Inside the Pike Place Market: Exploring America's Favorite Farmer's Market

Inside the Pike Place Market by Braiden Rex-Johnson is as fresh and vibrant as the famed Seattle marketplace itself. The country's oldest continuously operating farmer's market is miraculously captured in two dimensions: its nooks and thoroughfares, its personalities, and the found items that define the essence of Pike Place. With 20 market recipes, vivid photographs, and behind-the-scene tales of fish buyers, street musicians, organic farmers, herbalists, and tattoo artists, Inside the Pike Place Market relates the stories of this bustling urban village as if you were discovering them for yourself.

The book is a hybrid guidebook, photographic essay, narrative, and cookbook--and in this lies its success. Recipes, such as Fusion Flank Steak, Pear Vinaigrette, and Strawberry-Rhubarb Fool, mingle with Paul Sounders's intimate and colorful photographs and Rex-Johnson's succinct vignettes. Together they reveal the rich diversity that infuses the market. Most notably, humanity and tradition live throughout these pages. Meet Louie DeLaurenti, whose family has been in the market since 1928. Survey baby romaine lettuce, vine-ripened tomatoes, Chinese greens, and hot French pastries. Duck into a meatlocker. Listen to Demetrios Moraitis strum his bouzouki. Dodge the low-flying fish, then rendezvous with friends at the brass pig named Rachel. Open this book, and you step into Seattle's soul--and stomach! --Byron Ricks