any of the interesting meal options we saw on display.  The energetic primate in our midst was more upset that we wouldn't let him run wild.

The bin is nearly empty.  Does that mean high popularity, or small batch size?