At Ferry Plaza, follow the food back
A jar of miso, a named variety of fruit, a dumpling made through shared work. Follow the growers and kitchens that make a Ferry Plaza morning worth knowing.
Archive · 2022Mariko Grady did not set out to make a farmers-market business. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, she began selling homemade miso to raise money for relief. Demand brought another problem to solve: larger-scale selling needed a commercial kitchen. She entered La Cocina’s incubator, and the work gradually became Aedan Fermented Foods.
That story changes the way to approach San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. A jar is a food, but it is also a set of decisions about ingredients, production and how a small business finds a public. Ask what brought one thing to the stall and a morning’s shopping starts to draw a map.
The map reaches across California farmland, through kitchens in the city and outward to other places. Come for breakfast or a bag of fruit, and leave with a better sense of the work behind it.
Three days, three ways in
Saturday
The broadest grower-and-maker visit, with more than 100 vendors around the building.
8 a.m.–2 p.m. Check the week’s attendance before planning around a particular seller.
Tuesday
A smaller midweek produce and lunch stop.
10 a.m.–2 p.m., year round. The indoor shops have separate hours.
Thursday
A compact street-food lunch with fresh produce alongside.
10 a.m.–2 p.m., year round. Sunday is not an outdoor market day on this schedule.
A container of possibility
Foodwise’s published account of Grady’s work describes an introduction through samples: tofu, daikon and watermelon radish showing different uses for miso and shio koji. It is an appealing way to explain an unfamiliar ingredient. The first question is what you could do with it in your own kitchen.
Miso, koji-based marinades and amazake offer different answers. In the account, shio koji is introduced as a marinade for vegetables, tofu or meat; amazake can be diluted with hot water for a drink, or combined with fruit and frozen. The practical connection matters more than collecting a vocabulary of fermentation. Ask about the particular product’s ingredients, storage and intended use before carrying it home.
Aedan’s current seller profile lists small-batch, handmade production and organic rice from Koda Farms. It records Grady’s own San Francisco kitchen opening in 2022, after her years in La Cocina’s incubator. That progression gives the jar a local business history as well as a connection to Japanese food-making.
