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Chicago's SOAR Farmers Market: The Modern Art of Local Food
- Bob Benenson
- Jun 4
- 2 min read
Urban Neighborhood Market on the Plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art
SOAR Farmers Market, which opened for the season Tuesday (June 4) in Chicago, is a rare example of a downtown market that has a neighborhood vibe.
Make no mistake, this is a truly urban market. It is located on the plaza in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), which provides the backdrop of the above photo.
It's a couple of blocks east of Michigan Avenue's "Magnificent Mile" and the famed Water Tower, one of the few buildings on Chicago's North Side that survived the Great Fire of 1871. It has remained as the cosmopolitan city grew around it, revered as a symbol of the city's resilience.
Yet the market has the kind of low-key charm that many of us love in our farmers market visits. It is located in the Streeterville neighborhood, and SOAR is a acronym for the community association Streeterville Organization of Active Residents. Many of the shoppers there are hyperlocal.
SOAR Market also gets a lot of traffic from the health-conscious workforce at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital, the glass-fronted building in the background of this photo.
Though the market is relatively small, it has enough customers to draw some of the region's most ubiquitous farm vendors, such as Ellis Family Farms of Benton Harbor, Michigan, which featured two crops at the peak of their seasons: asparagus and strawberries. On the right is farm owner René Ellis Gelder, a longtime friend.
Nichols Farm and Orchard (Marengo, Illinois), the largest diversified produce farm in the region, is another fixture at SOAR Farmers Market. Hothouse cherry tomatoes are behind their big strawberry display.
SOAR is one of my favorite markets and it's convenient to where we live, so I was determined to make it for their opening day. But I was also well-stocked, which explains the small haul: Basil and my first sugar snap peas of the year from Nichols; 3-year Wisconsin cheddar from Stamper Cheese (Chicago); and a quart of those beautiful Ellis strawberries.
Have a favorite market you'd like to shout out? We'd love to publish your thoughts and photos.
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