Soulard Market

The Saint Louis Arch is more properly called the Gateway Arch, as Saint Louis is the Gateway to the West.  Overshadowed by its more recent history, it is easy to forget that St. Louis was once a small town on the river’s bank, the last stop before heading into new frontier. 

Today, I explored one of Saint Louis’s original landmarks, the Soulard Market.  The market traces its history to an open air farmer’s market prior to the Louisiana Purchase.  The current building was built in 1929, and while smaller, feels a lot like Pike Market in Seattle.  In some places, it is semi-open air, in others, there are permanent storefronts.  The stalls were packed with goods- fresh fruits and vegetables, fish, cheese, brown eggs, and, of course, gooey butter cake. 

Gooey butter cake?  Apparently this is a Saint Louis thing.  A sinfully delicious, terribly addictive Saint Louis thing.  It is sort of like a yellow cake with a brownie texture, but that is akin to saying that a Mercedes is kind of like a Kia with leather seats. 

Having already reached my quota of gooey butter cake for the week, I instead picked up some local blueberries, an heirloom tomato that I am assured by a friend is the best available in Saint Louis, and a pound of Rainier Cherries which I plan to gorge myself on this evening.

In addition to the food vendors, there are dry goods merchants, an herb shop, and a pet store.  While I didn’t go into the pet store, I did a bit of window shopping, and admired the cute bunnies and svelte little birds.  However, the bunnies would eat the trim of my apartment, and the birds would die of stress from my cat constantly considering how to make a snack of them. 

This being my lucky day, an arts and crafts fair was set up was set up next door to the fair.  It was a nice little fair, with around 20 vendors selling hand made goods.  The selection varied from some lovely jewelry with vintage flair to tie dyed clothing to tea cups on a stick.  Yes, tea cups on a stick; they came complete with a little bag of bird seed.  Not having a yard to put one in, I passed these by. 

However, I did pick up two new pendants, one was a stone that has the colors and striations of tiger eye, but more opaque and with a glitter rather than a shine.  The other is a bronze circle stamped with “wander”; I thought it was cool to find an inspirational pendant that was so unique and in harmony with my life.

Outside the park where the fair was set up, there was a sign for a free concert series in the park.  With that finding, my trip was complete.  I’m off to add some more free entertainment to my calendar.




Soulard Market:  http://soulardmarketstl.com/