Unless you can take the farm- to-table concept to the extreme and grow and raise your own food, or have mastered the art of online shopping so that you never need leave your home, most of us have to take a trip to the market every now and then. Some love perusing the shelves for new convenience foods, squeezing the cantaloupes, asking the butcher to cut the lamb chops just so or nowadays, grabbing a cup of coffee at Starbucks or Dunkin’s and taking a break to check e-mail via Wi-Fi. OK, so we don’t have a Trader Vic’s, Wild Oats or Whole Foods market yet, but we do have many great options on the Seacoast for food shopping, each with its own charms. So here’s a guide to where to food shop on the Seacoast, with some comments by both “lay shoppers,” and a few experts who cook for a living, notably Kathy Gunst, South Berwick-based food writer and cookbook author; Exeter resident Denise Landis, the New York Times food columnist and cookbook author whose first column for Home & Garden appears herein, and Susan Tuveson, chef and owner of Kittery’s Cacao Chocolates.
Of course, there are plenty of independent fish, meat, bakery and produce shops as well as the farmer’s markets in the region. But for now, we’ve started with the larger stores, along with the stores along Kittery’s “Gourmet Alley,” so shop until you drop. Or until you have to stop for a cup of coffee and check your e-mail.
So Independent
These smaller and independently owned, but still super, markets have everything you need all in one place and feature local produce, artisan cheeses, fish fresh from right off of our own shores and experts in each department to help you find ingredients for the perfect meal, right down to the wine.
Fiddlehead Farms Marketplace
920 Central Ave.
Dover, N.H.
(603) 749-9800
A cluster of individual food shops all in one, Fiddlehead Farms is sort of like an indoor farmer’s market. The awardwinning The Meat House is here along with Butler’s Pantry for cheese, wine, and specialty foods as well as wine tastings and expert help in selecting the wonderful cheeses. Fiddlehead’s itself offers produce and deli items to go, along with seafood from the Dover Fish House and breads and sweets from Finnico’s Bakery. Top it all off with a bouquet of flowers from the table from Roman’s Flowers.
“I like Fiddlehead because there’s so much around this area that’s all chain stores and here the people take the time to help me find exactly what I want or help me decide what to make for dinner,” says Artie MacKenzie of Dover.
