The Soulard Market offers fresh produce at a fraction of the price of both Schnucks and Bear Mart. (Netta Sadovsky | Student Life)

Rating: 5/5
730 Carroll Street, St. Louis, MO 63104

If you live in the Village or on the South 40, the thought of regularly paying 75 cents for an apple and almost $9 for a box of cereal is no longer absurd. While the apple is probably bruised and not of your favorite variety, you’ve learned to take what you can get. And as you bite into it, it smooshes a little under your teeth, and you have to tell yourself, “Keep eating the apple. Just don’t think about it,” trying to ignore the cognitive dissonance emanating from the price-to-quality ratio.

What if you could go to a place nearby where you could buy apples of your favorite sort, picked fresh that week from a local farm and offered at a fraction of the price of Washington University’s mediocre selection? But wait, you can! In fact you can get there yourself, by car or via a friendly companion-with-a-car. It’s Soulard Farmers Market, and it’s only a 15-minute drive from Brookings. I had never been to the Soulard Farmers Market before I went this past weekend, on a warm early autumn day, with the wind in my hair and a skip in my step. I was already salivating in the car for the inexpensive produce I’d heard so much about. Truth be told, I didn’t believe it could be anything extraordinary; after all, shouldn’t the market economy work itself out to disallow radically good deals? God knows free-market principles don’t rule at Wash. U. Dining Services, but I had a hunch that Soulard prices could not stray too far from the local Schnucks.

Boy, was I wrong. The first thing I saw when I walked through one of the aisles was a man selling my favorite kind of apples: Gala. I picked the four best, and the vendor asked for a dollar. I fished out some coins as I closed my jaw, which had apparently dropped.

My friend Alex told me as I left the vendor’s station that I should try to resist the temptation to buy things at the first few booths. After all, there were about a hundred more waiting to be discovered, with even better products and prices.

There were items galore, from herbed Amish goat cheese to cranberry date bread and, oddly, a live rooster. I ended up with three bananas, four apples, four plums, a loaf of bread, a bunch of strawberries and three ears of corn, all for under $10. The sun looked brighter and the ground more fertile as Alex and I walked back to the car, groceries in hand.

The next day when I woke up, I heard that familiar grumble in my belly and considered my options for breakfast. “Ah yes!” I soon recalled. “I have an abundance of Soulard produce!” and happily fetched an apple and a plum. The apple was a shiny reddish orange, and when I bit into it, there was no give, only crunch (i.e., no smooshing). The flavor was mild yet tangy as a morning fruit should be. The plum was rather firm, with just a bit of give to it. It was a deep eggplant purple and had a rather strong, sharp flavor. Needless to say, both of the fruits surpassed their Bear’s Den equivalents by a large margin.

I highly recommend the Soulard Farmers Market for its amazing selection and reasonable prices. You can get to the market by taking Highway 40 to downtown St. Louis and getting off at the exit marked “Last Exit in Missouri.” Soulard is open year-round, Wednesdays through Saturdays. The prices are best on Saturday, and they get lower over the course of the day, as vendors try to sell off all of their remaining produce.

Find out more about the Soulard Farmer’s Market.