Last week, the Union Square Farmer’s Market, one of the biggest and best in the city, put on its first nightmarket, billed in a lavender promotional jpeg as “A Midsummer Night’s Green Market.”  The farmers stayed twice as long as they usually do, there was beer and music, and a handful of area restaurants turned out to dish out.

So we turned out, too.  We were psyched.

It ended up a bit of a very crowded catwalk of very good looking food.

We tried Telepan’s blueberry crescent and fried eggplant with ratatouille, both of which were pretty, decent, unspectacular.  Each of these guys were four bucks.

Next up was the peach turnover from Union Square Café, which was not only infinitely superior to its blueberry cousin but pretty damn delicious.  Once you accept the fact that any turnover stuffed with corn syrup gloop masquerading as fruit is an offense to all that is good and noble in the world, you are left with a turnover’s pastry as its defining feature.  The Café’s was fantastic: delicately crispy on the top, firm and flaky elsewhere.  Cost: six bucks.

And finally, our wallets getting lighter, we tried Toqueville’s beet salad.  Look at this salad.   Is that not one of the prettiest salad’s you’ve ever seen?  Your answer is “yes.”  The salad consisted of baby golden and red beets, candycane radishes, microgreens, slivers of crouton, and walnets that were still warm.  A light dash of something creamy but not particularly strong in flavor dressed it all, letting the beets come through, making me as happy as a clam.  The walnuts and toasted croutons were essential; the change in texture and crunch elevated the whole dish.  Cost: three bucks.

In total, we spent seventeen dollars.  Which brings me to the biggest takeaway of the evening.

The nightmarket was ridiculous.  It offended me.  When the major argument against the culture’s ever-growing disinclination to be harmed by Industrial Agriculture is that slow food, organic food, locavore movements, etc. are elitist, six bucks for a three-bite peach turnover is counterproductive.  And when it is at the Union Square Farmers Market in New York City, arguably the flagship market in the biggest city in the country, that’s a major problem.  How many people decided to check out a farmers market for the first time, were floored by the prices and general air of high society, and deduced that locally grown food is not for them?

Greenmarket, the organization in charge of the farmers markets, is a good organization, and the markets (and the government) are good enough to allow that folks can use food stamps there.  But they ought to know better.  They ought to have included vendors selling good food at reasonable prices, not just high-end Union Square restaurants whose appetizers cost ten dollars and up.  If farmers markets are supposed to be for all of us, then public events promoting them need to be as well.

After our beet salad, we crossed to the booth of Caradonna Farm, which occupies a prime corner spot at the northwest corner of the market every Wednesday.  They’re so farm’y they don’t even have a website, and I go to town on their apples each fall.

We bought these five juicy peaches.  Cost: two-forty.  Now that’s what I’m talking about.