How I ate my way through LA’s Original Farmers Market
There’s a reason I want to go back to Los Angeles: pickles.I know it sounds ridiculous and it will sound even more ridiculous once you learn that I’ve always hated pickles. Loathed them. I fling them off burgers and give them to the nearest pickle-loving person, shudder when there’s relish in tuna sandwiches. I even pick the tiny bits off macaroni salad.
But on that beautiful afternoon in LA, I was handed a paper plate with four little cups of pickle chips.
“This is pickle mecca, welcome to our pickle heaven,” said Olivia when we arrived at Kaylin + Kaylin at The Original Farmers Market. “Our Honey Mustard is our bestseller. It’s called the 98-Percenter. When people don’t like pickles, they try our Honey Mustard and we convert them.”
I had four kinds of pickles on my plate: Honey Mustard, Spicy Garlic, Classic Dill, Sweet Heat. I ate them all, a miracle in itself, but Olivia was right—it was the Honey Mustard that did it for me. Which is funny because I don’t even like honey mustard.
Kaylin + Kaylin’s Honey Mustard pickles were crunchy, juicy, sweet, tangy and strangely good. I loved it. Kaylin + Kaylin had achieved the impossible—they made me like pickles.
The brand was started by Scott Kaylin, who is originally from Long Island. Lamenting the lack of a good pickle in the West Coast, he decided to make his own.
He opened his pickle-tasting bar at the Farmers Market in February 2020—yes, right before the pandemic lockdowns. But Kaylin + Kaylin managed to stay open. Olivia said, “Scott went to town hall and said, ‘Hey, I feel like we’re an essential business, we sell vegetables.’”
The powers that be agreed, and Kaylin + Kaylin didn’t just survive during the pandemic, it thrived. Their customers kept coming back for their pickles, and their following grew and grew to include pickle lovers, new converts and even celebrities. There are so many videos online showing people eating Kaylin + Kaylin’s pickles and declaring it the best pickles they’ve ever had.
“Pickles bring people happiness,” Scott likes to say. And now, they continue to serve their brand of happiness at their pickle bar and they also ship their pickles all over the United States.
Kaylin + Kaylin is just one of the many delicious stories you could savor at LA’s Original Farmers Market.
Alfresco dining adventure
Journalists who covered this year’s IPW, the US’ largest inbound travel trade show, got to go on a press tour of their choice. There were a lot of options but I picked what they called “an alfresco dining adventure at The Original Farmers Market” and boy, did I make the right decision.
Tour guides from Melting Pot Food Tours (meltingpottours.com) gave us a crash course on the history of the market, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary this weekend—how it went from dairy farm to oil field to a market where local farmers could sell their produce.
Today, you could still buy plenty of produce at the Farmers Market, but it’s also a place where people go to dine and shop for all sorts of things—from gourmet food items, candles and souvenirs to skincare, sneakers and stickers. The Farmers Market even has a barbershop, post office, bank and shoe repair shop.
Many stores have been there from the beginning and are still being run by the fourth or fifth generation of the same family.
“A lot of the merchants here are family-owned and are passed down either from family member to family member or from owner to employee … A lot of times, employees have bought out the owner and then they continue the business. It’s very tight knit here,” said Kim, who is from the Farmers Market’s PR agency.
Our food tour kicked off with falafels from Moishe’s—crispy, yummy and eaten with a side of tabbouleh.
Corned beef sandwiches
Then we had corned beef sandwiches from Magee’s Kitchen, the Farmers Market’s first restaurant, which traces its history to the first days of the market, when Blanche Magee started offering lunch to the farmers from her picnic hamper.
Years later, she would also open Magee’s House of Nuts at the Farmers Market, a stall that continues to sell fresh roasted nuts and pure nut butters today.
The list of merchants is a delightful mix of old and new, including the pandemic-born Gone Bananas Bread. Longtime friends Estee Stanley, an interior designer, and Leah Smith, a wardrobe stylist, started making banana bread a month into the lockdowns, to bring a little dose of joy to hospital front-liners.
What used to be a pop-up at the Farmers Market has become a permanent stall where people could get their delicious banana bread in different flavors—Big Banana, OG Chocolate Chip, Bluenana, Cinnabanana, Nucking Futs (Pecan) and Nucking Futs with Cream Cheese Frosting.
It was love at first bite for us and OG Chocolate Chip—Gone Bananas Bread’s super moist banana bread is definitely one of our Farmers Market favorites.
At Monsieur Marcel Gourmet Market, we sampled two kinds of cheese—Vacherousse from France and a goat cheese from California called Midnight Moon.
Our tour guide Wendy Krueger held out a bag from Littlejohn’s Candies. I reached in and grabbed a piece of their world-famous English toffee—nutty, chocolatey goodness that melts in the mouth. So, so good. Definitely another favorite from the tour.
People of all ages book the Farmers Market tour ($89 for adults, $50 for kids, 10 stops, 2 ½ hours), said Wendy. They’ve had families, friends, local and international tourists. “High-schoolers are fun,” she said. “They ask a lot of questions.”
1st place to serve pizza
We sat down for the next few tastings—cheese pizza from Patsy D’Amore’s Pizza, which was the first place to serve pizza in Los Angeles, washed down with beer from Macleod Ale Brewing Co. and then followed by curry puff dunked in sweet chili sauce from Singapore’s Banana Leaf.
Then we headed to Bennett’s Ice Cream, which has been at the market for 60 years. The Oreo Cookies N’ Cream is their bestseller, I was told, and so that’s what I got.
But the tour wasn’t over. Next stop: Dylan’s Candy Bar. Oh yes, there’s a Dylan’s Candy Bar at the Farmers Market. The place is massive—big enough for The Grove, LA’s popular outdoor mall, to also be built on it. Kim said, “The market owns all of the land and The Grove is a tenant. The Grove is on a hundred-year lease.”
By the time we got to Marmalade, our final stop, some of us were too full to eat. And that’s a shame because they prepared a lovely spread—salad, pasta, sandwiches, wraps and fresh fruits. “We serve simple, classic food that everybody can eat,” said the manager.
We wished we had more time at The Original Farmers Market. With over 100 specialty stores and restaurants, there was still so much to explore. But the Melting Pot tour was a good start. Next time, I’m definitely buying jars of pickles.
The Original Farmers Market is at 6333 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, California.
